Awareness. Cultivation and Growth. (KEW Episode 121)

I’m revisiting some of my favorite concepts in this episode. Awareness. Intent. Attention. Consciousness. Will. And how these things work together and facilitate growth. Being human.

Underneath all of this, I believe that growing to be a ‘better’ human is a critical requirement of being alive.
Or, if it is not a requirement, it is a meaningful element whose absence is a shame if not a failure.

We are all humans, subject to the distractions of life. We can become addicted. Be assholes. Make terrible decisions that hurt people. But we can also help. Connect. And grow.

It is easy to blame our shortcomings on ‘the human condition’. And it is even excusable. Because we are nowhere near perfect, whatever that even means. And we WILL fail. We will make mistakes. We will accidentally hurt people. We will hurt each other on purpose.

We will fail to help when the opportunity arises. We will have regrets.

But we can also choose to rise above the human condition. And isn’t being better a worthwhile goal? Not perfection, by any means. No one should hold themselves accountable for the impossible. Given our machinery and evolution we will not be perfect by any definition. But intent matters.

And I talk about intent, in this Episode, as an intentional direction of attention.

We are blessed with an awareness. An artifact of our nervous system and ‘millions of years of evolution’. Humans seem to have more of this than other animals, but perhaps it is universal.

We can become aware of our awareness, and this becomes consciousness.

We can then make a choice about how we direct that consciousness. For good or evil. We can remain victims of our other evolutionary machinery, or we can filter this consciousness through some meaningful values or goals.

Being kind. Being helpful. Being calm.

Being self centered. Being rude. Being violent.

Our privilege and opportunities (or lack thereof) in many ways guide these choices. But they are still choices.

Learning to direct our attention with intent and will is difficult.

But a worthwhile life goal. In my opinion. And of many thousands of years of other opinions.

Link to podcast stream, but please find Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom on your favorite podcast app.

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Previous KEW Episode on similar subjects:

https://chrisburcher.com/2022/02/04/kew-episode-83-awareness-attention-and-meditation/