76 The Importance of Staying Awake To Your Life
Bear demonstrates the cat version of “staying awake.”
In this episode, we start with telling you about our encounter with "nakedness" in the wilderness, during the cold and waning weeks of 2019.
Then we get into the actual main topic and share thoughts on what it means to “stay awake to your life, and in your life.”
After that, we share 7 things you can do to help cultivate awake-ness and alive-ness, and make it more of a habit than say, going numb, dozing off, and missing your precious and passing life.
We mean two different but related things by the phrase “staying awake.”
One is paying deliberate attention to internal and external phenomena.
The other is having active involvement and responses to what The Life Force is growing or making whole within you.
Here are…
7 ways to cultivate “awake-ness”
Ask yourself: what am I feeling in this moment? Observe and exercise self-awareness of the energetic phenomena of your feelings in your body and thoughts.
Listen to others. Listen without crafting a response; with curiosity versus anticipation.
Listen to your body. Your body needs fresh air, fresh and natural food and drink, exercise, stretching, and rest.
Identify ‘painkillers’ that you may be misusing to cover over discomfort, discomfort that is actually a message from The Life Force to address in a more healthy way. For example, do you feel the life force within you is brighter, or more dimmed, after [binge-watching TV] or [overeating/snacking] or [scrolling through Twitter]?
Savor simple moments. Super simple things like coffee, tea, listening to music, or even a minute of just sitting there and purposely ‘doing nothing’ help us to enact mini re-sets of our internal states of being.
Quiet Time for Reflection. This is a time of solitude to quiet your mind down. To be still and receive the energy of life, and light, and love that provide support, reassurance, and comfort…if only we receive it.
Nature. Get out in it. It doesn’t have to be a national park. Even time with a potted plant, or looking deep into a starscape, and reflecting on the fact that we (plants, humans, stars) are all part of the same cosmos, eternally evolving.