Our Pathway Home - The First Tool

The first tool is a tool of the mind, or spirit.

We all have the ability to focus our awareness (our consciousness, our attention) in different places.

We can place our awareness:

In our environment. Our awareness is outside of the body, in the world.
With the body. Our awareness is inside or on the surface of the body, and we are aware of the body's needs, pains and pleasures.
In our thoughts. We become aware of what we are thinking and what our self talk is about (worry, self doubt, etc.).
In our unconscious. Where our feelings reside and we can be aware of past feelings, how we feel at this moment and what we hope for in the future.
In our creative place. Our imagination; where we daydream, fantasize, visualize, problem solve and create.
Through the mind to outside the body --where an important part of you resides that is not trapped in the maze.

Practice point of awareness whenever you can. Take your point of consciousness all over the place. Try to locate that part of you that is outside your body, think of it as about 6" over your head.

Who is the "you" that changes where your point of awareness is, at any given moment?

We all think we are in charge of where our attention and awareness is focused. But that is seldom true. Many of us are NEVER in charge of our point of consciousness. Most of us are in charge of our point of consciousness only rarely. And none of us are in charge of our point of consciousness all the time. For if we were, we would be out of the maze and on our way home.

The question is how to begin to be in charge of where we are focusing our attention - especially since we operate from such a trance (or hypnotic) state most of the time. We were designed to be in total charge of each moment we live and what we are focusing on. It should not necessarily be a random process. Unfortunately, we no longer have dominion over ourselves and others have been allowed to determine where our awareness is focused. In this state we are told what to think, taught to suppress our feelings and even told how we should feel.

To survive, we must stop this domination and oppression and take back our personal dominion. We must remember who we are. We must be aware of how we really feel. We must practice "point of awareness" until we are in charge of ourselves. And most of all we must access our memories.

Unfortunately, stored along with our memories are feelings associated with those memories - what we felt at the time of the experience. We must learn how to deal with these feelings before we can go forward. And that brings us to Tool No. 2.