Embracing Conscious Living

29/07

Conscious living, what is that? Who cares? Why?

We live our lives far less than fully conscious. Too harsh? Maybe. I wonder
whether conscious is good or ‘something else’. The fact is that our brain can only
handle very few things at once. The walk and chew gum at the same time example
is well known. When I am fully absorbed in a task or my own inner dialogues, you
may need to break me out of that state. Being fully conscious in doing something
deeply, using up the capacity of my brain to do a present moment activity is only
fully conscious on that one thing. That seems to be it, the number of things the
brain can handle simultaneously. It is not the complexity of the task per se, but the
quantity of tasks.

I suggest that most of us, most of the time, let things just ride along. We pick one
thing to pay attention to, say balancing a chequebook. When doing that, it can
mean I do not hear the traffic. I ‘go deep’ to do that task. How would that activity
compare to balancing myself as I walk across Niagara Falls on a tight-rope?
Deeper yuh. The more intense the task, the less capacity we have left to be
conscious about other things. Balancing on that tight-rope engages almost all that
we have. It is a high value task, dying if we blow it.

So what? Are we somehow ‘better’ if we can get ourselves to be living consciously
more often? What’s the reward for doing that anyway? Before addressing that,
what is the cost of not living consciously? Not paying attention is the root of
almost all mishaps, car accidents for instance and etcetera. Big cost.
When we are not living consciously, who is driving?

The Rewards of Living Consciously

The reward is in the quality of the choices we make when we are fully conscious.
We make better choices and thus live better lives. Folks talk about living
intentionally. That points toward being conscious more often, better choices more
of the time, better life.

It can feel hard. But honestly, it is an option for everyone. Maybe hard at this
moment, but with practice, it’s where we want to be. It makes our lives better, we
are better able to create the lives that we want when we live consciously. We make
way better choices.

How much of your day do you wish to live consciously?

One sequence we can implement to increase living consciously is to use ‘look, see,
tell the truth, act’. To look is not much beyond turning to point our eyes in a chosen direction. To see, actually see from all that we are looking at, means concentrating
attention (consciously) on what I want to see. Remember those complex cartoon
drawings that, somewhere, included a little dude called Waldo. Finding Waldo,
that was the task. Think of the level of focus needed for that.

Present moment living is, at its deepest, intense and if we are to sustain it, maybe
even exhausting. We simply can’t do it full time. We need to ‘veg out’, just stop and
let the mind idle for a bit. Yet, once we do it, again and again and again, like many
things, with practice, it is possible to live in the moment more and more of the
time. That translates into making better choices more of the time. Ought to be
good.

The Transformative Power of Conscious Living

Conscious living is a way to employ our conscious mind, powerful computer
remember, more often than not. Takes concentration. So putting it into perspective,
it is not realistic or healthy to try to instantly become a person who is always living
consciously. And, we can do it when we choose to. Do it for a short time, at first,
then longer and over time more and more of the time. The enlightened gurus can
maintain conscious living for much of their day. The rest of us, well, choose when
you are going to be conscious, like the next time you decide to walk across the
Niagara Falls on a tight-rope.

Joseph Seiler MCC 2011-2022

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