#4 – The Importance of Self-awareness

This podcast episode is taken from Big Shakti’s Light on the Chakras and Kundalinī training masterclass series. This masterclass is taught once every two years and is conducted over nine months. It consists of 20 lessons, and you receive one lesson every two weeks, and after two lessons, there is a live class where you get some extra theory, practice a meditation on the chakras and kundalinī, the serpent power coiled in the base chakra, and have an opportunity to ask questions and review your progress.

In this podcast, which comes out of Lesson 3, we are going to discuss the concept of self-awareness. This is the central concept in all of yoga, yoga tantra, and meditative practice. The core aim of all wisdom traditions is self-knowledge. Know thyself, and unto yourself be true, is the ancient dictum that has been passed down through the ages.

As you direct your attention inwards, the ultimate goal of this process is to touch the core of your being, your true and authentic self.

The journey to the self is via the mind and the deep psyche, the unconscious, called the shadow. The authentic self that you are aiming to be aware of is the eternally unchanging principle. It is the ground of being. All life, which includes your body and mind, are eternally changing energy patterns. Birth, life, and death are all under the control of energies that power the world, both the visible and invisible. The best place to be to manage these energies is in the self. We call this the witness position. When you are in the witness, you are in the witness protection program. In this place, you are protected from the dark forces of the mind and psyche, from past undigested emotions and traumas.

When you are identified with the duality of the mind and emotions, you are identified with the eternally changing energies, which can be positive or negative, creative or destructive, pleasant or unpleasant. When you are identified with the self, you are connected to your center, a stable, unchanging, blissful part of you from which you can observe the changes occurring in your mental and emotional energy patterns, for example, and you can do something about them if you need to.

The self is the center. If you are centered in the self, then any perturbations in life can be managed because if you can hold onto your center during the tough times, you are grounded, centered, stable, and not overwhelmed. However, if you are not centered, then any change in the outer world will destabilize you because you don’t have a fixed center. You need the outer world to remain the same to feel safe. Any change is scary if you are not self-aware and you don’t have a center.

The self is the source of all knowledge and who you are. So, the aim of meditation is to know more and more about who you are and expand your sense of self. In meditation, you actively engage in self-reflection, and the result of this is self-discovery. You discover parts of yourself, both your strengths and your weaknesses. As a result, you can begin to do what is required to manage your weaknesses by accessing your hidden strengths.

All of Big Shakti’s meditations and courses teach you how to cultivate and amplify self-awareness.

Get our FREE Introduction to Yoga Tantra