Every person?s awareness can be in different states. Awareness can be cultivated, or it can be inhibited. A Martial Artist depends upon his high level of awareness to react quickly to any given situation. It is necessary to understand the definition of awareness as it pertains to your ability to respond to things that occur in present time. It is also vital to understand what can cause inhibition of awareness and those things that can be done to expand awareness.
Awareness is the thorough certainty that you are viewing the present time environment with all your attention units fully available. Attention units are those mental capabilities measured in units. Your mind is operating at a very fast clip, and faster than any computer that could be built from here until eternity. The mind is perceiving many things at the same time. If you evaluate just how many things you perceive as you are driving down a road, it is a fantastic amount of multi-tasking that occurs. It takes many units of mental capability to perceive all the details of the house, the stop sign, the street, the pedestrians, the vehicles; ad infinitum.
Every human being has a time track of experiences from birth to present. The mind records everything. It makes a facsimile of every moment of existence including all perceptions. Unfortunately, people get confused with the mind and the brain. As a spiritual being, you are pure ?thought.? Therefore, thought emanates from ?you? the spiritual being. The brain is just a switchboard. Electrical currents are sent to certain portions of the brain to accomplish certain bodily functions.
It is necessary to understand these things in order to begin to understand how your own self-determined thought plays a role in awareness. I will give you a quick test. Recall the last time you saw a cat. Do you see the picture of the last time you saw a cat? Who is looking at it? Right! You are. If we take your mind with a time track of experiences, it is easy to understand that you have good, bad, and painful experiences from the past. Painful memories can capture the attention and inhibit awareness in present time. For example, if you just got into a fight with a friend, your attention units can still be stuck in that incident. So you are not completely in present time. You don?t completely perceive the present time environment. This is lack of awareness, and you are prone to accidents and an inability to respond quickly in any given situation.
Drugs inhibit awareness and an ability to perceive the present time environment. People on drugs cannot master or command their environment because they are already operating on a disability. Drugs make it difficult to use one?s mind to perceive the physical universe in present time. Drugs cause grogginess, cloudiness, an inability to think, an inability to evaluate what is occurring in present time, and so on.
Awareness does not pertain to only the Martial Artist, but everyone. If you had a fight, don?t go driving around. Take a walk, and really communicate with your environment. Look at all the details. Use your perceptions to perceive the temperature, the texture, the colors, the shapes, the smells, and so on. This will help pull your attention from the incident, so you can operate in present time. Do this until you feel better. You can expand awareness by eliminating anything that inhibits awareness.
Sifu Villanuevateaches in Vallejo and can be reached at 552-7598
1 response so far ↓
1 Coolin fawcett // Apr 25, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Thought is awareness, every time you think of something you are aware of that thing wether it brought from memory or from a picture or from life. There is no magic to this formula, a busy life takes a lot of our consciousness, so for us to have more awareness for our surroundings would mean to slow down and observe more.
Leave a Comment