TribeSteemUp posed the question this week 'what does awareness mean to you' and I'm about to start to unpack that in this post, but first, a little about the tribe, if you haven't heard about them already!

How amazing is this infographic which illustrates the eight pillars of @tribesteemup by @hungryhustle! It really beautifully shows what values the tribe live by and I'm sure you'll agree they are pretty good ones.

TribeSteemUp was dreamt up by @kennyskitchen and had the aim to generate abundance for all members of the tribe. It's an awesome project as it both generates great content with the express aim of making the world a better place, and to enrich and empower all of it's members. I've certainly felt the great benefits of the tribe as I now can earn around 10 SBD per post rather than cents, so I'm eternally grateful, plus I've met some awesome people who I follow and interact with, which stops me swimming sadly around the steem sea on my own. Some of the topics include:

| Anarchy | Non-Violence | Philosophy | Veganism | Mindfulness |
| Community Empowerment | Love | Original Music | Esotericism |
| Healthy Recipes | Psychedelics | Truth | Permaculture |

and other topics that align with the eight pillars. If you're writing consistantly on these topics, I'd say it's worth getting in touch with @kennyskitchen and seeing if you're a good fit.

And so, the question of the week! What a rabbit hole! Here we gooooo...

'What does awareness mean to you, @riverflows?'

I really liked @whatamidoing 's post about what we think we know, and how we think we're awake but really, that's an illusion too. We all think we know a truth but it's arrogant to presume that our truth makes us more awake and aware than someone elses:

Firstly, you inhibit your own growth by thinking you know more than you actually do. You assume that your truth is true for everyone and this may not be the case. You may see something others don’t see merely because of where you are standing. They may see something you don’t see and think you have taken the red pill and them the blue one.

We live in a sensory world we're we're pulled this way and that by sensations that are the result of sensory experience. The weather's too hot, we retreat indoors and long for the cold. We wake in the morning with frost on the grass and long for summer. A lover rejects us, and in exquisite pain, we douse ourselves with the soma of wine to forget, or dance naked with other lovers to feel again and again. We feed hungers, run from perceived threats, retreat into caves of our own making, sweat and run on the hamster wheel of modern life with elevated pulses and a sense that something isn't quite right. And if we're lucky, we stumble across a thought, a method, a truth that screams at us: 'awaken! you thought you knew, but you're dreaming!'.

We're always pulled this way and that by the 'fluctuations of the mind stuff' as Patanjali says in one of his first yoga sutras. And Buddhist thought suggests that it's the cause of our suffering, because we're pulled by our desires, yet they're not permanent - as soon as we've achieved one thing, we're onto the next, because nothing we do brings us lasting happiness. And that's true of the things we don't like too, the things we're adverse too - our aversions also cause us unhappiness. I don't like what you say or do and that pisses me off and bam!! There goes the rippling of the mind stuff.

I'd always read spiritual texts and understood - or thought I understood - about the nature of impermanence but I'm not sure I was ever *fully awake to it until I sat a vipassana ten day silent retreat in the Blue Mountains of Sydney years and years ago. I'd read too about experiental understanding but ironically, until you've really experienced that you can't understand it either! The awareness that I experienced in that moment changed everything for me. I literally felt my body change on a cellular level, moment to moment. There was no solid "I", just a shifting, fluid universe that was connected to all things. By placing all my attention on the breath, and only the breath, I withdrew from the thinking mind and became incredibly aware of my place in the universe and the changing nature of myself, where nothing at all was fixed, solid. Anything I thought was my identity, the big "I- am" was not the truth of my existence at all. And that was really liberating! And once that door of perception opens, you can't really go back. You've awoken to this new way of seeing the world.

For me it's now a fairly constant practice of attention to the breath and sensation so I can connect to this deeper awareness that is beyond self identification. By doing that, I can try to control the desires that make me unhappy - the thinking I have to earn a certain amount to be successful, that I'm too old to be a yoga teacher, that I'm not good enough, that I won't succeed at that or this or the other even if I try - all those brain monkeys that are just thoughts, that's all. I can breathe and allow them to pass and be attentive to what really matters - kindness, compassion, - the things that are at the core of me, the core of us, the core of every living thing in the entire universe.

To live in a moment to moment awareness is reallly hard to do and I have to constantly practice it. But it's the moment to moment attentiveness that is so precious - the world whirls around you, thoughts come and go, but there is this core that is beyond that. And then you start to realise that everything that is, is part of you - the air I breathe, the birds I hear, the trees that whisper in the night, the chattering of voices around me, this leaf, this raindrop, this wave on the shore. I am no lesser or no greater than any of that. And this awareness is really liberating.

And if you are part of that thrumming, humming, singing, om-ing beauty of the world, and that is part of you, how is it possible to harm yourself, because then you'd be harming the world? How is it possible to harm the world, as by doing so, you harm yourself? And of course - I, we - stray and do things that cause harm all the time because we're young in the wheel - we're constantly pulled by this desire or the other.

But the more we practice, the more we can catch ourselves, and come back to this awareness, back to this moment, and connect to all that is, in the infinite field of conscious awareness.

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This brings me to the next part of 'awareness' as I've been thinking about it this week. I think this quote sums it up well:

We are the generation with the awareness of a great danger. We are the ones with the responsibility and the ability to take steps of concrete action, before it is too late - Dalai Llama

Regardless of whether we're living in a complete state of cosmic awareness (which is really hard to do, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to get all the things done that also need to be done, like care for children, or eat to live to do things that make the world a better place!) we do live in an age we most of us DO know about what impact our actions have on the world.

We know that we must respect the cycle and balance in nature because otherwise the future is doomed. And we can see this future understanding in the past - the evidence is right before our eyes. We've seen animals become extinct, forests turned to deserts, seas to dead things that mourn what was. There's not many people in the world that are unaware of this, but rather those that turn their attention away from this knowledge and truth and choose their own self interest instead or perhaps they just 'forget' because they're so busy being distracted by other stuff and their minds are just chasing their desires and aversions so much that they aren't paying attention to what they're doing in the world and the affect their actions have.

If you're going to live within awareness, you have to live attentively, skilfully, mindfully - benefitting the entire world by shifting away from exploitation. This way of thinking and and being in the world is entirely compatible with an environmental agenda - if we can be more aware of what we think we **need** then we can make major changes to how we treat the world and each other. We have to seek a lifestyle that's free from the destruction that comes along with being human in this way. For example - I desire this really beautiful pair of jeans, but I know it's made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh. Do I buy them knowing that, or do I care for my fellow human beings and allow the selfish desire to pass? I'm at the shops, and I left my recycling bag in the car. Do I just give in to the desire to get things done fast because I'm tired and accept the plastic bags that I know can cause harm to the oceans or do I go and get the bag? There's a million ways that mindful attention and awareness to what we do can benefit the world.

And that, my beautiful friends and my beautiful steemtribes, is what awareness means to me. xx

What does it mean to you?

All of the art pictures are by Svabhu Kohli, as I stumbled across this beautiful artwork this week.

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You can read about the 8 Pillars of TribeSteemUp here