Daryl Wood's Blog

Awareness is my strength. And my weakness. It is my strength because it reminds me, alerts me to how I am living this life, to what I am choosing and priortizing. My awareness shows me the difference between what I am doing and what I want to do and what I think I should be doing and the gradation between my reality and my hopeful visions. I have created these ideas in my mind of how I want to live or sometimes how I think I should live and my awareness reveals the truth, the reality and not the fantasy.

Awareness is my weakness because I can’t blind myself to pain and suffering. Without this awareness I would live in whatever way I impulsively choose without reflections or discernment. Without that spark I would not question behaviours, thoughts, actions, feelings. I would move through my days and endless nights feeling sometimes oblivious to the root of my anxiety or joy and sometimes in denial of my own contribution to these states or sometimes feeling victimized by choices I have made or situations I feel have been thrust upon me.

Lack of awareness could keep me numb or judgemental of myself and others, keep me paralyzed into inaction, despair or stubborn resistance. But I have awareness. I am awake. Even when I try to hide I am eventually brought back to knowing. And with knowing I see my role in doing or not doing, showing up or hiding out, speaking up or staying silent, collapsing in great sadness of rising slowly, sometimes even strongly to attain a level of peace.

I try sometimes to counter the inner truth, to challenge it, to find fault with what is true and real in front of me only to at last surrender and see my role in creating the things I least want in my life. Awareness is my weakness because sometimes I don’t want to notice. I tell myself and occasionally others that I want a peaceful heart, body, mind and spirit. And I do some of the things that generate that for me and my wellbeing and then I don’t. I see it. I see how I contribute to what I don’t want and I say as kindly as possible that “I am human and imperfect and doing the best I can especially under the extreme circumstances that I find myself in.” And I say this with an almost timid voice because a part of me is seeing this as an excuse. There is both truth and justification in this and I know my inner voices – the loving one and the cruel one – will both argue out the real intention.

But I am awake. I am aware. I see with the loving eyes of a mother that I know the truth and will once again forgive myself for looking away and falling into a pattern of wishing and hoping for a miracle to transform me so I don’t have to do the work, the heavy lifting of planning and taking action which I know with certainty from experience will give me what I need and ultimately want.

And some days, too many days lately than I would like, it all feels like very heavy lifting. Awareness, the knowing that my mind believes that gets in the way of any movement. And yet, maybe this writing about it frees some space that has been trying to hold all that behind a closed door. Once a crack opens, maybe things will change. Maybe I will change. Maybe.