Ep.21: Aware but not Transformed - Part 1 of 2

Episode Transcript

Self-Awareness Isn't Just About Awareness

Welcome back to the Wisdom Practice Podcast. In today's episode, if you're on this journey of self-awareness and you've built up your awareness enough to understand your conditioning - where it's coming from, the beliefs and emotions behind the life situation you want to change - but you're still struggling to actually change it, this episode is going to help.

We go over one of the key pillars in my self-awareness method that will explain why this awareness you've built up isn't resulting in the transformation you want. If you've been in this situation for at least three months, you may be suffering from a bigger issue that we go into here, and in part two, which gives more practical ways of dealing with it.

Self-awareness, funnily enough, isn't just about awareness - which sounds crazy, since it's in the name. But there's a big misconception in this space that self-awareness is just about sitting down, meditating, being aware of how you feel and what you think, and that's it. That simply by being aware of the way you act, feel, and think, you'll become a different person and suddenly have the life you want.

Don't get me wrong - you need that first step. You need the space and the questioning to understand and observe why you are the way you are, especially in the parts of your life causing you suffering, the parts you want to change, which we all have. But do you believe that being aware of it is going to fix it?

Stuck for At Least Three Months

This can be really frustrating, especially when you're starting out and committed to this journey, because you've realized the profound impact it can have - the true freedom it can bring from the way you used to be. You may be at a point where you're very acutely aware of exactly what's causing the life situation you don't want anymore - the emotion, the thought, the belief holding you to a life that's causing you pain. But still it doesn't change.

If you've been at that point for at least three months - recognizing what's causing the pain, those patterns, those beliefs, giving it space, trying to be aware of it - and still nothing is changing, you may be struggling with a larger issue. An issue I call the observer syndrome. When you haven't dialed in and fixed this issue, your awareness can feel like more of a weight than a liberation.

The Observer Syndrome

Before we start this self-awareness process, all of us can be quite ignorant of the way we think, feel, and even act. That's normal. But you know what they say - ignorance is bliss. When we're not aware of what's causing the pain, we just blame the outside world, because we've grown up in a way where all our attention is put on the outside world, none of it on the internal world. Whatever happens inside is treated as a direct result of something that happened outside.

So when we're suffering in any form, before we start this process, it's easy to just blame the outside world and take no responsibility. That in itself is a kind of cushion. But when you start to realize the truth - that actually this is something I'm doing, something I'm responsible for - and you're aware of it, and it's still not changing, it can get really painful. Because for the first time you have the power to change it, to get the life you want, but it's just not working.

At least when you thought it was the outside world, you could blame the outside world - it's just the way it is, not my fault, and you could relax in that knowledge. But now it is your responsibility, even if not entirely your fault. So when you're stuck in that limbo of aware but not transformed, it can get really painful and make you want to stop. What's the point of building this awareness if it just makes you more acutely aware of your problems and the fact that you can't solve them?

That's what the observer syndrome is, and that's what we're getting into today, because I want to give you a solution. It's part of my method, but I want to share it because it's a real pain, and I've been there. I want you to see some transformation in your life as a result of self-awareness, so you can feel good about it and want to keep doing it.

It's Just Stored Energy in the Body

I know you're probably trying things like meditating, being aware of your thoughts, breathing, feeling the emotion and giving it space - those are all amazing techniques, and I do the same things. But what I've realized is that simply being aware of it means it's still there, still an energy in your body.

A lot of the conditioning you want to release has been stored in your body for decades, built on beliefs and experiences and new actions filtered through those beliefs. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly be free of it. You might - don't be disheartened if you're not - but by committing to this you'll finally get some progress rather than feeling like you're watching it happen and can't do anything about it. That's why I call it the observer syndrome - it feels like you're watching something horrible happen while handcuffed, unable to stop it.

The one thing to remember: all this conditioning is just stored energy in the body. That's all it is. When you're being aware of it, doing all the practices we're told - focusing on your breathing, giving it space - you become aware of the energy. But the one thing you're not doing is giving it a means of releasing. So the energy is still there, which means whenever you're in the same situation, it gets triggered again, causing you to feel a certain way, think a certain way, and make the same decisions and behaviors that led to the life situation you don't want anymore.

Learning to Let It Release

There are a few ways to help this energy release. The energy is already trying to escape, already trying to release, because your body knows it's not good for you. When you have stored, stagnant energy in the body over time, it can cause physical issues as you get older. So when you're in a situation that triggers that conditioning, being triggered is that energy's way of trying to come up and get released.

But what happens is we feel uncomfortable, anxious, frustrated - we feel that energy coming up, and our innate reaction is to reject it. We don't want it. It feels uncomfortable, which is completely natural. So what do we do? We push it down.

Realizing this is a huge step forward. When you realize that being triggered is actually this energy's attempt at releasing itself, you stop seeing being triggered as a bad thing. The only thing left is learning to allow it to release - which is tricky, because it's really uncomfortable and really painful.

So how do we learn to let it go? In a perfect world, you can just sit with that feeling, that emotion, be aware of it, and if you truly accept it, it will dissolve, because suddenly there's no resistance to it coming up. But for us mere mortals, it's not so simple. We need to find a way of accepting it, which means finding a way to address the part of you that's reacting to whatever's going on - the part that feels insecure, damaged, or attacked by the situation. The reason you're resisting it, the reason you feel triggered, may be such an old piece of conditioning that you forget why it's even there, why you react to it in the first place. That's why your awareness is important - it gives you insight into why it's there and what caused it.

When you understand that, you can find ways to address it, because the only reason part of you is emotionally reacting is that it feels threatened by what's going on. I'll go into this in more detail in the next part of this episode, but this is where the awareness you've been building comes in handy - you understand what belief has been driving this conditioning.

I want to leave it there, on the note of trying to understand what part of you is reacting to what's going on, what part of you is pushing that energy back down. That's awareness. Once you understand that, in the next episode we can go into practical ways to let it release.