Life with Awareness
Working with me directly, as well as in my content, you’ll frequently hear me say “life with Awareness.”
What is life with Awareness?
To discover something you didn’t know—that you didn’t know—is to become aware.
When the discovery is about you, it is self-awareness.
When the discovery is about your connection to divine consciousness, it is Awareness.
When you live your life centered in, and developing a relationship with this level of consciousness, this is life with Awareness.
Awareness is more valuable than knowledge
In her book Entering the Castle, Caroline Myss tells us “You cannot get to the soul through the intellect.” She is referring to Awareness. Unlike learning historical facts or gathering and analyzing data, Awareness cannot be obtained by research or pursuing degrees in higher education. Even if you were to study psychology and spirituality for years, it would not necessarily result in more Awareness—it could deter you even further. This is why doctors and clergy are not more Aware than you. Even therapy, which I generally support to help clarify concepts and mentally process past experiences, could get in the way if a person is so distracted by the past that they can’t be present now. Academics, as well as seekers can end up with too much information and never get to transformation.
Awareness is more valuable than money
“I want more money.” Almost everyone would like to have more money. In nearly all cases, when a person looks deeper at why they want more money, the answer is some combination of:
More security—money buys things that make us feel safe or comfortable including houses, clothes, food and healthcare
More freedom
More pleasure (through acquiring possessions or funding experiences)
What if you could experience true security, freedom and joy without needing a certain amount of money?
You can—by getting into alignment with Awareness.
Awareness is organic to life itself and therefore every human being can access it, even though few people connect to it and cultivate the level of abundance it freely offers. You could say that “Awareness is in our DNA,” but it’s not something that can be seen in the two biopolymer strands coiled around each other that form the double helix molecular shape of DNA. While DNA contains genetic instructions like the color of your eyes and if you’ll have the same dimples as your dad, Awareness contains details to the purpose of your life.
Awareness is Power
Awareness is the power to do and experience what you authentically desire.
I want to do work that feels purposeful.
I want to experience rich, meaningful relationships.
I want to find a partner to experience intimacy with or I want to develop intimacy in my current relationship…
I want to explore my sexuality…
I want to look people in the eyes and tell them I love them…
I want less stress and more energy…
I want to stop medicating myself with alcohol and drugs, or behaviors like too much non-purposeful work, media, internet, pornography, shopping, or gambling…
…but…
…I’m afraid (of making a mistake, it’s too late, what people will think about me, I’ll end up alone, etc.)
…I’m stuck or blocked—I keep doing everything except the work I want to do, or I don’t know what I want to do
…I feel so much anger, shame, guilt, sadness, or another emotion that gets in the way
Stop. Are you powerless to make these changes on your own?
Nobody wants to answer “yes.”
Breathe.
Now be honest with yourself.
If, for any of the above reasons or the countless others you are not doing what you authentically desire to do, the answer is “yes.” You are unable to produce the effect that you think you want.
Similarly, if you’re aware that you authentically want to stop doing something (working at a meaningless job, staying in a mediocre relationship, exaggerating, lying, faking, obsessing, having terrible feelings or any variety of uncontrollable emotional reactions to the world), but keep doing it—the answer is “yes.” You are unable to produce the effect that you want.
Breathe again.
Powerlessness.
Contrary to popular belief, powerless is not a synonym to weak. It simply means ‘unable to produce an affect.’ It might seem paradoxical, but once a person is able to accept powerlessness, immediately we become aware what is needed: Power.
However, Power is quite different—nearly the opposite in fact—from the pseudo-power that a person might believe they have with a “VP” or “President” title, a set of skills or knowledge, accumulation of wealth, or a social media following making you the envy of all your friends. Those require either external validation, or something to feel powerful over. The power of Awareness is accessed internally.
Instead of needing to be powerful, you become Power-filled.
Awareness is more valuable than knowledge, or money, or pseudo power because it connects you to the people, work, and experiences that are in alignment with your life’s purpose. It doesn’t take muscle, genius, or a high-profile network. When you connect to Power, you are provided the exact resources and guidance for you.
Awareness is God-consciousness
Awareness is access to your highest consciousness, which produces your highest thoughts during this lifetime. Awareness is the same consciousness as the source of life itself. This is why you see me capitalize the “A” to separate it from “normal” levels of consciousness. You might call it Spirit or God or Universe. I will occasionally use those words, however the label used means nothing and it is certainly not limited to a Judeo-Christian or new age context. Awareness is developed through your practice accessing this consciousness, building a relationship with it, receiving guidance, and then behaving into that guidance in your daily life.
Awareness is the End of Suffering
You may have been harmed in the past—emotionally, mentally, physically or monetarily. Perhaps you were lied to, stolen from, cheated on, humiliated, fired, treated unfairly, or disappointed by a person you trusted. Or you don’t feel good—stress, anxiety, overwhelm, fear, shame or guilt. Either way you are suffering. During self-examination you will feel your feelings—it’s possible you’ll be even more uncomfortable temporarily before you feel better. Often there must be a breakdown before a breakthrough.
Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, describes enlightenment as the “end of suffering.” Enlightenment is a popular word in spiritual circles but it has taken on mythological characteristics of an experience reserved only for the Buddha. Not true. It’s a synonym for living your life connected to the power of Awareness. Reality is that part of being human—part of life—is having feelings, including the uncomfortable ones! What fewer people talk about is learning to discern between a feeling, the related thought, and ultimately your behavior (which then creates more thoughts and feelings). Assisted by me (or anybody with Awareness), you will bring experiences and feelings to your contemplative prayer & meditation practice. That process will guide you to the release of suffering. It is not magical. It’s also not spiritual alone. It is a combination of a mental, emotional, and a spiritual process. Here are two elements of how it works.
Accept reality
If you were able to set aside your human thoughts and emotional reactions while observing any of your challenges or disturbances from outside yourself, you would see that suffering has one common denominator: suffering is the gap between your expectations and reality. Effectively, we suffer when we resist reality and cling to an idea or a belief system that we want to be true, but isn’t.
I’ll give you an example from my own life. After leaving the comfort of a lucrative job, I made a series of what I called “investments.” Three to be exact. In two of the three projects I was never paid back any money and from the third I received seven cents for each dollar invested. To be clear that was not seven cents profit—I received exactly seven cents of each dollar I put in as a settlement. I could argue I was harmed financially and tell you a long story. I did that for a while. I suffered. Even if I was harmed, am I still being harmed over and over again? Only by my non-acceptance of reality. Without awareness, I carried the self-created burden of resentment and being wronged for a long time. Finally, I became aware that my ongoing suffering was my own creation. The only real facts were:
1. I listened to an opportunity
2. I willingly handed my money over to some people
3. My expectation was to be paid back with profit for doing almost nothing
4. Those people did not do what I wanted them to do
5. I lost my money
6. The source of my suffering was my unwillingness to accept reality
Once I began to accept reality, the suffering diminished. Then, much to my surprise, with less suffering I had ample energy to focus on other opportunities for joy and abundance. And somehow my investments began to make money far more often than losing money without the burden of a false belief system.
Remember I said it’s possible you’ll be even more uncomfortable temporarily before you feel better. During the process I described above where I learned about the source of suffering and was ultimately released from it, I did work that is representative of the work you will do with me in coaching. I became aware of an unconscious belief system inside me at an even deeper level. It looked like this:
Thought: I need to be smart to make money
Thought: I need money to be liked
Thought: I need to be liked to be safe and secure
Belief System: If I lost money, I am stupid, therefore I will not be liked and I will not be safe.
This was very surprising to me because I did not see myself as attached to money. There was a blind spot I was not aware of, until I become aware of it in that moment. However, when I was able to link the money to intelligence to self-worth to safety (all of which are erroneous, yet I believed to be true), I became ‘aware’—I understood why I did what I did.
Purpose in suffering
How you do anything is how you do everything.
In the example above, not only was it the end of my suffering related to that specific experience, I also had a profound experience of self-awareness. I discovered that nearly everything I’d done to that point in my life, was for the goal of creating more, and more, and more security. And then came the biggest awareness of all: Why did I want security above all else? Why does anybody need security above all else? Because I had zero faith. I had zero trust in anything other than myself. I thought I had to figure everything out about life and my life’s purpose on my own! I could not believe that the very Power that somehow created me into this human form and did everything to keep me safe up to now, was somehow going to drop me on my head if I didn’t become super intelligent, wealthy, powerful, and control everything!
This brings me to the second major point about the end of suffering. In your life with Awareness, you will find that suffering always has a purpose. I lost money and suffered on my way to becoming aware of my personal insecurity, and lack of faith in anything other than my human faculties. I was doing everything in my life because I was afraid—nothing was from inspiration or authentic desire. While at that time, I didn’t’ know exactly what my authentic desires were, I knew that I did not want my life to be about fear. So, I began to practice faith simply by doing the opposite of what I would do if I was in fear.
I used to cringe at the word faith. Today, that word above all others, represents what I believe to be the purpose of my life. I have come to believe that surrendering my self-will, developing faith in a Power greater than me, and discovering its will for me is the purpose of my life.
Here’s another example of purpose revealing itself through suffering from a real person I worked with, but changed his name.
Paul suffered from resentment toward his ex-wife Sandra. For years he held onto anger toward her for cheating on him and telling lies during their child-custody process. When I worked with him, I asked, “are you happy you have your children?” “Yes, I love being a Dad,” he answered. Then I said, “is it possible the Awareness-level purpose of your marriage was to enable you to experience giving and growing through being a father?”
He paused.
He had never looked at it that way before. In that moment he realized he could never have become the father of his children without his ex-wife. During this dialog he became aware that he was only seeing her as the person standing at the alter saying wedding vows—promising to never change from who she was at that moment in time—and then she broke her promise! That is when he became aware that he was resenting her for changing—for being a dynamic human being like we all are.
Because I knew from my own experience that this suffering turned into a single awareness was only scratching the surface, we went through the exercise to find the underlying belief system. Here’s what we learned:
Paul’s thought: I need to be married.
Corey’s question: Why?
Paul’s thought: If I’m not married, I will be alone.
Corey’s question: What if you are alone?
Paul’s thought: If I’m alone, it means I’m not valuable.
Corey’s question: What if you are not valuable?
Paul’s thought: If I’m not valuable, I am not safe.
Corey: What belief system did we just uncover?
Paul’s belief: If I’m not married, I’m not safe.
Similar to me, not only did Paul’s suffering help him become aware of part of his purpose—to experience sharing love as a father, he also found that his human self-protection mechanism of needing to feel safe (security) showed up in almost every major part of his life. So, we identified the opposite experience—trust—and now we regularly talk about behaviors to practice trust. As a point of information, you pick the word that works for you. Paul didn’t like the word faith. He liked trust. What matters is that we identify the opposite of the previous, erroneous, unconscious belief system. Over time, Paul worried a lot less about his relationship partners leaving him, and he develops trust in a Power greater than him to keep the universe going without him intervening so much. Interestingly enough, he went onto marry again, co-parent 4 children and continues to enjoy his partner.
This brings us full-circle back to life with Awareness.
When “enlightened” you won’t be exempt from ever having an intense thought or feeling, or never be disturbed again. In your life with Awareness, suffering will significantly diminish, and occur less frequently as you learn to see your patterns of resistance, identify the erroneous thoughts, and then behave into Awareness-level guidance.
Life with Awareness is:
Becoming aware that you are connected to a power greater than you that will help you—end your suffering and grow into the highest vision you have of yourself
Developing a relationship with Awareness through daily practice of contemplation, prayer and meditation (CPM)
Behaving into the guidance received in your everyday life—your work, your relationships, and your relationship to your body
When you live your life with Awareness, most likely you will not become a monk on a mountain top. Rather, you will become the most natural expression of your highest consciousness that probably goes to work doing something meaningful, connects deeply with family and friends, and enjoys life.
You look normal but you are so much more!