Is Awareness Over Rated?

- A 7 Benefit Series; #5: Freedom -

This is part of a 7 benefit series in the exploration of gains to be had through the development of our awareness and consciousness.

Benefit #5: To find freedom born of self acceptance, honesty, and truth.

As more and more we accept full responsibility for our actions, we take on a sense of acceptance of who we are. We can be honest about our faults and qualities. We can accept how we feel regardless of whether we like it or not. There is no need for lies, half truths, or hiding. With the burden of pretenses removed, being truthful both with ourselves and others can be liberating. It opens up deeper levels of integrity and genuineness in all aspects of our lives, not the least being in our relationships.

This is not to say that complacency about what we are discovering in our personality is ok. Falling back on the “that’s who I am” or “I’m ok with being this way” is not what I mean with being accepting of who we are.

Can you be at piece with your lesser qualities and still thrive to be better? Isn’t that a contradiction?

After all, how can you accept who you are, faults and all, AND continue to work to be better? If you work towards making something better, are you not in essence stating that you are not satisfied with the state of what that something is, and that you want to change it?

Well yes, and I still maintain that it is possible to be both at peace with the person we are today, at this moment, warts and all, and continue to grow towards the person we envision ourselves to be.

The accepting is more in tune with letting go of judgment and simply recognizing things for what they are, without assigning a definitive label on the scale of good versus bad. From that stand point there is no stress, just recognition. We are at a place of choice with how to proceed.

In acceptance there is freedom. In honesty and truth, there is freedom. We are no longer prisoners of our own lies and limitations. In accepting what is, we are free of worry. It’s a very zen attitude in a way. It lifts the veil of deceit behind which we hid ourselves from our own mind, feelings, and soul.

Next, Benefit #6: Judgment and Compassion

This article is copyright 2008 Christine Pointeau and for entertainment purposes only. All rights reserved. Pointeau is the artist, author of the book series A Cappella and Stray Tales, and a personal development published author. For articles and more information, go to http://www.ChristinePointeau.com

Quotes: Choice

Of the last three benefits of higher awareness talked about so far, i.e. insight, choice, and understanding, choice stands out as a permeating factor. Whenever we gain insight and understanding, whenever we take the time to listen -be it to others or our true self- new information comes about and up to now un-conceived choices appear.

True freedom is about having choices… and making them.

Read the following carefully and tune in to which resonate with you and why.

Choice

You are free to choose, but the choices you make today will determine what you will have, be, and do in the tomorrow of your life.
- Zig Ziglar

We choose our joys and sorrow long before we experience them.
- Kahlil Gibran

To make the right choice in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.
- Deepak Chopra

I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.
- Stephen Sondheim

In true courage there is always an element of choice, of an ethical choice, of an anguish, and also of action and deed. There is always a flame of spirit in it, a vision of some necessity higher than oneself.
- Brenda Ueland

What man wants is simply independent choice. Whatever that may cost and wherever it may lead.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose.
- Martin Kohe

The difficulty in life is the choice.
- George Moore

No man is free who is not master of himself… Is freedom anything else than the power of living as we choose?
- Epictetus

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Any person who recognizes this greatest power… the power to chose; begins to realize that he is the one that is doing the choosing and that friends, although they mean well, cannot do his choosing for him, nor can his relatives. Consequently, he develops real self confidence based upon his own ability, upon his own action, and upon his own initiative.
- J. Martin Kohe

It is always your next move.
- Napoleon Hill

Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
- Gordon B. Hinckley

When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment. When we live at this level, we participate in the creation of a better world. [The Circle is Sacred]
- Scout Cloud Lee

The way to activate the seed of your creation is be making choices about the results you want to create. When you make a choice, you activate vast human energies and resources, which otherwise go untapped. All too often people fail to focus their choices upon results and therefore their choices are ineffective. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left if compromise.
- Robert Fritz

Man’s power of choice enables him to think like an angel or a devil, a king or a slave. Whatever he chooses, mind will create and manifest.
- Frederick Bailes

You are the person who has to decide. Whether you’ll do it or toss is aside; You are the person who makes up your mind. Whether you’ll lead or will linger behind. Whether you’ll try for the goal that’s afar. Or just be contended to stay where you are.
- Edgar A Guest

This article is copyright 2008 Christine Pointeau and for entertainment purposes only. Christine Pointeau is the artist, author of the book series A Cappella and Stray Tales, and a personal development published author. For articles and more, go to: http://www.ChristinePointeau.com