Blueprint >> The Waking Daze

Disclaimer: This document is in raw form as I process and distill 4 years-worth of my personal development notes. Expect some typos and cryptic language for now. I will be updating frequently and polishing up.

Prescription: Understand the Waking Daze. Monitor your level of consciousness.
Related Concepts: Consciousness, Enlightenment, Meditation, Inner/Outer World Distinction

What is The Waking Daze?

The idea that you are far less conscious than you think you are, which makes it impossible to really control yourself. A habit of self-observation must be developed to start to take back control.

Why is it important?

Ultimate success and happiness in life comes from mastering your inner world. You cannot strategize about your life, or play the role of a creator without high self-awareness. You cannot control your environment if your environment controls you.

Waking Daze Videos

[coming soon...]

The Waking Daze: Key Points

Strategizing about your life, and having the discipline to execute that strategy requires self-awareness and self-control. By definition, you are trying to manipulate your environment, and you cannot do that if it has you mesmerized.

You are far less conscious than you think you are. Most of your day, maybe 95% or even more, is run on auto-pilot. You are not really conscious, you are executing habits and patterns. But your mind is really good at tricking you into thinking that you've been conscious the whole time. In fact, when you start to study yourself, you realize just how much you resemble a marionette pulled by strings, and you don't even know it!

It's hard to improve your life when you're constantly reacting to the outer world, always pulled by strings. You want to make a change, like quit smoking, or quit constant worrying, but you find it difficult from a position of low consciousness. In fact it's impossible to make the change from a very low consciousness mode. If you're going to make a successful change, your awareness has to expand. Your higher self has to come through somehow and take control. You have to stop running your old program and consciously choose a new program. You can't be very happy with your life if you are always reacting to external circumstances. The circumstances are too variable for sustained happiness. That's why you've got to take control of your own strings.

Ouspensky, in Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, asks us to do a consciousness test: look at your watch as the second hand ticks and think about yourself, "I am Leo Gura." How long can you keep your mind focused on the thought of yourself without straying? That is the extent of your consciousness. It's hard to do even for 30 seconds!

Your level of consciousness is critical to your life success. Bad things come when you are stuck in a low conscious mode — that's when you overeat, lose your temper, make poor decisions, act rashly, get depressed, or commit crimes. Low-consciousness is you reacting to the environment rather than choosing your responses thoughtfully. It's also the most base, survival part of you. Tapping into high-consciousness you make thoughtful decisions and respect your ideals. No ideals are respected when you lose consciousness, then you are just a stimulus-response animal.

The best personal transformations happen when your consciousness expands. Your awareness increases until you outgrow the problems plaguing you at your current level of consciousness.

Being in high-consciousness simply feels great — it is a reward in itself. Constantly living up to your ideals without struggle and being fully aware and in control of yourself one of the greatest feelings in the world. It's the opposite of feeling neurotic. Conversely, procrastinating, indulging bad habits, acting against your own intentions, overeating, constantly worrying, etc. is one of the worst feelings in the world.

As your consciousness increases your interaction with the world and other people improves dramatically. You let go of aggression, you start to see abundance everywhere, you start to genuinely care for others, you get the desire to make a positive contribution, you start to see the world as a good place, you become optimistic, etc. If you want to help the world, start by raising your own consciousness.

States of consciousness:

• Sleep >> Normal >> High Consciousness

So what can be done about consciousness? The first step is to start observing yourself. As Eben Pagan says, start watching your chimp-self in action. Observe how you act throughout the day and do automatic things, like reaching for that bag of potato chips when you said you wouldn't, etc. Just observe. Do not judge or try to correct yourself at first. You need to have a few of those "Ah-ha" moment where you realize just how reactive you are. This observation is subtle and hard to do because you are so unused to doing it. You will tend to simply forget. But if you care out the observation over days and weeks, you will have those Ah-ha moments and start to see how unconscious you really are. Once you see that, your consciousness will expand a little bit.

"The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant." 4 The rider is your conscious mind. The elephant is your unconscious mind. Your conscious mind evolved much later to serve your unconscious mind, so don't be surprised when you feel torn at times. If the rider is weak, as he is for many people, the elephant will run amok. The rider will never have full control over the elephant, but he can certainly improve.

Ways of increasing consciousness:

• Meditation, 20 minutes every day
• Self-observation
• Journaling
• Writing
• Reading
• Mind Power
• School, classes, or seminars
• Getting out of your comfort zone and doing something challenging and new: like starting a business, doing pick-up, learning the piano, etc.
• Travel
• Contemplationv
• Deep conversations with friends/colleagues

References

1. The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, Peter Ouspensky
2. Mind Control, Eben Pagan
3. Mind Power, John Kehoe
4. The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt