“Never hide from yourself the way you really feel about someone or something. Make it conscious to yourself and do not feel guilty about it. Just look at the way you really feel, while considering it an intelligent exercise in psychic health, which it is. Any temporary feeling of discomfort should be considered as normal to the exercise, for it is caused by the clash between the conscious real and the unconscious unreal. Be active with this exercise, remembering that we are punished by whatever we hide from ourselves.” -Vernon Howard

Question: How do I live this way in my daily life?

Answer: Oh yes, practical application, the fun stuff. I really do mean fun, if you change your perception and no longer think something is hard or difficult you will begin to find more ease in the process. For me seeing my personal and spiritual growth as fun changed my experience of it and that changed the outcome. This does not mean it won’t be challenging, but haven’t you ever done something fun that was challenging. You are bringing together the scattered pieces of a puzzle to complete the picture and reveal the real you.

OK there is a lot I could say here but let me get to it for the sake of space. These tools will help you to stop hiding from yourself the way you really feel about someone or something and begin to make it conscious to yourself.

I believe the foundation for all personal and spiritual growth begins with awareness, without awareness how can we change. With the seed of awareness, desire begins to grow, and then intention comes and finally out of intention comes manifestation. Remember I said this was the quick and dirty version OK maybe not that dirty.

How do we develop awareness? Well there are many ways of course to develop awareness. One would think that this is natural for us or that we are already aware, however years of social conditioning have trained us to shut this natural ability down or at least it has been minimized. Remember no matter how aware you think you are you can always develop a deeper awareness.

Again, for the sake of space I will only mention two. The first is what I call body scanning and the second is meditation. You will find two articles I wrote in 2006 explaining body scanning and some other thoughts that will help here: http://bit.ly/uxMrzr and http://bit.ly/gaVNdq. Body scanning is a form of meditation; however, it works with the mind and the body at the same time. There are many misconceptions about meditation these days and most people get frustrated when they first try it. This is a normal part of the process for many and it requires practice and the ability to stick with it. In addition, finding a form that works for you is very important. You do not have to sit is a seated pose, like lotus position with your legs crossed to meditate. I urge you to investigate the many options if developing your awareness is important to you.

Once you begin to work with one or both of these tools, you will begin to have more clarity and awareness of your thoughts, feelings and emotions. With any new tool, practice is required, there is no timeframe when a shift will occur it depends on your desire and willingness to change. With an unbending intention to succeed you cannot fail.

Pay attention to your thoughts and be aware of what you feel as things come up during the day. Pay attention to your body and recognize the messages it is sending you. If you feel anger for example, where do you feel this is your body? One of your greatest allies you have on this journey is your body. You only need to learn how to read the messages it sends. Moreover, remember the more you practice the more you remember to notice what you are thinking. Do not beat yourself up, when you forget let it go and start again. The three most important things you can do is practice, practice practice.