Conscious Living : The Difficulty In Living Consciously
Living consciously in today’s society is hard. If people do not like their life, it is easy to forget about their problems with entertainment, drugs or alcohol.
Drugs and alcohol have been around for a long time, and although there have always been drug addicts and alcoholics, there were fairly few in comparison to today.
But what there wasn’t such an abundance of, which there is today, is entertainment. Today if I wanted to I could spend the whole day browsing the Internet, watching films, playing video games and getting drunk.
It would be very easy to forget about my problems and escape into some fantasy reality, while my mind remains unconscious in my original reality.
This ease of escapism, and the feelings of inadequacy or discomfort that drive it, are the two main reasons why some people can find living consciously so hard.
After all, who wants to experience pain or discomfort when they can easily take their mind off things by watching TV, or doing something else that distracts them from the problem they face?
The simple truth is that people are motivated towards pleasure, and away from pain. And for this very reason many people choose not to live consciously, preferring to hide or disown their problems hoping that eventually they will go away.
Becoming Conscious Of Consciousness
One of the main purposes of these articles on living consciously was to make you conscious of consciousness, and the potential consequences of avoiding it.
This is important because with knowledge comes awareness, and with awareness comes action. It is only through action will you be able to exert a meaningful change into your life, and this action can only come through consciousness.
Becoming conscious of consciousness is therefore a self reinforcing cycle, whereby the more conscious you become the more appropriate action you can take that will positively impact your life.
However the reverse is also true. The less conscious you become, the more inappropriate action you take that negatively impacts your life.
For example, if you know there is a hole in the ground you can walk around it. But if you didn’t know the hole was there, you would most likely fall into it.
Life is a lot like this. There are holes everywhere, just waiting for you to fall into them.
Often when people fall into these holes they never get out, and most of the time they don’t even realise they fell in! So they just walk round and round never going anywhere.
But when you have the knowledge that comes though living a conscious life you can avoid these holes, and if you do fall in you can get out again.
This is what living consciously is all about, recognising, accepting and taking appropriate action for the reality you are in. Only this way will you achieve your true potential in life.
The Principles Of Conscious Living
Here is a summary of the key points discussed in the articles on living consciously.
- Pain or discomfort motivates people to escape their main reality.
- Drugs, alcohol and entertainment are all means of escapism.
- The amount of time you can spend in an alternate reality is limited.
- You must always return back to your original main reality.
- Your main reality supports and sustains alternate realities.
- When in an alternate reality, you become unconscious in your main original reality.
- Time spent in alternate realities will positively or negatively affect your main reality.
WTF is this n00b? You said there ARE reports of death whilst playing video games… how about some reliable exivdence to back that up instead of mindless hearsay you twit. Seriously writing crap like this until you actually learn to back up your shoddy self-gratifying claims with some facts. What’s next you going to try and tell me that ketchup licked off of cats is the essence of life? Give me the damn proof to your allegations damnit!
I understand your need for evidence. Please let me assure you that all information on this site is researched and can be backed up with evidence if needed.
Here are some examples of people who have died playing video games
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2120472/second-gamer-dies-massive-binge
http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/vnunet/news/2198850/chinese-man-dies-three-days
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSPEK26772020070228
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4137782.stm
http://www.joystiq.com/2005/06/23/boy-dies-after-12-hour-gaming-session/
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/08/09/video-games050809.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-02/28/content_815396.htm
Also please note that i am not suggesting you will die from casual gaming.
good job martin. I really enjoyed your article and found it extremely useful for my research and personal understanding. it’s good that you shut that other loser up .. your article is great ..
This was an inspiring article and it should especially be beneficial to NOOB so he can face his reality of being a rude ignorant asshole instead of escapin it
A well written article i must say. Yet i find the example of dying because of being in another “reality” a bit harsh.
If those gamers would have taken care of themselves, meaning proper rest, meals etc they might not have died.
That said i think what you have written is motivating and i will definitely keep it in mind. The following questions comes to mind: Do you live your live conciously? And in what way do you try to refrain from escapism?
/Drm
Hi Drm,
I live consciously by trying to see things for how they really are, rather than how i would like or hope them to be.
There are some techniques i use which you can read more about here:
http://www.eruptingmind.com/conscious-brain-control/
How do i refrain from escapism? Well i dont think you can truly avoid escapism, as everytime you shift your conscious awareness from one thing to another, you are technically escaping your main reality.
Living consciously means knowing what your main reality is, and then escaping into other realities which support and sustain it.
But if you are referring to escapism in terms of entertainment, then that really comes down to strongly desired goals, a clearly defined purpose in life and self discipline. All of which you can find information about on this site.
However this is not to say that i never watch a movie for example, because as i discussed in the article, it is sometimes nice to take a break from “reality”. Problems will only occur if these realities are preferred to your main reality, and do not support it in any way.
So living consciously is simply accepting reality for what it really is, and not trying to delude yourself by ignoring the facts of a situation.
If you know what you want in life, have a reasonable amount of self discipline and are willing to work hard then you will be well on your way to living life consciously.
THANK YOu! your words are inspiration!
This is a great article and a great website. It is too bad that many of the people who need to hear these words the most are the same people who would never think to come here and read them. Thank you
I think you have really hit the nail on the head with this article. I think that it is a truly great thing to write something that actively gets people improving their lives and reading this has certainly helped me reflect my own. I could also see that you practice what you preach when n00b reacted to your article very harshly and you did not respond in kind. Thanks for the inspiration!
i really enjoyed your words. thanks for taking a common sense approach. sometimes the spiritual stuff says the same thing but the words they choose turn me off. much love to you all in your journey towards living consciously.