Warrior training begins with developing awareness.
The key to mindful living is consciousness; consciousness of how we are oriented by habit-patterns. Without training, our behavior is a string of learned reactions and associations that are then cemented through years of unconscious repetition.
Consider this example: when you get home after work, it's become a habit to open the fridge and have a munch. You're so conditioned that the before-before-dinner snack is now part of your routine--it has nothing to do with hunger anymore.
Mindfulness involves inserting purpose into all aspects of life, especially where facets that we normally run on autopilot. The key is to disrupt our natural reflexes in which we frequently reproduce patterns that are counter-productive to our conscious priorities. Think of the previous example. Snacking out of habit is hardly an effective weight-control strategy.
There are many techniques for cultivating awareness. Meditation and simply paying more attention are two possibilities. Otherwise, I happened onto another interesting idea the other day:
Ascetic Yogi Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, says
"Why ascetic paths were set is simply because of this: you start doing things that are naturally not comfortable for you. Once you start doing such activity that is uncomfortable for you, you do it, but you don't like it. If you have to do something that you do not like, you can only do it consciously; there is no other way to do it. Yes? Things that you like, you can do compulsively; but things that you don't like, you can only do consciously. That is why the ascetic path. You start doing everything consciously. There is no other way to be."
The ascetic strategy for cultivating awareness is to work with what is unpleasant. By doing uncomfortable things necessarily keep us conscious. Thinking of ascetics automatically calls up images of hair shirts and massively long finger-nails, but this doesn't have to become a lifestyle. Perhaps it's enough just to become conscious of how it feels to do something unpleasant but necessary. At any rate--food for thought.
The challenge of consciousness is the taks of a lifetime. Consciousness is literally a massive task: most of our waking time takes place in an unconscious, reactive trance. As we begin to build zones of awareness, these spread outwards, becoming seedlings for radical change.
Terrie Schauer
http://warriorqueenproject.blogspot.com/
Writer, kick-boxer, peaceful warrior.
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