Awareness - Consciousness

The consciousness is what makes us aware of our life, in a manner that we can make decisions about it in a conscious way. We start off by making conscious decisions based on intuition but we remember, at a conscious level, what we have done. We remember the consequences and gradually that feeling decision becomes a logical decision. We develop ‘reasons’ why we make those decisions. The development of consciousness out of the unconscious is a natural progression in the same way that the walking development in the animal world is a natural progression from the crawling status. The human development lies in the field of expanding consciousness.

At the unconscious level, we are fully aware of our life. However, the learning process of what works for us and what works in certain situations, at the level we are currently at, is nothing more than unconscious reaction patterns. All these interactions are the result of ‘sensations’ and there is little ‘knowing’ as to why these sensations occur. Emotions rule our attitude towards our outside world, not logic. We are easily persuaded by emotional arguments, which are used by every authority on the planet as well as by advertising agencies or any other power requiring our vote and assistance. It is the process of becoming aware of these underlying sensations that we call consciousness. In that respect we may become aware of the fact that humanity knows very little about the how’s and why’s of our own reaction patterns. One of the reasons is the fact that medicine has become separated from science, which means that medical ‘specialisms’ are no longer based on scientific knowledge. This includes the fields of study of psychology, psychiatry and sociology.

There are three different kinds of awareness.

Inner Awareness
We become aware of some of the inner processes of our body and mind. We begin to feel certain things and that leads us to very specific actions. This happens both within the body and the mind sensations. We first notice physical signs as having ‘a meaning’, and we learn ways of responding to those signs with the aim of making the signs go away. 
As we grow up, we do the same with some signs originating from our mind. We become aware of how physical changes occur within us when we find ourselves in certain situations. This allows us to make decisions about how we are going to handle the situation without it disturbing our physical balance. It allows us to adjust before any physical expression of an imbalance shows up in the matter, in the tissues of the body.
Awareness of our inner processes allows us to learn who we truly are and what our inner requirements are to keep life in balance.

Outer Awareness
Mainly through our senses we take notice of our surroundings. Our environment becomes a subject of study in order to expand our ‘understanding’ of how that functions and how it is structured. We learn about the different elements within that environment and we start to figure out what effects they are having on us. Our unconscious mind finds a way to cope with the big unknown that surrounds us and we settle into several survival pattern. 
As our survival in the outer world depends largely upon our knowledge and interpretation of our surroundings it makes sense that this is, at the early stage of human development we find ourselves in, where most of our awareness development currently takes place. Our attention is mostly drawn to our environment and what it does to our lives, as opposed to an inner awareness whereby we would be learning more about ourselves.
Our expanding knowledge of the outer world allows us to evaluate certain situation in relation to the effect it might have on our inner balance. This can only have value when it is our own experience, not the evaluation someone else has made for us. Spreading this kind of information does not help any individual to expand their own mind, to learn more about the real effects the environment has on them. Knowledge is a very personal requirement.
Awareness only develops through own experience, own observations, own analysis.

Reaction Awareness

Between our inner world and our outer world there is a constant flow of interactions. They are influencing each other constantly. Through the growing awareness of the inner and outer world we first become conscious of the fact that our environment has an influence on our inner balance. 
A further development of awareness is becoming conscious of how our inner world effects our surroundings. To realize how we bring about changes in our environment is a crucial step in the awareness expansion of our conscious mind. What happens around us has a direct effect on us, but equally, what happens inside us, what we radiate, has a direct effect on our environment.
Being aware of the influence one has on one’s own environment allows for conscious adjustments to be made. This is extremely important as the environment does not always change to what an individual personally requires. However, through this awareness the individual is able to alter what he/she sends into the environment, which subsequently will change the reaction from the environment, which in turn allows the individual inner world to alter as the situation one finds oneself in has changed.

It is only by becoming aware of the two-way system that an individual has expanded his or her consciousness to a level that gives the individual a directed control to alter his inner status through bringing about changes in the personal environment. For most people, the majority of work in awareness needs to be done at the level of reaction patterns. To make this possible one needs to have a great awareness of both the inner and the outer world first. One can observe reaction patterns both within and without in order to gain knowledge about the way one can influence one’s outer environment, using inner changes.