The following is the fourth installment in a weekly series of reflections from one of our learners in the Beyond Mindfulness program. Each week, Noopur will recap her personal experience to give insight into her journey towards a more aware and intentional life. If you’re ready to start your journey in mindfulness, please get in touch. We’re here to help.
Hello, my lovely people!
How is your week going?
I am back again with another week of my learnings and reflection.
Let me begin by saying, this week’s session was powerful!
The learnings and the experiential aspect were just so impactful! I hope everyone can experience it sometime if not soon.
This week we covered two concepts that are polar opposite—Collective Consciousness and Autonomy.
The Wholesome Collective Consciousness:
Collective consciousness is what connects us to each other beyond what we believe our identity is. It’s this shared sense of belonging that goes deeper than just the understanding of our existence. The understanding that everything is one, just in different ways and forms.
One example that I can think of when it comes to ‘Collective Consciousness’ is the recent pandemic we were hit by. We were all cooped up in our individual spaces and yet there was a deeper sense of understanding each other’s suffering and what we were going through collectively. We understood the fear, the sadness, the feeling of being alone even though each of our experiences were so personal.
The Lonesome Autonomy:
Autonomy on the other hand reminds me of ‘I am in control’. It was an interesting experience to be reminded how easily we give up our autonomy. We choose to let go of control every time we blame someone for letting us feel a certain way. When we let a situation dictate the way we choose to behave.
The Much-needed Autonomy from Ourselves:
This has been my learning this week. To elaborate on this: it is about who or what we are choosing to give power to. We don’t just give our power to people, sometimes we give our power to our emotions, our thoughts, our feelings, and the stories we tell ourselves.
When I reflect on my past I realise how easily I gave up my autonomy. I let narratives like “I am not worthy” take control of not only me but my actions at that moment.
This week I have tried to be aware of all the things that I am giving my power to. Is it food to suppress an emotion? Or my phone to distract me from an uncomfortable thought. Am I ruminating on things that are in the past just to feel a certain way? What purpose are these things serving me now? This has really helped shift my focus to be more observant of not just my actions but also the why behind those actions. The stories that I am telling myself and how it is showing up.
In the reading material that Tracy sent us this week, there was a part that talked about how freedom means to not attach oneself to our form, our feelings, conditioning, perception, and consciousness. When I first read this I was like “that’s great, this means nothing really matters!” But then the afterthought I had was “If nothing really matters, then what really does? Do things need to matter at all to do something?”.
I believe that when we care for things and they matter to us it is easier to take action. Maybe, I can hold this thought and not get attached to it. My smaller actions need to be in alignment with the bigger intention which is everything is one. Everything I do is allowed to have love and care and compassion in it. Everything is one at the end of the day 
In one of the experiential exercises that Tracy made us do, she taught us:
It is not about the focus on the one thing but the ability to have a peripheral vision while being able to focus on a singular thing. We all can focus on things in a way that there is room to gently absorb what is around it too.
This ended up answering my question about awareness from last week. Awareness is the ability to have a peripheral vision of things.
I love how every session teaches me something new that either challenges me or answers things that I had been wondering about. I can’t wait to see what new things I will learn about life and myself in the upcoming session.
Signing off for now!
See you next week
