Meditation: The 4 Primary Skills (2/4)

By Paul Cavel

Part 1: Making Your Body Conscious

Part 2: Expanding Your Awareness

Awareness is born out of presence. If you don’t think so, just try being aware while you're spacing out! Awareness of what is sets the foundation for change.

Acceptance Arises From Awareness

If you are not aware of any particular state, you cannot change that state. This is why acceptance is an important stage in all healing programmes. For example, until a heavy drinker recognises that they are an alcoholic — i.e. becomes aware of their repeating behavioural patten — they can do little to change the status quo. Likewise, becoming present to your hand opens up your awareness of your hand, and through that experience, you can more clearly recognise the state of your hand.

Awareness of what is happening in any given moment might seem like a very basic function of the mind, but many people are disconnected from their body and swing between emotional states. Almost everything in modern cultures creates dissociation from the body and other levels of our being — from food, drugs (whether pharmaceutical, legal or narcotics), technology and entertainment to the impersonal ways we interact with and judge others on a daily basis.

The instant gratification, push-button, pop-a-pill existence causes many people to get swept up and make decisions without conscious awareness. The illusion that there is not enough time to stand back and take stock of what is in line with our values, our path, saps our ability to be present and aware. We can too easily override our innate desire for balance and stability. Since the dawn of time, meditation has been used as a means for going inside and becoming present to and aware of that which is true, real and authentic in order to let go of everything that is false.

When you are present, you can become aware of that which holds you back — and at the right time. This is why presence and awareness are absolute prerequisites for letting go.

Intent versus Awareness

The mind has many aspects and layers, but two intrinsic functions are intent and awareness.

• Intent is used to initiate, drive and achieve any goal.
• Awareness allows you to recognise what is happening and the state of any phenomenon.

Although they form very different aspects of the mind, they work in tandem with one another. For example, when learning a qigong movement, the initial phase is about how the body moves: raising or lowering an arm, turning, shifting, squatting, etc. All of this is driven by the intent. Once the movement is embodied to some degree, the intent passes the baton to the awareness, which observes the movement in play as well as the qi flows that result from the motion. If the awareness detects an error, it passes the baton back to the intent, which goes in to fix the issue. Once addressed, it passes the baton back to the awareness. From this perspective, the intent is yang, i.e. making something happen, whereas the awareness is yin, i.e. observing what is and the quality of what is happening.

In the beginning, any complex task, in this case practising neigong, the intent and awareness operate in concert with one another and are quite inseparable. Over time, the two can join and operate at the same time. This is one example of balancing yang and yin, which is the source of integration. At first, the awareness is limited to specific parts of the body, e.g. of a leg, an arm or the torso, but with consistent training, the awareness can grow, expand and develop to encompass the whole body, from the entirety of the skin through to the core of the body. In this way, neigong exercises prepare the practitioner for meditation because, in meditation, the awareness must spread out and encompass not only the physical and qi bodies, but also the entirety of the emotional and mental bodies, as well as the spirit of a human being.

This is also why presence and awareness are absolutely required for healing, because to “heal” first the individual must become aware of what is stuck and bound; next they must find a way to release it; and finally they must let go of the blockages in order to reinstate the natural state of their being.

Sign up for any online or in-person course and receive access to my Taoist Breathing & Meditation online course — 23 guided practices on whole-body breathing and Outer Dissolving available to stream 24/7.

In Part 3 we’ll discuss how to create a stream of consciousness through the cyclical nature of learning.