This is the first blog from The Awakening Series. In each blog we will discuss one of the 9 principles from Sidra Jafri’s book – The Awakening. These principles are aimed at helping us live a life of courage and joy. Each week we’ll discuss one principle, understand it and work on integrating its essence in our lives.
Why Start with Awareness?
Interestingly, the first principle in the book is Ask Quality Questions. However, during my time with Sidra, we often debated the principles and their application in life. On one such occasion, I asked Sidra, How can I ask quality questions if I don’t have awareness around the issue itself? In other words, if I don’t even know there is a conflict or a challenge, how would I even think of asking questions to find solutions?
After months of contemplation and conversations, Sidra, in one of her online sessions, stated that awareness should ideally be the first principle, as it is the key that opens the pathway to living an awakened life. And that’s why we begin with Awareness today.
What is Awareness?
Sidra Jafri (SJ) says – Your awareness is your reality. It is everything you know. As you expand your awareness you also expand your consciousness in the same proportion, and this brings you closer to your truth.
How Does Awareness Work?
We make decisions based on the information we have at the time. To illustrate this, imagine three people looking at the same garden:
- The first person sees the plants, soil, and flowers and understands that they need sun, water, and nourishment to grow.
- The second person knows all of the above but also understands the medicinal properties of each plant.
- The third person sees all of the above but also perceives the consciousness of each plant and how they are all interconnected.
This deeper level of understanding is what true awareness brings.
When awareness deepens, it reveals our deepest beliefs and the conflicts surrounding them. Awareness nudges us toward resolving these conflicts and helps us make meaningful changes in various aspects of life, including health, wealth, relationships, and personal growth.
What we are excited about sharing here are some of the ways that SJ has discovered after addressing large audiences worldwide, speaking to thousands of people and then using her gifts to navigate through these challenges. The principles and tools she created have helped people heal themselves and live a life that is light and joyful.
Why do we Need Awareness in our Life?
We need the gift of awareness in our life for 3 main reasons
- Navigating through life’s challenges
- Experiencing more of your real truth
- Raising your level of consciousness
When you do the above, you not only learn to see these in your life, but also observe, appreciate and understand this about other people’s lives. Let’s look at each of these closely
1.Navigating through life’s challenges
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
Albert Einstein
Awareness is a tool that helps you identify the areas in your life where you feel stuck currently. Think about it – it is only when we expand our awareness around any challenge do we understand what’s going on underneath the situation. Awareness is the tool that helps you take a deeper dive into your challenge to see what is really going on. It is like going backstage and seeing how things are working and where the real challenge is coming from.
Think of your current challenge as the tip of an iceberg—what’s visible above the surface. Beneath the water lies a vast, hidden structure, just like the deeper beliefs and patterns influencing your life. Awareness acts as a guiding rope, allowing you to dive beneath the surface and uncover the root of your struggles. As you explore, you gain insight into when and how these beliefs were formed, helping you identify the underlying conflict and transform it.
When you understand this, your consciousness or awareness around the issue is so much wider and deeper now. Based on this new information, you can make better decisions to overcome current challenges. And it will also help you take different actions or embrace different perspectives so you can move out of the loop of repeated challenges. Getting stuck in the same issues all the time – landing in the same debt trap, having the same money challenges, repeating patterns of anger or arguments in a relationship, fighting over the same problems again and again are some examples.
In her book SJ reveals how she kept falling at one particular point in the ice skating rink several times over, until she stopped and noticed an ice mound at the spot was causing the fall. She came in again for the next round, knowing there was an ice mound there, and she avoided it this time, by detouring a little and had a smooth pass. The ice mound is a wonderful metaphor for the challenges that exist, but we don’t have the awareness till we stop and notice them.
2. Experiencing More of Your Real Truth
The truth of who we truly are is usually hidden beneath our programming and conditioning of years. – Sidra Jafri
In her book she shares the story of an eagle in the farmyard. A hardworking farmer, weary of his daily routine, one day felt a sudden urge to climb the towering mountain that loomed over his farm. As he reached a ledge near the summit, he stumbled upon a nest filled with large eggs—eagle eggs. Carefully, he took one and carried it down to his farm, placing it under a brooding hen.
In time, the egg hatched, and a small eagle emerged. Though it looked different from the fluffy yellow chicks, the mother hen raised it as her own, teaching it to cluck, scratch, and follow the ways of the farm. The young eagle believed itself to be a chicken, never questioning its place in the world.
One day, as it pecked at the dirt, a great shadow swept across the ground. Looking up, the eagle saw a magnificent bird soaring effortlessly in the sky.
“What a majestic creature!” it thought in awe. “Don’t bother with that,” clucked a nearby hen. “We’re chickens. Our wings are taking dust baths, not flying.”
And so, the eagle lowered its gaze and went back to scratching the earth, never realizing it was born to soar.
Where in your life are you being the eagle who does not know who it truly is. I invite you to use the essence of this story to open new doors of possibilities, and to question your current reality to understand how aligned you are with your real truth. Are you a dancer stuck in a professional’s body, or do you feel the strong urge to travel the world and meet new people, but are currently experiencing a contrasting life operating out of one place and living through the mundane routine of life?
While there is nothing wrong in doing just that, the lens of awareness helps you get in touch with your heart’s true desires and make more choices that are in its favour. It helps you take responsibility for your current circumstances and make a conscious choice to make a shift wherever you feel is needed. This is what conscious living looks like. When you become truly aware of what you’re doing and why, you have a choice to follow through with that action or pick a different one.
3. Raising Your Level of Consciousness
“What you believe is what shows up in your life, and this makes the belief stronger. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
If you believe the ‘world is unsafe’, ‘people hurt you’ or ‘you are not good enough’ – you will attract such people and circumstances in your life that validate your belief. Likewise if you believe, ‘life is easy’, ‘people are amazing’ and ‘the world is a safe place’ – you will attract loving and compassionate people in your life.
Awareness throws light on some of the beliefs that are running in the background of your life. You can also take a step deeper and check if those beliefs really belong to you or your family? If there are beliefs that are passed down to you from family or others, and those beliefs don’t serve you, then awareness as a tool helps you raise your consciousness around them and can help you let them go. Eg., beliefs around money. If you grew up in a house where money was difficult to come by then you may have an issue making more money in your current life. This could be because your family thinks rich people are bad, or making money is difficult and so on.
When you shift your awareness even on a small scale, you will notice that events in your life appear to be more connected than they were before. The way you look at things will truly begin to change. You may no longer have the same challenges and can seek out new experiences.
Awareness in Everyday Life
Awareness is the prerequisite for change. No awareness means no change. Period.
Awareness helps us remember who we truly are. Take the story of Hanuman from the epic Ramayana—before he could uproot an entire mountain in search of the Sanjeevani herb and fly across vast distances to save Lakshman’s life, he had to be reminded of his true power. Just like Hanuman, we often forget our own strength and abilities, until awareness rekindles our inner knowing.
Being unaware can cause harm—not just to ourselves but to those around us. Think about a person who talks more than they listen, constantly gives unsolicited advice, always tries to prove they are right or makes sarcastic comments in their effort to look funny and witty. Awareness helps us see our own patterns and correct them.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Dr. Wayne Dyer
Sometimes, mere awareness of an issue resolves it. There’s nothing more to do—just seeing it clearly is enough. That is the power of awareness!
How to Cultivate Awareness
Once you understand what awareness is and how you can use it to experience life more fully, the question is how do you build awareness? How do you learn to become aware?
The answer is SILENCE. We live in a world that is full of distractions. From the beeps of the gadgets we own, to the fast paced lives we live.
To enable the gifts of awareness to come to you, you need to be in silence. Learn to sit with yourself in silence for a few moments each day and allow the external noise to turn down their volume so you can do these two things
- Observe – When you silence the outside, your mental chatter comes to the fore. Observing your chatter / thoughts will then help you uncover your deepest beliefs and points of conflict.
- Listen – When you choose to stay in silence consistently you can hear the voice of your inner dialogue and this connection can be your guide intuitively.
Once you are aware of how you show up in life, you can control where you want to go next. It is a choice that lies with you.
Awakening brings gifts of awareness and suddenly routine events that you never paid attention to before come alive because you appreciate them in a new light.
I invite you to listen to this process to help you cultivate more awareness. Feel free to listen to it as often as you feel inspired to and allow this time and space to be your guide to living a more awakened life.
