A short multi-speaker conversation about strengthening moment-to-moment emotional awareness through steady, kind practice. The speaker contrasts having awareness with lacking the strength to act on it, and emphasizes dedication, repetition, and kindness as the pathway to build constancy of awareness and emotional strength.
We all have times when we know that it would be best to respond a certain way, and yet our emotions overwhelm us. In the next sequence, notice the focus on losing control of her own best awareness and how the depth and strength of awareness can grow through constancy and kindness. Ask yourself if you are aware of the constancy that is needed and are you dedicated to deepening a practice of kindness?
So I really want to keep looking into this theme of how I can be more aware in the moment. And I'm thinking of a specific time when I was in a conflict with Justin and I felt my emotions bubbling. I felt myself get angry, I fel, myself contract. I felt myself want to explain everything. And I knew, I knew that it was an opportunity. And despite my best efforts, I still went into the old pattern of needing to express my own emotions before I could be ready to listen to to his. So I want to know how in that very moment I can work to be. I can work with my awareness.
By asking the question right now and ongoing in your life, how can I strengthen the awareness? Is much more the question than how do I develop the awareness? First of all, because you have the awareness, you don't have the strength. So recognizing that is very important. The second thing is that the constancy of awareness of your feelings being regurgitations of the past and not so relevant as you think they are in the present, that constancy of awareness is what builds the strength is that you aware past, past, past, past, past. And then what happens is you hit a boiling point where the awareness starts to gain muscles. So you have enough awareness for the whole planet, but you don't have the strength yet. And so when these feelings bubble up, they're extremely potent. And that's your lifelong conditioning that you weren't fed and you need feeding. Your awareness knows better, but it doesn't have that real ferocity. So by you repeating over and over again the truth to yourself and you start to fall in love with the truth and you don't criticize yourself for not being able to have the strength yet you actually have a kind awareness that says I don't yet have the strength and I'm dedicated. So it's a kind stable awareness that's recognizing that your feelings are rooted in the past, that builds the strength. And are you dedicated to that kind stable awareness that's going to build the strength? That's the question I would ask you.
So in answering the question, it sounds like, it sounds like it's more in the dedication and less in the awareness. The awareness is a big part of it. But if you're not dedicated to the awareness, then it's really what's the awareness even for?
It's the dedication to the awareness and it's the kindness. The kindness and the recognition of the sincerity in the repetition in the kindness. So it's a mixture of repetition, kindness and awareness that builds the strength and you knowing that you're a lifer and that you want to build this and it's going to be something that you Repeat to yourself 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 times a day. I want to be kind. I want to build the constancy that these are past feelings and I want to appreciate the awareness and I know that all those will build my strength and I'm dedicated for the rest of my life. So I ask you, is that true? Is that really true? Are you dedicated? Do you want to be kind and is there a constancy that you want to keep building?
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's the source of strength. You can't not be strong if you have more constancy and if you have kindness and you have awareness, that's the good news.
