Book Review “Awareness”
Awareness is a self-help book that will try to answer about how to live a life. A peaceful way to live a life is important in today’s noisy environment. There is so much going on that we are occupied with some or the other issue. Life nowdays isn’t as smooth as it should be. So, in times, when things are pretty messed up & there is no finish line to look up to, getting help from an external guide is a blessing. This book is that external light that will allow you to settle down & look ahead the life in a more fulfilling & satisfying way. Though the book is a short one, yet it contains lessons for a lifetime. This is also one of the most recommended books to read & one will know the reason for it after completing it. So, here a book review of Awareness.
The book starts with the fact that we all are sleeping & doing not enough to wake up. But, just like any other problem, one has to accept that one is having a problem to solve it. We are not aware that we are sleepwalking life & hence we are not able to do anything to wake up from this situation. The first step to start anything, knowing that we can do it. The book contains various thoughts that tie us to unhappiness, things like labels, our perception about others & things, self-observation, happiness, wisdom, etc. The author explains these & other such points in a very simple & interesting manner.
To encourage you all to read, I will only highlight a few points that are much-needed by all & related to every one of us during some time in life.
Self Observation:
Self-observation is watching self. It means one watch everything in you & around you & watch it as if it is happening to someone else. Thus it means you are not personalizing what is happening to you & look as if you don’t have any connection with it. Usually, one suffers from anxieties because we identify with them & as we identify ourselves with it, we are experiencing it. The trick is not to fix it but to watch & observe & most of us are just fixing things.
How Happiness Happens:
As explained self-observation is a delightful & extra-ordinary thing. One only changes what it understands. Once you are aware of yourself & your surroundings, you will have no fear & you will fear nothing. It is a blissful feeling when one is living not for rewards but to perform to the best of its abilities. With awareness, one knows honor doesn’t’ mean a thing. It’s a social convention, that’s all. All the aware people don’t bother one bit for it. Further, the most difficult thing to do for a person is returning love for hate, including the excluded, admitting that you are wrong. Once all this is done diligently, one will reach a place of total bliss.
Four Steps of Wisdom:
The four simple yet difficult steps of wisdom are as follows:
Identify your feelings: To solve anything one needs to understand where the problem is & the core reason for our problem is our feelings. We have to identify our feelings first.
Feelings are in you & not in reality: There is nothing in reality the only thing that creates the illusion is our mind. We spend all our energy on changing the external factors which are not under our control & in result lose our mind. We enforce others to behave the way we want, forgetting that it is not in our control. The only thing we can change is ourselves. Realty is not a problem our mind is.
Never identify with the feeling: Don’t identify yourself with the feelings. Feelings are perishable & feelings are illusion they never last. Like everything feelings shall too pass. Your feelings have nothing to do with happiness. Happiness is attained by not adding something but by dropping something. After dropping something you will be free & with freedom comes happiness.
How to change things: We believe that we will feel better if somebody else changes yet the problem is with ourselves. Rather than changing others, we should focus on changing ourselves & by this, we attain the forever goal of humankind. A true bliss.
Permanent Worth:
What determines one’s worth. Is it labels that one wears, watches that they buy, one’s beauty or any other thing. Most of us relate to others worth these set parameters. Yet, these are the most perishable items. Your worth is the problems you have faced. As difficulties help you to grow. Pleasant experiences make life delightful but don’t lead to growth.
These are only some of the points that I have tried to explain. However, these & many other such points which impact our lives in a direct & indirect way & being aware of the same is as essential as living a life. A wonderful book to analyze where we are going wrong & can help us to improve a bit.
Awareness is a book to help you live your life fully, the book is highly recommended & also among one of the most recommended books to read. The author covers various vanity’s that block our minds in day to day life. The author covers topics like impression, label, happiness, awareness, sleeping, impression, etc, or the way how we perceive the world. This book will open your eyes & your mind, especially during this time of life where we are so engrossed with the world. We are connected to the world & never really get the time to introspect ourselves. Hence, this book is one of the resources that will help one to calm one down & look at the world from a different perspective.