Becoming conscious

What is the first step we need to take in order to become conscious? How does our subconscious get in the way of us achieving our goals?

Inspired by the yogi and mystic Sadhguru, in today’s episode we dive deep into the steps we need to take to becoming conscious. We unpack why our unconscious reactions get in the way of us achieving our purpose and what important steps we can take today to improve the quality of our life.

Transcript

Episode 3 – Becoming conscious

Welcome to the Mindy Movement, the thought-provoking podcast by Soulful Soundwaves. Conversations inspired by real life events, lessons and learnings, gifted to us while traveling across Australia in a tiny home on wheels. Welcome aboard.

We would like to acknowledge the traditional owners, custodians and ancestors of the land and country we walk on, and their connection to the land, waters and community. We pay our deepest respect to the elders, past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all indigenous people across the world.

Lorenzo:

G'day G'day folks! Here we are with another episode of our little podcast.

Maeve:

Hello guys. 

Lorenzo:

And today we're going to go through a topic that is fundamental, which is how to become again the master of your ship. Which means, what is the first step that we have to take in order to become conscious? 

Maeve:

Let's get going. So, where do we start on this big topic? 

Lorenzo:

I think we start where our inspiration for this topic started. 

Maeve:

Absolutely. 

Lorenzo:

So, Sadhguru is a yogi and he is a spiritual teacher in India. And in these days he is going through…he loves to ride a bike, and he's going through the United States trying to raise awareness for his campaign “Save the soil”, which by the way is absolutely incredible and interesting. So if you have the time, check it out. While he was driving through the states he did an interview with Joe Rogan, and it's a certain point Joe Rogan was asking “What do people need to do in order to start getting a better life?” And…people have all sorts of problems. You are riddled with anxiety, alcoholism…you name it. And more often than not what happens to us is we create a pattern, and we are riddled with wrong patterns.

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

On a multiple level. On a physical level, on a psychological level, on an energetic level, and we follow these patterns because the hard part of our subconscious, they became automatic.

Maeve:

Yeah.

Lorenzo:

So, how do we break the chain and we start creating a conscious persona? How do we heal ourselves? That was the question that Joe Rogan posed to Sadhguru, And Sadhguru came out with an answer that is not only enlightening, is also thought-provoking, because what he said is (that) in order to create these new patterns the first thing that we need to do is to recognise that we are constantly reacting to something. 

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

Ours is an unconscious reaction. It's not a conscious action, it's an unconscious reaction. So if we notice, during the day we probably take a bunch of actions, let's say from 5 to 10. All the rest of our days is riddled by unconscious reactions. 

Maeve:

And especially in the world of social media too.

Lorenzo:

Everywhere. 

Maeve:

It's everything. We react to what people say to us. It's a really, really interesting question that was posed from Joe Rogan. But also the response, as you said, enlightening because the first step is to becoming aware of our actions. And one of the things that really landed in my heart when Sadhguru responded was…through these reactions we become a slave to the person that we have reacted to. 

Lorenzo:

Absolutely. 

Maeve:

Slave as a word, it's a heavy word, but it's also very true. When you think of this in more detail, someone may say something to us that we don't like or maybe we're being sensitive, maybe they have said something that wasn't conscious or compassionate, and it's come out with a little bit of a poison arrow, shall we say. And we allow that to go in and touch a sore nerve, an exposed nerve, that there is no time for a conscious decision. 

Lorenzo:

There is time. 

Maeve:

Yes, there is time when we train ourselves to become aware of that pain. However we often unconsciously react, and what happens in that mechanism is…we have just allowed ourselves to become a slave to the person that dealt those words or that action. 

Lorenzo:

Totally, yeah. 

Maeve:

Nine times out of ten that is the last thing we want. It would be the last person maybe we would want to be enslaved to. 

Lorenzo:

I don't think it’s a matter of a person, you can be enslaved to something. 

Maeve:

Absolutely. 

Lorenzo:

As you pointed out before, procrastinating for example, which I'm an expert about, is when you let yourself become a slave of whatever you're doing to procrastinate.

Maeve:

Totally. You're trying to get out of the way of what you want to achieve, and put other things in the way of the destination. 

Lorenzo:

So you don't have to be a slave of somebody, you could become a slave of something too. 

Maeve:

Absolutely. And that is a nice little segway too, because what happens in this mechanism? When we are not 100% sure, maybe in our destination or where we want to go, or even a task, a goal we want to achieve. We hold that goal. However we have become so interested in other people's business that we allow that business to get in the way of our own business, in so many different ways. So procrastination is just that. You get distracted but we're distracted because the goal isn't clear. 

Lorenzo:

Yeah. 

Maeve:

We allow ourselves to be distracted. However, if we hold that goal clear and we're not worried about what other people think or what we should be writing, in what way it should be written, what pictures it should go with, how we should turn up in society, …blah blah blah. The list is endless. All of that is noise because we're worried about other people's business.  

Lorenzo:

And this is a waste of time. 

Maeve:

It absolutely is, but ultimately it gets in the way of us understanding ourselves. And when we…if you think throughout the day, also, how many times it comes into your head that you are thinking of what other people may think of you. 

Lorenzo:

Not only that, I think every single one of us experienced, at least once in their lifetime, remembering something that hurt you in the past, and still hurting you today. It could be a person, it could be a situation, it could be… I think every one of us has the kind of little knife that is piercing your skin while you think about it.

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

That means that that person or that situation is actually holding you slave today, in the present, after many years.

Maeve:

Absolutely. 

Lorenzo:

And the best thing that we can do for ourselves is to break this chain. 

Maeve:

How would you advise you break that chain? 

Lorenzo:

Well it's not me, Sadhguru said this. I think he’s spot on. What we need to do is to becoming aware of our potential. 

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

What we are is a very sophisticated machine that can achieve pretty much anything.

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

But we take this as a given most of the times, and we get trapped in patterns of routine.

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

So we don't consider ourselves for what we really are. Understanding this brings to the next step, which is recognising when you are involuntarily reacting. Somebody pokes, you get a bad phone call, you see on the road people looking at you because you have a shirt that is not the usual colour. And that creates a little scar, a little scratch on your… 

Maeve:

…existing scar. 

Lorenzo:

Yes. Stopping in that moment and recognising that THAT reaction creates the problem. It’s not what other people are doing.

Maeve:

Absolutely. 

Lorenzo:

It’s your reaction that creates the problem and creates the state of physical, psychological, energetic imbalance. 

Maeve:

Absolutely and it's not what that person has done. It’s what we have done. 

Lorenzo:

Exactly, so regardless of what the other people are doing, if we realise that our reactions are what brings us… 

Maeve:

…either towards wellness or away from wellness… 

Lorenzo:

…yes, we can actually start working towards a different outcome. 

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

If we make a habit to pause for a fraction of a second when something happens, and say “I'm not gonna allow this to come through me”, because first of all I'm not that person’s slave, second of all I have my own business, I have my own day to go through, I have my own things to do… 

Maeve:

Yeah and ultimately achieve what those things are. 

Lorenzo:

Absolutely and also, something that we don't think about is that we produce ripple effects that affect other people's life. So in that moment we should realise that we don't want to affect negatively other people. 

Maeve:

Yeah. 

Lorenzo:

We do it for ourselves, we do it for others as well. 

Maeve:

That quote comes to mind, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. 

Lorenzo:

Absolutely. So true.  

Maeve:

Ultimately those reactions that we spend time on use a significant amount of energy. 

Lorenzo:

Yes. 

Maeve:

Misaligned energy, energy focused on the outside, sending it out towards something in a reaction, instead of focusing and harnessing it on the inside. And as Sadhguru actually said, the most complex and beautiful of systems is, or machines, is the human body. And we are constantly projecting externally. Whether that's sharing opinions, sharing views, whether they are asked for or not.  We've all been in those situations that you want to achieve something and someone passes comments or opinion on something that leaves a sour taste in your mouth, or a sour feeling in your heart. And it gets in the way, it gets in the way. We allow ourselves to sit into that spiral of not achieving what it is we want to achieve, or not achieving wellness, and instead it takes us into “Oh that hurt, why did they say this ,why did they do this?” But the human body doesn't come with a manual. 

Lorenzo:

It does come with a manual, as Sadhguru said, but it’s inside us. So we have to start understanding how to read it. 

Maeve:

And your manual might be different to my manual.

Lorenzo:

Absolutely, with common points. For example, we have clearly different paths, but we react to the same things. So the way we overcome this unconscious reactions and we create new patterns, healthy patterns, that can create a different persona, that can create a healthy ourselves, is actually about focus. The whole thing is about focus. 

Maeve:

It is. 

Lorenzo:

So we need to start becoming more focused, and we need to start training ourselves. It's a long training, because we have to replace patterns that have been there for decades, but if we start doing it every day and we commit to this… First of all we need to commit. 

Maeve:

Absolutely and that's a little challenge for us all. Even today, set a little goal. What it is you want to achieve? Today. Can be small, can't be large, whatever that is for you. 

Lorenzo:

Not reacting to others. 

Maeve:

However, we’ll not… well, whatever the goal is.

Lorenzo:

That’s mine.

Maeve:

Recognise how many things or thoughts or scenarios get in the way of you achieving that goal.

Lorenzo:

Absolutely, that's what I was doing coming here from the post office. You know? Just because I was in that kind of mental state, I wanted to find out how many times I was reacting to things. I found out that in the space of two minutes I reacted four times. Seriously!

Maeve:

It’s gonna be a long day. 

Lorenzo:

It is, but we don't realise that.

Maeve:

It's true, it's true. We have to train ourselves to become focused. And just when you start meditation for the first time, reigning in that mind is a hard challenge. But with time, with consistency, it becomes so much easier now 10-15 years later. You close your eyes with the intention to go into meditation and it becomes way easier than what it did 15 years ago. That's for sure. That is the challenge for today. We should all take accountability for, it’s becoming aware of how much stuff is in the way of you achieving one goal. 

Lorenzo:

Yeah. 

Maeve:

That we set ourselves. Is it something we can get up and go and straight away do, or is it something we procrastinate about? And if you're procrastinating what is all that stuff that is inhibiting us from achieving what it is we want to achieve? Because the reason why I mention this example is (that) it's no different to achieving your purpose. 

Lorenzo:

Yes. 

Maeve:

It is no different to the bigger picture of being that help in the world, providing. Giving, caring, whatever that is. It is no different. If you have your goal or your mission clear, let's do it. 

Lorenzo:

Yeah.

Maeve:

It's becoming aware of all the stuff in the way, because ultimately we are spending our time on other people's business and we are on our own business. And that is all why we're here, we all have a gift to share, we all have a purpose to be here. But what's in the way? 

Lorenzo:

In terms of quantity it's more in the bar as you said it's more about what's in the way than what we achieve. 

Maeve:

Yeah that's exactly why we don't feel fulfilled. Because ultimately at the end the day, or each day, we spent more of the day fluffing around or having our attention on things that aren't important, or will never achieve the goal, ever, worrying about what Nancy said down the road about a project that, you know, just an example. But worrying about somebody's opinion of you, or a job that you're doing, or X Y and Z. Sitting in that, and losing the energy over that, we will never achieve the goal itself. 

Lorenzo:

No, totally. 

Maeve:

Therefore that’s where the unfulfillment comes in, that we go to bed at night feeling unfulfilled. Because we didn't achieve…What didn't we achieve? We didn't achieve what we set out to do.

Lorenzo:

And it doesn't matter what you do really. Some people might think that you need time to have…the time to do these kind of exercise. It's not. It doesn't matter what we do. We might be working for eight hours, 10 hours, 16 hours. We might be taking the kids to school, we might be at the supermarket shopping for the day, it's exactly the same thing. There's always something that pulls the trigger and we allow a reaction to come up. So it doesn't really matter what environment is outside of ourselves. 

Maeve:

Yeah, exactly. 

Lorenzo:

What matters is how we react inside ourselves. 

Maeve:

An example the tomatoes being quite pricey, if you wanted to go and buy tomatoes cause you wanted to make lasagne for dinner. “Oh my gosh, they're three dollars a punnet!” So what are we doing here, are we actually going to make lasagne or we going to focus on the price of tomatoes? 

Lorenzo:

Well, that  depends if you can afford the tomatoes.  

Maeve:

There are other options, like tinned tomatoes. It's just an example of how we can then cloud our judgement, even over shopping. On things that just don't matter. There's always an alternative. There's always something that gets in the way if we allow it. And that's the great lesson from Sadhguru. 

Lorenzo:

The other example that comes to mind…it just came to my mind. Do you remember when during the pandemic there were people collecting toilet rolls? You went to the supermarket and you found all these aisles there were bare. And you couldn’t believe yourself. What was your reaction? 

Maeve:

One of judgement 

Lorenzo:

Our reaction was like “Oh, somebody was so irresponsible to take all these toilet rolls for themselves and not leaving anything to others”. Well, that is a reaction that we can actually control and change. 

Maeve:

Totally, totally. 

Lorenzo:

Because at the end of the day it's not important. 

Maeve:

It's a loss of energy and, you know, even anything you can extend it (to). Obviously we've been in the grasp of a worldwide pandemic for the last two years but it doesn't need to even be that big. 

Lorenzo:

Sorry, it's not about the fact that it's not important. Something can be important. It's about the fact that when we start thinking something like that we become slaves of the person who committed that action. 

Maeve:

Yeah, exactly. 

Lorenzo:

And that is something that we don't want for ourselves. 

Maeve:

Absolutely, because ultimately we want to change the situation. If somebody has done an action to towards us or something that leaves us without something, why on earth do we want to be enslaved to that persons opinion or action that ultimately hurt us? We don't. 

Lorenzo:

We don't. 

Maeve:

Exactly. But this is all subconscious. This is how our subconscious mind works.

Lorenzo:

So I think this episode has been thought-provoking. 

Maeve:

Another thought-provoking one, and this is what The Mindy Movement is about.  It’s about sharing. This is our conversations in the hope that you may find some grace in these conversations as well, because just as we did listening to Sadhguru it provoked and sparked something in us. 

Lorenzo:

Exactly let's not forget to give credit to Sadhguru for what he said.

Maeve:

Yeah, so go and check him out, if you haven't watched any of his “Save the soil”, or even the podcast. He's great entertainment but he comes with profound wisdom and grace. 

Lorenzo:

He’s a great speaker, actually. 

Maeve:

Yeah. Until next time. Namaste. 

Lorenzo:

Namaste guys.

Thanks for listening to the Mindy Movement Podcast. You can find more content, free meditations, brain entraining music and much much more our website, at www.soulfulsoundwaves.com

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