What Does It Mean to Awaken?
Waking up to life here and now
Many of us live as if we are sleepwalking. We’re living in the world, but we don’t really see it. We do not touch the joy of being alive, the beauty of nature, or the preciousness of each moment.
We are often distracted by our thoughts, caught in planning and fantasizing, chasing after an imaginary future, or clinging to memories of the past. Far too often our mind is doing one thing while our body is doing another. We are not in touch with reality, and as a result, we feel cut off from the radiance and beauty of life.
Mindfulness helps us wake up from this dream of endless thinking, and return home to our bodies and to life in the present moment. The present moment is the only moment that is ever happening, and if you are not in touch with it, you are missing out on the precious moments of your life.
As simple as this sounds, mindfulness carries a tremendous amount of energy and an incredible potential for healing. Mindfulness practice has been used clinically to treat numerous psychological ailments and mood disorders, including anxiety, depression, anger, addiction, and much more. It has also been used successfully for reducing physical pain and ailments.
Mindfulness helps us come home to ourselves. In waking up out of our restless overthinking, incessant self-talk, and endless mental chatter, we relax deeply into the present moment and can discover true peace and joy here.
We feel as if we have finally arrived. So many of us spend our lives planning for a future to come, and disregard the moments we are living right now. We are already experts at planning to live. Mindfulness teaches us how to actually live our lives deeply now.
Mindfulness is the essential practice of waking up to the reality of our lives. By learning the Foundations of Mindfulness you can develop your own mindfulness practice and awaken a deeper sense of freedom and peace in each moment.
Waking up to who you are
Mindfulness can help us cultivate a deeper awareness of our lives, which naturally helps us experience life with more clarity, peace and freedom. But what is this awareness that is experiencing life? Who is it that is present and aware in this moment? What is this thing that we call "me" or "I"?
While we identify ourselves as "I," or think of ourselves as "me," most of us do not really question what this "I" is or who we truly are. We have many beliefs about ourselves that we have adopted from society, family and the culture we were raised in. As a result, most people are unaware of the truth of who they are, and often suffer greatly because of it. We suffer, because we fear for the protection and survival of the self that we think we are, a self that is really only an idea in our minds. Consequently, being blind to our real identity, we do not experience the wholeness and peace that comes from being connected to our true Self.
Waking up to who you really are frees you from everything you have mistaken yourself to be. It frees you from the concern and obsession over your self-image, from the stories and beliefs in the mind that cause you pain, from the need to be socially accepted and validated, and from the influence that any circumstance has on your peace. It also frees you from limiting worldviews and opens your mind to dimensions of life that you never knew existed.
When you have a nightmare, you suffer in the dream, but once you wake up your suffering ends because you realize that the dream wasn't real. In the same way, when you wake up from the dream of thinking you are your story, all the suffering associated with that story ends because you realize it isn't actually who you are, and it does not affect your true Self.
Waking up to who you are is the most important goal of life, because your understanding of yourself determines your perception and experience of life. We designed an online course that can guide you in this process of looking within and waking up to the truth of who you are.
Our Intention
Our intention at Conscious Collective is to help you wake up, to the beauty and peace of the present moment and to the freedom and bliss of your own presence—both of which are always available to you. While this freedom and peace is your birthright, available to you in each and every moment, it is often difficult to realize. It is difficult, because of the deeply conditioned habit of identifying with the mind and distracting ourselves from reality in the present moment. Conscious Collective offers courses, books, blogs, and videos that aim to help you in this process of awakening, so you can travel the inner journey with greater clarity and ease.