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The awakened mind does not suffer from anything.

—Vernon Howard

Now that you have a better understanding of thoughts and how they can rule (and ruin) your life if you let them, it is appropriate to talk about waking up and bringing awareness into your life. Thoughts can only affect you if you allow them to. It’s entirely up to you. You may not be able to control what thoughts come into your mind, but you certainly have the master key in how you let them affect you. If you rise above them and see them as just thoughts, watch them come and go without latching on to them, that is awareness.

Awareness has been taught by all the great spiritual teachers and sages throughout the ages. Most of us go through our entire lives without really knowing why things happen the way they do, why we are always the victim, why things never work out, why we always feel so down and angry, why we’re always broke and unhappy, why we let every little thing that life throws our way affect us. Why me? We accept it as our fate in life, our calling in life, and we continue on our journey of misery. We buy into “that’s just the way life is for me.”

The only true and full awareness is awareness of awareness. Till awareness is awareness of itself, it knows no peace at all.

—Sri Ramana Maharshi

Awareness is the key to your freedom. Knowing that you know why something might be affecting you—that’s waking up. That’s awareness. Knowing that you have let your thoughts take you on an unnecessary journey down a dead-end path that only leads to misery, being conscious of this fact, and knowing that you can change your thinking and reactions at any time—that’s awareness. You know these are just thoughts and that you have complete control over how they affect you. Your senses aren’t always the reality. You can rise above all your thoughts and external environment and see them any way you want, on a daily, moment-to-moment basis. That’s awareness, and it’s your ticket to freedom, happiness, and bliss.

Awareness can be a very simple thing, and also can be extremely complicated. It’s simple when you practice and incorporate it into every aspect of your life—not occasionally, but each and every day. It can be extremely hard if you don’t think you have time, if you believe it probably won’t work for you, that it’s a little too “out there.” You can be driving to work and as soon as someone cuts you off, you fall back into your old ways of reacting. You get mad and may want to retaliate. With awareness, you can watch your thoughts as they go down this path that leads to no place good. You can catch yourself and “see” yourself caught up in this moment of anger and let it go.

Or maybe when you get to work and you see an e-mail that upsets you, your blood pressure rises, and you want to react and respond immediately. You want to vent your anger, and without thinking you send off an e-mail that you later regret. With awareness, you can watch yourself get caught up in this little drama that has upset you and realize that there is no need to respond quickly and without thought. You can take your time, understanding that whatever has set you off is probably not that big of a deal, and you can either respond or not respond at a later time. That is awareness. You can actually “see” yourself getting angry, getting mad, wanting to retaliate. You may even find it humorous. How could something so seemingly benign affect you that way?

It can be hard, though, when you get caught up in daily life, with all the things that we have to do: going to the store, driving, going to work, school, social functions… In no time, you are back to being the person you have always been, reacting to life the way you always have. That’s unawareness. That’s living a life reacting to your senses, to your surroundings, to your environment. And that’s how you lose control of your life, happiness, and freedom.

But if you practice awareness, if you start now (no better time than now), each day you will become more aware. Awareness will begin to become second nature to you. It is so important to make awareness, “waking up,” a part of your daily life. In his book A New Design for Living, Ernest Holmes writes, “Man as a self-conscious expression of Spirit, which is never limited, encounters limitations only through his own thinking. Man imposes limitations on himself through wrong thinking. We must wake up to the tremendous creative nature of our thought. We can specifically, definitely, direct our thinking in such a way as to be productive of good in our experience.”120

Learning how to harness your mind to promote growth is the secret of life, which is why I called this book The Biology of Belief. Of course the secret of life is not a secret at all. Teachers like Buddha and Jesus have been telling us the same story for millennia. Now science is pointing in the same direction. It is not our genes but our beliefs that control our lives… Oh ye of little belief! 121

—Bruce Lipton

Haven’t you lived by your senses and same old reactions that have always plagued you for long enough? Don’t you think it’s time to try something different? Where has this type of living and thinking taken you? Do you like being dragged around by your thoughts, your environment—and even worse, someone else’s thoughts, opinions, and advice?

There’s an old story about a shaman with a reputation for curing insomnia. A busy professional who can’t sleep tracks him down deep in the jungle, and the shaman agrees to help. The shaman sends instructions, and two weeks later, the professional sends back word that he’s been cured. “Thanks so much! I’ve been sleeping great!” the note reads. The shaman sends back his own reply: “No problem. Come back and see me whenever you’re ready to wake up.” 122

—Chris Guillebeau

Life and the concept of “me” is often described by many spiritual teachers as being similar to the ocean and the waves. We are much like the individual waves in the ocean that rise up and subside. The problem being that “we,” as the waves, see ourselves as separate from the ocean, and when any little flare-up or disturbance comes our way, we believe it is exclusive to us. Any storm that comes along is “my” storm, “my” hurricane, “my” tsunami. We forget that we are the ocean. We forget that we are life. We forget that we are not separate from life, just as the wave is not separate from the ocean.

And yet we continue to go through life feeling we are separate, and consequently we go through life unaware. Even though you may think that you are aware, you probably are not. As Vernon Howard writes, “What is the condition of the unaware man? He does not know that he does not know. He is unaware, and so he is unaware that he is unaware. And being lost, he gullibly gives other lost people an opportunity to make him even more lost.”123

By your own efforts waken yourself, watch yourself. And live joyfully. You are the master. 124

—Buddha

I have lived the majority of my life unaware. And I was definitely unaware that I was unaware. I lived and reacted to what was going on around me, my senses, with no idea I had any control over how I reacted or how things external to me affected me. The entire time I was in control and yet I wasn’t, because I didn’t have this wisdom. I didn’t know about these teachings.

In business, things are always popping up that, at the time, seem to be monumental. You lose a customer, you have to fire an employee, you receive an angry e-mail from a customer, and without awareness, you get caught up in the moment and deal with the problem without really thinking it through. You are reacting and oftentimes overreacting. You allow events and other people to make you even more lost.

Most of us live this way. We are all lost to some extent, as Vernon Howard would say. He adds, “Declare to yourself, ‘Nothing in life has any meaning except my aim to wake up, to see life as it really is. So whatever my daily duties, I will use every minute, every thought and every energy to achieve this aim.’”125

It’s tragic when we allow others who are unaware the power over us to make us even more lost. But you don’t have to let this happen. You can wake up. You can become aware. And as you do become more aware, you will feel a great sense of liberation and freedom. You will start to see and understand your thoughts, your emotions, your up days, and your down days. You come to understand that what arises does subside. You start to realize there are no dualities in life, and the reason they existed before is because of the way you viewed and reacted to them. You viewed life on a sense level, letting everything that came your way affect you. You lived by your senses. You let outside circumstances control your life. You didn’t create your life, you let your environment create you. You accepted this type of life as just the way life is. And that is the opposite of awareness.

Self-awakening is the one great task of every man and woman on earth. To be self-awake is to be free of unconscious self-sleep. The first step toward Self-awakening is to detect one’s actual state of psychic sleep, which is characterized by suffering, fear, anguish, and similar negative states. 126

—Vernon Howard

Many people use the popular expression, “It is what it is.” But it doesn’t have to be what it is. With awareness, you can change all of this. Don’t buy into “It is what it is.” You have complete control over the way you let any circumstance, event, anything external to you affect you. You are the conductor, the artist, the director, the painter, the sculptor of your life. What if Michelangelo had looked at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel before he began his masterpiece and said, “Sorry, it is what it is”? Or looked at an uncarved block of stone and said, “Nothing I can do—it is what it is.”

It is time to wake up and fully realize this wonderful power that we all have. The power of our thoughts and the power of awareness are two of the greatest powers any of us possess. Jesus tried many times to convey this simple message, telling us that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). You have the kingdom of God in you now. It exists now. Jesus was telling us to wake up to this power within, and yet so few of us realize or know we have it.

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive… We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn. 127

—Henry David Thoreau

Most of us tend to think that money and financial security will give us the freedom we want. It may help, but it’s not lasting. You’ll feel secure for a while, but that’s not the security and happiness you’re looking for. The real security is the knowing that you have the freedom to think anything you want, to believe anything you want, to react however you want to anything that arises, and to observe situations as though you were elevated above them and seeing them for what they really are. All of this comes from awareness. It comes from waking up from the nightmare that many of us live in on a daily basis—living like the hockey goalie of life, reacting, overreacting, and believing in every puck (life event) that comes our way.

Practice your new awareness every day. When you are in situations and can feel your blood pressure starting to rise because of what is happening around you, catch yourself before you get caught up in the melee of the moment and watch yourself become aware that you are aware. You can still deal with whatever is happening, but now you are dealing with the situation with awareness. You are not just reacting—or worse, overreacting. You elevate yourself to a higher level and see the situation much more clearly and calmly. And there is great power in that.

Hope is the dream of a soul awake. 128

—French Proverb

The true freedom you are looking for is the freedom that we all have access to now. It is the heaven within. What could be more freeing than to be able to interpret and perceive life in any manner that we want, and to allow any thoughts to pass through like a leaf on a windy day, like a passing train? The thought could be as benign as a leaf or make as much noise as a train. But with awareness, you can silently watch them come and go. If you like one, grab onto it if it makes you feel better, if it empowers you. Relish it. You have the power to do whatever you want with it. But most importantly, don’t let it adversely affect you. Don’t buy into anything negative. Let those thoughts go. Learn to laugh at them.

What good comes from negative thinking? How can a negative thought possibly help you? Believing in a thought that has potentially dangerous and negative connotations can affect not only your mental well-being but also your physical well-being.

Maybe a thought pops into your head of something that has happened in the past, something you didn’t like. Perhaps it was a negative comment, a situation or event that you wish hadn’t happened, something you said that you wish you could take back. It could be anything, and when you replay it in your mind, all the old memories, frustrations, anger, guilt, all of the old emotions that you already once lived and suffered through come back to you, and you start reliving them again. You start tormenting yourself over something that may have happened yesterday or ten years ago. It instantly affects your mood and how you feel in the present moment, and you aren’t even aware that you are doing this.

With awareness, you can let the thoughts, the old memories, come and go—no damage done. That is power! Awareness brings this to your life. It’s your kingdom of heaven, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s the key to life. So wake up, bring awareness into your life, and you will forever change the way you view life.

You can develop the right mental attitude when you realize that nothing external can upset you or hurt you without your mental consent. You are the only thinker in your world; consequently, nothing can move you to anger, grief, or sorrow without your mental consent. The suggestions that come to you from the outside have no power whatsoever, except that you permit them to move you in thought negatively. Realize that you are the master of your thought-world. Emotions follow thought; hence, you are supreme in your own orbit…

You can voluntarily and definitely change your attitude toward life and all things. You can become master of your fate and captain of your soul…

Decree now, and say it meaningly: “From this moment forward, I will admit to my mind for mental consumption only those ideas and thoughts that heal, bless, inspire, and strengthen me. 129

—Dr. Joseph Murphy

I will leave you with the title of Anthony Robbins’s classic book, which sums up this chapter: Awaken the Giant Within! And by the way—that giant is you.

Over the years of traveling around and speaking with people, I have seen that there is clearly a deep, strong, and true desire to ‘wake up,’ whatever that means to any particular individual. There is a strong desire to realize God, to realize truth, to stop the violence, to stop the hatred, to stop the suffering and to wake up to what is possible in this lifetime.

If you want to awaken one hundred percent, If that has priority over everything else, then immediately you are awake. That’s the truth. I stake my life on it. My life is guaranteeing that if you want to awaken to your true nature, if you want that totally, you will awaken to your true nature. 130

—David R. Hawkins