Focusing Tip No. 110.

What is awareness? Who is aware?

When you’re Focusing, it is helpful to say ‘I am aware of..’, and then describe what it is you are aware of.
You describe it as best you can, even though it can be difficult to find words to describe what you are experiencing.

But what is awareness itself? .
It may feel like an open, spacious attentiveness. When you are Focusing, it is a deliberate act of turning your attention towards something. It it the context within which all content, all life experiences happen. It has no content itself. It has no particular agenda, of looking for a particular outcome. It has no needs or wants for itself. It just is, a state of being, always and already present.

You can get a feel for awareness by simply noticing what you can hear around you.
You can try practising an open, spacious, ‘global’ listening to the sounds around you, noticing what you can hear.
See if you can hear without labelling, or notice that you are labelling. ‘There’s a car, a bird, someone talking’.
You can notice your breathing at the same time.
This has a calming effect.
You become aware of how you are situated, embedded in your environment. Doing this at the beginning of your Focusing session can help you to be open, spacious, grounded in your environment; consciously alert and connected.

Some people find this aware space by ‘clearing a space’ at the beginning of the session.
You ‘set aside’ all the things that are between you and feeling really fine right now. When you have set aside your difficulties and problems, what is left? Maybe you can notice a feeling of well-being, ‘all OK’ underneath all the problems.

You can then turn towards what needs attention with friendliness and interested curiosity.
Open, spacious awareness is not judging or evaluating what your are aware of. It is simply being aware. If you find yourself judging or evaluating, you can be aware of that. And then bring your friendly attention to whatever is there.
When you bring open, spacious awareness to your inner experience, it has room to breathe.
It has space to be there just as it is.
And that brings change; already it’s different now.

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Warm wishes

Fiona