I am now deeply into my Transpersonal Coaching course so this week I am going to share some of the ideas I am exploring. Writing helps my own understanding but there is also a hope that perhaps some of it might resonate with others on some level. It is lovely that my post on liminality seems to have been relevant for a few people and thank you to those who have sent comments. 

The word ‘transpersonal’ means ‘beyond the personal’. So any transpersonal approach recognises that there is more to being human than the thinking mind and the personality. Psychology has traditionally focused on understanding these aspects but the transpersonal aims to go beyond. There is a recognition that much of our behaviour and the decisions we make come from unconscious influences but also that there is a deep reality beyond the physical, a deeper wisdom or knowing, a consciousness which permeates through and beyond all things, which can be accessed, known, heard.

We rarely think about our own awareness. We go through our days following the same routines, meeting people, thinking, sometimes worrying or wishing things were different, sometimes reflecting that today seems like a better day.  Our usual sense of ourselves is as a separate individual: a ‘me’ inside a body relating to a world ‘out there’.  It is characterised by a deep sense of separation.  However, as you begin to explore your experience a little more closely it becomes more and more curious: Alice down the rabbit hole!  Because when you examine it closely you come to realise that absolutely everything arises in ‘your’ awareness.  So, as you hold an orange in your hand there is the experience of  colour, a sensation of touch, perhaps the smell, and if you cut it and squeeze the juice onto your tongue there is the taste. But where is the colour, the texture,  the taste? In what sense do they exist? They may be features of the orange but all are known in your awareness so in that sense they are  features of your awareness. The orange and your experience of the orange are intimately connected.  Even the experience of your body and your  thoughts are events which arise in awareness. Awareness becomes the ground of your being and the boundaries between ‘you inside’ and ‘the world outside’ start to dissolve.  You realise it is limitless. Awareness can stretch to far off galaxies, it can go back to the start of time, if indeed there is such a thing, and it is inclusive of all other people, creatures and the planet itself. Vast!  

So becoming aware of awareness is a curious thing. You realise that all things arise in awareness and pass like waves on the sea. Thoughts, perceptions, feelings arise and fall away but the awareness is constant. It is the same awareness which has been there all your life. Ageless. And those things which arise in awareness are so much energy; energy in the form of a flower, a river, a thought, an emotion. Just where does that new idea come from when it springs into awareness out of liminal space?

It can be possible to expand your awareness and with it your sense of self. It can be possible to become more attuned to the subtleties of experience, to that deeper consciousness. Many people spend much of their time in what might be described as ‘tunnel awareness’. Tunnel awareness is a consequence of a narrowing of attention. All thinking may be focused on a problem and increasingly for many attention becomes focused on computer screens and mobile phones. When attention is so narrowly focused much is missed. One of the approaches used by transpersonal coaches is to help someone to open their aperture of awareness, to enter a state of open awareness and also, as coach, to be in that state themselves. In this state there is a sense of expansion. There is a greater noticing of body and environment and a space is created in which unconscious ideas, images and solutions can emerge and be recognised.  You can begin to expand your own awareness with quite simple practices. Just sitting calmly and breathing deeply, bringing attention to the body and the space it occupies then directing awareness down to the earth beneath, up into the space above, into the space to right and left, in front and behind, exploring the space and being open to what might arise in that space.  Walks in nature can expand awareness particularly when there is a mindful noticing of all that is there to be noticed; colours, smells, textures, sounds, feelings, emotions, ideas. 

So perhaps next time things are becoming a bit much, becoming aware of being aware might offer a space; a moment to breath, to step outside the problem and into the bigger picture, the greater space.

If you want to explore this further here is a link.

https://aleftrust.org/open-awareness-the-game-changer/