We can only achieve self awareness by releasing our selfishness. It is only once we are able to step outside our own little world of worry, self-pity, anxiety, inflated sense of self, etcetera that we can truly see the world around us. By releasing the mirror we hold in front of us that invariably reflects our gaze back upon ourselves, we can become open to the movements of life, society, humanity, and for those that are religious, our God or spirit within our lives. Where is all this self awareness talk coming from? Well, over the I weekend I participated in a men's retreat at my Church. It wasn't until the end of the half day retreat that I began to see things a little differently. The whole point of the retreat was a preparing ourselves spiritually and emotionally for the Advent season leading up to Christmas. As we all know, despite what has become the underlying message of Christmas, that being Jesus' birth for Christians, (which should be the overlying message), there is an overabundance of commercialization which has transformed Christmas into a season of giving gifts, shopping ourselves into debt, and getting overly stressed out. The retreat was held to try and stave off the commercialization and bring us back to the basics, to seeing the signs of God within our lives. Everybody has different signs they see that they can attribute to God, or for others, to providence, to a certain aligning of spirits or stars or planets. I choose to attribute those signs to God's presence in the world around us. What I stumbled across through the retreat was the realization that the only times I am open to seeing those signs around me is when I step beyond the bounds of my selfishness and truly look at the world around me. Its once I stop worrying about my life and simply let things be that I can become "self aware" in the sense that I realize the world's fluctuations, the simply signs of God's presence in everything and everyone, and become more than who I really am. My path to this realization did not merely start this past weekend, but has been building for quite some time through different readings, both Christian and non-Christian, that have brought me to where I am today. Before anyone goes thinking that I am presenting myself now as all-knowing, a wholly self aware individual, let me assure you that I am not any of those. The moments of self-awareness that I have are often times fleeting and concurrently, I have trouble most times releasing my selfishness. So where is this idea of self awareness as I have stated it coming from.
Well, I have read a number of different philosopher's and theorists, a lot about personal identity, about who we truly are and how we become the person we are today. I believe that at this point I have blended a number of different philosophies and theories together to come to my own conclusion of who we are as individuals. I believe firmly that humans are social beings. We were not meant to spend our lives holed up by ourselves like hermits in a cave. Rather, we depend on others to reflect back on us who we are. This doesn't necessarily come from others telling us we are "such and such" or we have issues with "so and so", but it is rather through our interactions with others, the way other's reflect our image of ourselves back to us, that is the basis of this theory. Whenever we interact with other people, they act as a mirror to who we truly are. Through their reactions, their facial features, their responses; they build within us a sense of who we are and what we mean to them. We always have the option of deflecting that reflection of self from them away from us, however, the more we do that, the more we become self absorbed with who we think we are rather than who we actually are. We can try to hold up the mirror in front of us to see who we are, but the reflection we see is invariably what we want to see, not what we need to see. If we persistently hold up the mirror, we become self absorbed, and unaware of the world around us. We can continually tell ourselves that we are what we see in the mirror, but that is usually not the case. Once we allow others to become the "mirrors" in our lives, we can truly become self aware instead of selfish. We can come to see how we affect others and how they affect us and that starts to build our sense of self. Once we drop the mirror in front of us, become self aware, and move beyond that, we can truly start to see the signs of God and life around us and impact others in a positive way. To me, those that are truly self aware or the selfless ones, the ones who consistently give to others, help others when not asked, in other words, become more than who they are by seeing themselves as a part of the bigger picture, not the entire picture that we see through selfishness.
All this theory is great, but what about concrete examples. I can only offer you examples as I see them. I was talking before about how I don't see the signs around me until I release my selfishness. It is those times, while driving, where I let me thoughts of myself go and look around that I see the goodwill of others. Just the other day I witnessed a number of people from their cars on an exit ramp in Milford giving money to a homeless person. It is the simple act of noticing someone holding the door for someone else. It is seeing sunset, perfectly framed in my rear view mirror that gives me a glimpse of God working through nature. It is seeing someone helping a person pick up dropped items without a second thought. The signs are everywhere around us. Simple signs, yes, but why should signs always be big and in your face. It is most often times the smaller signs that truly give us a sense of the good will that humanity inherently possesses. Some will say that humanity is inherently evil. I beg to differ. We only come to the conclusion that humanity is evil through our inflated sense of self and our selfishness. Once we take down that veil, we can begin to see more clearly and more often than not, once we see more clearly, we are more inclined to act selflessly. Becoming self aware is perhaps one of the hardest things we can do as humans. There is a big part of us that wants to look only at ourselves and who we are. But we can't really see who we are unless we look beyond ourselves. It may see anathema to think that in order to become self aware we need to look outwards, but it is the only way. We ourselves are most trivial beings who think we are important. The only way to gain importance is to move beyond our own wants and desires and start helping others. Even then, importance is trivial, what really matters is how we affect others in a positive way. I challenge anyone reading this to try dropping any selfishness you may be holding on to and look around you. Become self aware by becoming selfless. I may have been a little convoluted in my writing this morning, but I did my best to describe my thoughts and theories. I now know that becoming selfless will lead to self awareness and by becoming self aware I can start to see more of the world around me, the fluctuations of humanity, the signs of good will; and in the end, make my life a little more peaceful by dispensing of any worry and anxiety.
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