What is awareness and why is it useful?

Awareness is the experience of embracing a moment fully, with every sense available to you. When you fully commit your awareness to an experience, this means that later on, you can recall that experience through visualization with, eventually, 100% accuracy. When your visualization skill reaches that point, your ability to connect with spiritual energies will improve exponentially.

This exercise will take you through the basics, and then show you how to apply them in basic visualizations, and also in connecting with your companions and spells.



The first thing you need to do is choose an activity which involves all your available senses. (Please note that if you are lacking a sense or have one that is impaired, you may need to edit this exercise to suit your circumstances. Do not let the lack or impairment of a sense limit your experience of awareness.)

For me, I chose the shower. You can choose washing dishes, going for a run, painting a picture, or pretty much any activity which you find to be enjoyable and fully involving. The reason I chose a shower is that I'm autistic, and I find the white noise of water falling to be very soothing, so it's easier for me to focus on all my senses without getting overwhelmed and shutting down. If you have an issue with sensory-overload, choose an activity or experience which does not trigger that experience, because we don't want you to end up with a block - the idea of this exercise is to REMOVE blocks and improve psychic experiences.

So the first thing you need to do is just relax into the experience. Relax so that you aren't thinking, you're just being - which is why choosing the activity is pretty important. I suggested going for a run because people have a tendency to fall into their bodies, into the moment, when going for a long jog if they're runners. So you want to look for something similar if you're not a runner. Take the time to really think about the activities you do on a regular basis that create such moments for you.

Once you have started your experience and relaxed into the... now-ness of it... then you want to start focusing on your six senses. In another exercise, I described a baseball game, so you could figure out what your primary sense is. Because this is a physical, rather than mental, exercise, in this exercise you actually want to just open your mind up and see which sense you notice first.

For me in the shower, the first thing I notice is the feel of the water - how the heat immediately makes the permanently tight muscles and tendons in my scalp and neck let go. The first pounding rush of hot water on my head is followed by the electric chill of tension release and the sensation of suddenly being able to take a deep breath. It's so pure, so bright, so sharp, that it's actually an emotional release as well for me.

The second thing that I notice is the sound - that white noise all around me which is so soothing. Other sounds eventually invade - the sound the soap makes on my scrubby gloves, the sound of the shampoo bottle opening (and the scent of my shampoo and soap) and the feel of the liquid shampoo in my palm, the feel of the gloves on my hands, the feel of the soaped up gloves rough on my skin. The sound of my nails on my scalp as I scratch shampoo into my hair and massage my skull.

The feel of the warm water as it slides over me. The slightly slimy feel of the suds as they're washed off my skin by the pounding water. The squeak that my face makes on my fingertips after I've washed my face.

I do my best to mentally record every sound, every touch, every sight, every smell... even the taste of the water in my mouth, or the accidental taste of the soap or shampoo. I live in that moment, experiencing it fully, completely aware of the whole of it.

Then I move into the psychic aspects of what I'm doing. Water is cleansing. I can feel it washing through my aura, even through my chakras. I can feel it grounding me, feel it flooding me and pushing anything that I don't need in my psychic spaces down, and out my feet, and down the drain. I can feel my connection with the water above me, and the earth below me - I feel completely rooted, refreshed, clean inside and out - empty and pure.



Once you have finished your chosen activity, collecting all the sensory input you can, write down your experience if you would like.

Wait until the experience fades in your memory a little bit... and then, in a meditative state, relive it, as clearly as you can. Remember to involve all six senses. Relive it so well that it's like you're actually running, or actually showering, or actually painting, or whatever your choice of experience was.



Practice both the physical experience and the meditative experience, as often as you need to until you have perfect recall.



Now, let's take it a step further. Choose a spelled item, or choose a companion spirit/entity from your household. You can even choose a mentor or m/patron deity if you would like. Enter into your meditative state, and if you've chosen an entity, spirit, or deity, invite their presence. If you've chosen a spell, simply open your awareness to the spell. Once you feel you have connected with your chosen subject, begin exploring it/them with your full awareness - use every available sense.

What do you feel, physically? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you taste? What do you feel emotionally? What do you sense, psychically? How does the energy affect your aura, your chakras, your energy?



As a bedtime ritual, each night, I choose one of my six senses, and I connect to my household companions and my deities, one at a time. Eventually, I will work up to involving more of my senses, but as a bedtime ritual, sometimes using every sense takes too long, because I'm really out of practice. I used to do this every night, did it for years, but after I got sick, I stopped. Seven years is a long time to go without doing something, so my mental muscles for this are flabby and it's taking time.

I find that this is really deepening my bond with my companions. I'm also working on applying this to my physical relationships and emotional experiences.



Feel free to share your experiences with this exercise and how it's working for you.

Great exercise, I'll be trying it soon! Thanks for this.

I loved your account, a shower was the first thing I thought to do when you mentioned an activity involving all the senses-a run sounds great as well.

Bump