Inner awareness therapy
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When I ask people if they’re happy, I often get evasive and conflicting responses. Many though, describe their lives as ‘in between’. A state of limbo, a place where they are waiting for something to happen to them so that they can find happiness and start living. The lotto winnings, a love of there life, a new car, better health, better circumstances… the list is endless and as unique as the person who awaits it.
Why are so many people waiting for happiness and where did they come to the understanding that happiness is outside somewhere, something to wait for? The answer to this question lies in something close to you—your thoughts. Let me explain. It’s important to realize that you are constantly thinking. Well known fact? I think not, most people are not aware of this fact, and most likely neither are you.
Think about your breathing for a second. Until the moment I brought it to your attention, you did not consciously been thinking of it. Breathing is automatic, so unless you are out of breath, you simply forget that you’re doing it. Thinking works the same way. You are doing it so automatically that you forget that it’s happening, and so it becomes invisible to you. Unlike breathing, forgetting that you are thinking can cause unhappiness and even depression. Why? Because what you are thinking gives rise to what you are feeling. Your thoughts always create your emotions. Whenever you have a thought, and you believe that thought to be true, you will feel a corresponding emotional response to that thought. It’s neurologically impossible for you to feel anything without first having a thought. Try feeling angry without first thinking angry thoughts. You can’t do it. In order to experience an event, you must process that event in your mind thereby interpreting it and giving it meaning. Do you see what this means? You think that when you see things as they are that you are being objective. But this is not the case. You see the world, not as it is, but as you are. Is it not true that your thoughts affect everything in your life? In the Bible in Proverbs 23:7 it says: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
The emotions that you experience are simply reflections of your thoughts. The truth is that the kind of person you are makes life what it is for you. This is why you will keep on struggling until you see that your unhappiness isn’t the result of the event, but of your thoughts about the event. Let’s look at this a little closer.
We have now established that your feelings are the reflections of your moment to moment experiences. We believe that by changing our perceived unhappy surroundings we will be able to bring an end to our unhappiness. This has never really worked, and it never will, because the unpleasant or unhappy condition that you are in is not the consequence of the event but your reaction to it. Why try and change your outer world when it is only a reflection of your inner thoughts? Unhappiness isn’t an entity that can exist on its own. Unhappiness is the feeling that accompanies your negative thinking about your life. On its own, unhappy feelings will disappear like the mist on a sunny day, because there is nothing to hold your negative feelings in place other than your thinking.
This understanding has enormous implications. It suggests that unhappiness does not come at you but from you! It means that you are not your feelings, or your moods, or even your thoughts. Most importantly it means that you can let go of the impossible and unbelievably self-punishing thought that you will be unhappy until you find happiness through someone or something. Accept what is. You are already happy, you just don’t realize it yet.
It is interesting to note that there have always been people who would seem to have every reason to be depressed, but weren’t. And then there are people who have every reason to feel happy, but don’t. Why is that? The American writer Nathaniel Hawthrone said: “Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
When you think, you are using your imagination to create an image or picture in your mind of an event rather than the real thing. That doesn’t mean that you are not living in a physical world of cause and effect. The law of cause and effect dictates that nothing happens by accident, that every ‘effect’ has a specific ‘cause’. Applied to yourself, this law means that the situations and circumstances of your life are the effects produced or caused by your actions. But if you follow the chain back, the ultimate or first cause is your thoughts. Everything that has ever been created began as somebody’s thought: every great work of art, every great empire, was once just an idea in someone’s mind. But so are every negative deed and every unhappy life the cause of a thought in someone’s mind. The way that you think about the situation determines how you feel about it, and in combination your thoughts and feelings influence your behavior, either spurring you on into action or immobilizing you with fear.
Within each of us there is an extensive world of thoughts and feelings whose movements determine how we perceive and experience the world outside of us. While this inner-world of thoughts may not directly bring us what we see, it does profoundly influence how we see our world of relationships and events. The inner determines the outer. In other words, we are seeing the exterior but experiencing the interior. One simple example of how this works is when your heart is heavy or troubled. Everything else around you tends to appear equally troubled.
Anthony De Mello describes in his book “Awareness” the absence of spirituality in most people’s lives; “Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.”
Some of you will say: "But I am awake." And I will then answer: "You think you are, but most human beings go through life without any wakeful thinking." Your wakeful thinking can be looked at from the same perspective as someone who is dreaming and then waking up to realize that it was only a dream and that it is not real. Thoughts are just like a dream—not real. Always remember that you are the thinker of your own thoughts. That’s why you can let go of those resentful feelings toward your job, because the problem isn’t what you are doing but the way you are thinking. You can also let go of trying to change other people, because you are what are bothering you about them. Do you understand that you are the one doing the thinking and that it is your own thinking that is creating your pain? Brother Lawrence, a seventeen-century French monk, said that if you want to practice the presence of God, you’ll have to become aware of your inner world of thoughts and learn to let them pass by without a lot of attention. The ego or the created drama or story of your life is the source of your suffering and unhappiness. By learning to stop identifying with this outer self or ego, is inner awareness. This brings us to the new and dynamic spiritual counseling tool called Inner Awareness Therapy.
Inner Awareness Therapy is the process of helping you to become aware of the energy flow in the mind (thoughts) and body (emotions) and thereby listening to the Inner Wisdom (the true Self) and activating the Divine Healer within. In other words you turn off the automatic pilot and decide to bring conscious awareness into all stages of your being. This process of becoming aware is the same as waking-up to your true Self or Witness. Christians will call it repentance, Hindu’s will call it liberation and Buddhist calls it enlightenment.
So you see that each one of us is on a journey… a journey to ourselves. And this is more than just a journey, this is the spiritual journey. Thomas Merton said about this journey: “The best way to come to God is to go to your own center and pass through that center into the center of God.” And Carl Jung concurs by saying: “The goal of life is to realize the self.” Inner Awareness Therapy is the tool to help people activate the spontaneous healing power from within. Therefore you have to become the Witness, the ever-alert guardian of your inner space. You need to be present enough to be able to watch the mind and body directly and feel its energy. Sustained conscious awareness severs the link between the inner unbalance and the healing process. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes”, the silent watcher. The unbalance within is then spontaneously healed, and you become whole again. This means that the whole purpose of life is to teach you to reconnect with your true Self. Disease then means to be at dis-ease with yourself. To heal is then to become at ease or whole again.
As an Inner Awareness Therapist my role is to guide people back to the Self. I do this by helping people quiet down, through guided meditation, and then directing them back to there own inner wisdom. Through a holistic awareness of their psycho-physical unity they can then reach higher levels of self awareness and inner guidance. Combined with the cure for the soul, which is an inner stillness, surrender to what is and let go into the ultimate mystery of God — “Be still and know that I am God”. This brings the flow of healing energy into every part of your life. The mind, body and soul can then work as a harmonious whole and peacefully achieve happiness in this present moment.