How Awareness Leads To Healing

Hi. How you doing tonight, folks? Nick Hanson, part of the Cadre crew, coming to you live and just wanted to talk today about staying aware. Now with the fast paced nature of life and of work and of just living as a human being in the 21st century. We got text messages coming in. We have Instagram notifications, work emails, family issues, relationship issues, all these things happening. So how do we stay aware? Because if we can have some modicum of awareness, then we are going to be able to interpret our lives differently.

I believe there's going to be some distance between our next action. There's gonna be an understanding so we don't get swept away in the world of thought. Because in a way, thought is just. Is no different from, uh, any other sensory thing. It is. It's like a sound, you know, in the atmosphere, or it's like a. Something you smell with your senses or see. Like, we put so much stock in our thoughts, and I do it as well. And you know what? For me, my thoughts are oftentimes, you know, not the greatest.

They're fearful. I'm ruminating about something. I'm worried about something that's going to happen, you know, in the. In the future. It's. My default is not necessarily, like, extreme positivity. I try to affirm positivity and to really act as if, because that leads to good results. But it's partially, you know, an overcoming of these fears. And I think, you know, with the hereditary nature, it's like we were kind of brought up, like, way, way back in the day. You know, people needed that fight or flight, that fearful instinct that, oh, my God, this could happen.

So I better be ready, because literally, you know, a lion could have eaten you or, you know, you. You needed food. But now the lion is not really chasing us. I mean, if the lion is chasing you or bear is chasing you, then by all means, you know, go into that flight or fight or flight instinct. But the lion's not chasing us now. But we get in that mind state that these life and death situations mentally, you know, and so to cultivate that awareness. And Anthony DeMello has a book called awareness that I would highly recommend.

But anyways, he tells this story that I love that this lion's chasing you. Get to the edge of a cliff, you have to jump off it not to get eaten by the lion. You grab a tree branch, and you're hanging by the tree branch. The lion's yipping at you. You're about to fall, and there's a delicious berry sitting right there. And DeMelo saying, you gotta take that berry and eat the berry in that situation. And in some ways, we're always in that situation. Sadhguru talks about just the moment and the bliss of the moment and how the moment is everything.

And, you know, what a difficult thing to get in that moment. But it's possible, and it's possible to get there, you know, more often. And so, you know what I do? Pray and meditate in the morning, use different meditation apps, ask people how they stay in the moment. Exercise, run, keep the heart open. Say hello to somebody. There's so many different ways to get in the moment. It doesn't have to be traditional, you know, meditation, but we want to cultivate that awareness, or else we just get in this.

This loop of thoughts. I used to have this poem that I read all the time that said, the thing about the mind is that when it's on the grind, it might never stop. And there's some truth to that. When that mind gets going, it's never going to stop. And until I found for myself a higher power in my life that I could call upon, and that higher power might just show up as another person telling me, hey, you should really try this. Or just even to be aware of that connection, you know, with other people.

And we don't have to do it by ourselves. We don't have to get stuck in this mode of us against the world, because it's not. That's an illusion. That separateness is undoubtedly, you know, an illusion. And that separateness can show up in all kinds of ways. And just when you've solved it in one way, like you're. You've connected on this issue or that issue, but then in this other thing, it doesn't. And it's. So it. This can be exhausting. But I think the key point to remember is you don't have to do anything perfectly.

You know, do it imperfectly. Start the healing process imperfectly. If you can only do five minutes of yoga, do five minutes of yoga. If you can only take three deep breaths, take those three deep breaths in the moment, whatever you can do, just start the process. The perfectionism, you know, messes with us in different ways, and we might not even be aware of it, you know, a lot of the time. So the more that we can cultivate this awareness, I think the better chance, the better odds we have at just kind of getting better results.

You know, I'm kind of a pie in the sky guy. I like big thoughts and revelations, but a lot of my growth as a human being has been a slow, painful process of overcoming these things and growing, like, you know, 1% every day. And I think some of the times that's things we got to do is just chop wood, carry water, keep doing the things that we know work. It's going to be hard work, but cultivate that awareness, and it's going to help us to make strides. So that's my message for you tonight. Have a great one, guys.

I'll catch you on the flip side. Bye.