by Russell Gurney

Created on: February 09, 2009

"Living consciously" can mean many things. It can mean that one is very conscious of their appearance, or their impact on their surroundings, or it can mean that one is making a strong effort to experience life as fully as possible. Whatever it means to you, there is one central concept that is keeping us from living this way. And that is our attempt to survive. As human beings, we naturally strive to sustain ourselves and to survive. That's the way we are, and how we've been since we found ourselves naked on this planet Earth, feeling cold and hungry. Sometime in the early twentieth century, we found the perfect balance of survival and life. We could live comfortably, sustain ourselves efficiently, and we had leisure time to spend. But since then, the project of survival has increasingly become the center of our entire lives. It has become so important to us that many have forgotten how to live, being so used to surviving all the time.

This obsession with survival is what has led us to live our (sometimes)-entire lives unconsciously. We are simply processed until we die, through schools, universities, the work force, retirement homes, and graveyards. We work to eat, eat to survive, and survive to work. It seems as through we might as well be fast asleep the entire time.

The scary thing is, us living unconsciously is good for business. If we were simply mindless wandering frames, then businesses would have the perfect opportunity to condition us and make a massive profit. This is what is happening today. The dumber we are, the better business becomes. So not only do we have the survival project boring us, huge corporations would like us to be as dumb as stumps. And corporations have a huge impact on just about everything.

So how can one beat this daze, this survival-themed funk? There are a few ways.

Knowing yourself will help a lot. When you are really aware of who you are, you can live your life accordingly and you pretty much can't go wrong. Learn from any mistakes and just enjoy the process. Simply being yourself throughout daily life will bring you much happiness, and will shock you out of that sleepy state of the survival way of life.

You can pick up meditation. Particularly mindfulness meditation, wherein you take time to get to know yourself, your relationships, your situation, and everything else about life. You can do this just like any other form of meditation. Simply sit there and concentrate on your breathing, and when you're ready, start to wade through your thoughts. By doing so you will become more tuned in to life.

Second, you can live in the moment as much as possible. Of course it's not sensible to live each moment to it's absolute potential. The world would fall into chaos within days. But by trying to experience everything more fully we will feel like we are really living our life instead of simply spending it unconsciously attempting to survive.

In conclusion, it's easy to fall into a state where we spend most of our time walking around asleep. But there is hope, that is for sure. Even in the process of trying to live consciously, you will be reaching your goal. So go ahead and try.

Learn more about this author, Russell Gurney.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.