Self-awareness is an Illusion

It’s time we resign ourselves to the fact that we are all nearly complete in our total lack of self-awareness.

I’ve become more and more convinced that the ones who claim the most self-awareness are the least aware of them all.

These are the ones who claim that other people are the problem and that they themselves couldn’t be because they are so self-aware.

Yet often, their awareness is a regurgitation of others’ self-proclaimed awareness.

I am not unique in this. My own failed attempts at self-awareness have yielded menial results of hubris and frustration with my own “smartness”.

I no longer believe that awareness comes from self. I believe awareness come from humility and humility comes from failure. Our mistakes make us humble and as a result we look outside of ourselves. We look to our mentors and our closest companions and we look out at the universe, to our own version of a God. We realize our weaknesses and only then if the conditions are right do we endeavor to make change.

That change is the awareness that allows us to catch ourselves in our weakness, until we’ve practiced enough to be strong in that thing.

If self-awareness is not an illusion it must exist as a continuum that is born not from self, but from experience. The mean operating at the low end of the spectrum, myself in this grouping. The most aware among us being fully aware that they are not yet enlightened — paradoxically living in a state of actual enlightenment and complete obscurity.