Five Degrees of Awareness

Awareness brings us freedom. The victim is the person not aware of the part he plays in his own drama, and thus not aware of the other choices he has. As we increase our awareness of how we live our lives, we find we are more responsible, yet, paradoxically, more free.

First Degree - the Watcher When drama happens in our life, we experience only the people and things around us, but not ourselves. Consider animals, which to the best of our knowledge have no self-awareness. A dog sits alone in a house, lonely, hungry. He is not aware of himself as a lonely, hungry dog, sitting in a room - he is aware of a room with no one in it and uncomfortable sensations hovering around. The owner comes home, and the dog is happy. He sees the owner, and the world seems good again. The dog is not aware of himself being present as part of the drama.

So our initial experience of any drama in our lives is the environment around us, which catches our attention and invades our senses. We do not notice ourselves, because we are the ones watching. We do not notice our judgments of others, because we don't experience our judgments - rather, we experience those around us as being a certain way.

Second Degree - the Feeler At this degree, we notice that we exist, and that we react to the world around us. We are aware we have feelings, opinions, intentions, and desires, and we are aware of ourselves as a being in the world, reacting to things around us. When we are with someone, we conceptualize two people together, interacting. We are aware of ourselves. This is the first step to consciousness.

If a co-worker walks past me without saying a word, I may say to myself, "How rude!" This is first degree awareness - I am not aware of myself or my feelings - I am only aware of the co-worker and his rudeness, real or not. My experience is that he is rude. Second degree awareness causes me to say, "I'm insulted." I am now aware of myself in relationship to the co-worker, and my reactions to his actions. This is the first step to objectivity, and allows us to see our judgments as reactions of our feelings rather than reality.

Third Degree - the Actor We discover we are an actor in the drama occurring before our eyes. Not only do we have reactions to others, we interact with them. My feelings of insult may be because of expectations I have that may not be valid, or because of failure to be aware that my co-worker has a meeting and has no time to chat, or because I happen to feel grumpy already. My reactions are in part caused by my own actions, and not entirely by my environment. This is the beginning of responsibility.

In the drama before our eyes, the watcher and the feeler were in the audience, watching the play; the actor is actually on stage, creating part of the drama that is happening. We are now an active part of the story being created.

Fourth Degree - the Director We become aware that in this drama, we are not only acting our own part, but in our minds, we are creating the characters and situations we see around us. People become who we want them to become, and situations take shape the way we want them to take shape. If we want to see someone as cruel, we will notice every nuance that could be interpreted that way, and write off every bit of counter-evidence. The person afraid of abandonment keeps seeing abandonment in the actions of everyone he gets close to. The world conforms entirely to the drama we are caught in, and the other actors appear to take on the roles we want them to have. We recreate our story, using others to fulfill the necessary parts of the drama.

Fifth Degree - the Playwright Finally, we discover that we are the authors of the entire drama, from beginning to end. It doesn't just happen to us as victims of a tragic story - on some level, we have written the story, enlisted the players, given everyone their lines, delved deeply into the drama to recreate the feelings, and then watched from a distance as the story of our life goes by.

What next? Surprisingly, when we become aware, we do not feel despair, but rather a lightening of the load. It is the truth that sets us free. We no longer have to act out our drama. When we are fully aware of the reality, we stop acting, because reality is much more satisfying than the endless repetition of unconscious urges. Realizing that it was just a dream, we wake up, get up, stretch our limbs, and look out on a new day.