Being fully conscious means more than just being awake. Engaging mindfully in whatever you are doing is essential if you are to get the most from each day. You only live your It e once, so make sure you’re full ‘there’ while you’re living it.
Many of us live our lives without being as mentally alert as we could be. Instead of being fully engaged in what we are doing, we tend to be easily distracted by those things that catch our attention -whether from the outside environment or our passing thoughts. As a result, we may fail to get the most from our experiences.
Modern pressures of living are partly to blame for this. Many of us lead ever-busier lives during which we are expected to juggle multiple responsibilities. Consequently, our minds are pulled away from what we are engaged in cowardly everyday anxieties and distractions. You can see this for yourself if you close your eyes for one minute and review the thoughts that run through your head. You will probably find that one thought leads to another and then another, taking you away from your original point of focus. Memories, ideas, hopes, anxieties, frustrations, and reminders of things you mustn’t forget to do may all have surfaced during the minute, perhaps with their attendant emotions. Try to gauge how many different thoughts you had during the minute. Multiply this number by 960 – the number of minutes in an average waking day – and you’ll get some idea of the extent to which our haphazard thinking impinges on our lives.
Memory and consciousness
We may sometimes be confronted by a lack of awareness of what is going on in our minds. Some mistakes reveal all too clearly our diminished ability to make mental connections because our minds have become over-compartmentalized. Consider this example: Philip arranges to meet a friend for lunch on the following Wednesday; the next day, he agrees to chair a lunchtime meeting at work on the same Wednesday. He holds both of these appointments in mind – but fails to realize that they are incompatible until too late. You may have had a similar experience, where one part of your consciousness seems to be strangely cut off from another. How can this happen when we are seemingly awake and aware?
It is tempting to put such lapses down to poor memory. And as we get older, the amount we can hold actively in memory may indeed diminish. But in a case where we are members of both events and simply fail to bring them together in our minds, it seems that a more subtle failure is in operation. The answer, in some sense, is a lack of ‘active consciousness,’ where the various parts of mental life – conscious and unconscious, past and present, personal and professional – are not as open to one another as we would like.
Cultivating active consciousness
So, how can we achieve a better level of mental integration? Certainly, our minds seem to have no problem becoming fully engaged when we face novel situations that are charged with danger or opportunity. Some individuals deliberately seek out exhilarating situations or take part in dangerous sports – Bungie jumping, racing, sky-diving – in order to feel wide awake and ‘alive.’ But such pursuits do not solve the challenge of maintaining focus and attention in everyday life; this requires a sea change in our way of thinking.
One worthwhile approach is to try to open our minds more to the world we live in. While our lives in ITI revolve around our material concerns and those of the people closest to us, we can – and perhaps, as fellow human beings, we should – include in our awareness the concerns of those remote from us. Being able to feel emotionally the concerns of those who do not know us is a rare and great quality, but appreciating these with the mind is something that all civilized people should aspire to and attain. Political or charitable activities are ways to take this further. Still, even without such practical consequences, a more integrated, rational consciousness follows from deliberately applying the mind to issues that are beyond its immediate concerns. In addition, there are valuable techniques, such as meditation and mindful contemplation, that aim to enhance awareness of our inner consciousness. These techniques – some of which are explored in the following pages – can help us to live more in the present moment and less in a tangle of associations, memories, and anxieties. They can optimize our mental abilities and enrich our lives with more value and purpose.
Increasing Awareness
Try this exercise to become more aware of your surroundings. Go for a walk with a companion in a local park that offers a good variety of sights and activities. Afterward, each of you writes a list of questions to test the other’s alertness.
For example, what color were the flowers in the flowerbed by the tea shop? Were there any geese on the pond? Were the boys on the left playing frisbee or football? What different breeds of dogs were being walked? What is the statue next to the bridge? Try to maintain a level of consciousness in everyday life that would enable you to answer similar questions about any experience. For example, when you are next being driven by a car on an unfamiliar route, take more notice of the journey. Not only will you find it easier to navigate yourself another time, but you may notice some intriguing local features you would otherwise miss.
How to Improve Active Consciousness
Have you ever been frustrated by your inability to remember the details of a film or book just a short time after seeing or reading it? A simple solution is to keep notes in a journal. When you finish a book, take 20 minutes to sketch the plot and main characters and record your feelings about the book. Knowing that you will be doing this will help to keep your attention more engaged while you are actually reading. Mentally highlight key scenes and events, memorable quotes, and descriptions that trigger a particularly strong response in you.
