Awareness – Integration – Perception
by pre.
In the first lap around the spiral, we addressed perception awareness, encouraged you to learn to pay attention to the things you are looking at, hearing, sensing. To really examine the shapes, contours, colours, smells and sounds and to practice taking note of them, remembering them.
Learning to actually take note of the things you experience improves memory by impressing those experiences upon you most strongly in the first place. Your memory is burned more intently the more stimulated it is. By paying attention to your perception, your memory of that perception is improved.
Perception is also a vital component in your consciousness at any moment, your self control and understanding of the world is based upon your perception of it. Better awareness of your perception inevitably leads to a better understanding of your own mental states since, to a large degree, your perception is of your mental states.
Your improved ability to concentrate upon and pay attention to your awareness of your senses doesn’t only apply to just the basic five: Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. It’s also transferable to your internal senses. Kinaesthetic awareness, control over your body and your diet. Perception awareness integrates with your whole body to improve your view not only of the world, but of your own body itself.
Where would your cognitive abilities be without awareness of your perception? Your intuitions are informed by the things you see, so obviously seeing more things more clearly will enable you to tune your intuitions more carefully. Your imagination will be fuelled by a greater awareness of the world around you. Your reasoning abilities better informed by more correct and conscious awareness of your own sense data.
Plus, of course, just because you can use your improved sensing abilities doesn’t mean that you must. Learning to filter, to program your own awareness of those senses, improves your ability to program yourself by selectively paying attention to only those things which both matter and will drive your personality and thoughts towards a positive direction. You’re improving your bio-programming abilites just by being more aware of the things you are programming into yourself.
Your social skills are immeasurably improved by simply increasing your perception awareness. How much easier is it to read the impression on someone’s face when you are more aware of that face itself? How much easier to project and signal your own emotions and thoughts when you’re more aware of the expression on your own?
Finally your ethics are greatly improved by this simple increase in perceptual awareness. Your ability to love and to empathise with others depends on your ability to see them, to see what’s happening to them. Also your understanding of karma relies on being aware, able to see and understand, the consequences of your actions, and the actions of others, on not just the immediate beneficiaries or victims but on the whole of society.
Every skill in the Spiral is dependent upon your senses, and every skill in the spiral is improved by every notch of improvement in your awareness of those senses.
The Meditation
As such, the ten minute walking meditation presented this month will encourage you to look at, listen to, smell and be aware of the environments you’re walking though. To pay attention to everything around you, to let it all in and take note of the way it makes you feel.