As most of us live our lives on automatic piliot we delude ourselves that we are in touch with reality.

We get up in the morning and travel to work and after completing a full days work we return home by the same route. We do this without registering where we are and what is happening. Sound familiar?

When was the last time you took a break from the frenetic pace you set for yourself and really appreciated the heat of the sun and warmth of it on your skin on a beautiful summer’s day, the splash of rain at your feet, the smell of newly blooming flowers, the sound of the birds in the trees as they announce the beginning of another day? Even more disturbing is that we can often miss the faces of our loved ones as we spend our time being pre-occupied with thoughts of the day to come or the day that has been.

How much of our lives are we really missing as we fall into the trance of delusion?

We seemingly live in a society  underpinned by the dis-ease of chronic inattention fuelled by the frenetic pace of everyday life in a techincally advanced age where speed seems to be the God of choice! We are constantly being pushed to learn and work longer and harder for the sake of making bigger profits and more money (another God of choice).

Our fragmented attention becomes shallower and shallower as we try to do more and more to merely meet the expectations of a society which enslaves us through the promise of our continued physical survival, distraction through short-lived thrills/treats and finally that promised independence that we believe will be ours when we finally get our hands on that elusive pot of gold that somehow just continues to elude us.

Our constant over stimulation causes us to become quickly bored and restless and susceptible to addictions.

Society’s self-created mandate seems to be to promote all these things to take the edge off our numbing dissatisfaction and to keep us pre-occuppied with our delusions. These delusions occur at all levels from the seemingly prosperous and successful people right though to the down and outers – delusions are not discriminatory! The deluded mind is always seeking pleasure and escape from pain both at the same time. The mind never seeks a neutral experience because we have been conditioned to seek higher and higher levels of stimulation.

There is however, good news at the end of all this. We can awaken ourselves from our deluded trances through the practice of what Buddhists term “mindfulness”. The first step in this practice is to notice when you go into automatic pilot mode and to identify those areas of your life where you are most unconscious. As you do this you will start to awaken from your slumber.

Remember it is not a competition and there will be constant failures when you will simply spend periods of time asleep while you’re awake. As you continue your practice of “mindfulness” you will experience yourself spending longer and longer in periods of wakefulness. As this happens there will be a corresponding reduction in your need to feed your addictive habits.

Welcome to a freer life full of appreciation and happiness.