Knowledge and Awareness

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Knowledge and Awareness

(Estimated reading time: 1 min, 54 sec)

Q: Can knowledge and awareness help me manage my emotions?

Primitive man, ignoring the cause of thunder and lightning, feared them and made them gods.

We fear what we ignore and what we have not experienced.

Goya - The sleep of reason generates monsters - (No. 43), from Los Caprichos - Google Art Project Knowledge and Awareness)
Goya — The sleep of reason generates monsters — (No. 43), from Los Caprichos – Google Art Project

Knowledge

Knowledge has allowed man to become civilized and to live longer and in better conditions, but only as far as physical and material life is concerned.

I ask: “Can knowledge of material things improve inner well-being? Can knowledge of material things relieve the tensions that affect the chemical/physical processes of my body?”

The knowledge of material things allows the prevention of some disasters and the correction of body malfunctions.

"Depression". Acrylic painting by Aurora Mazzoldi
Aurora Mazzoldi – Depression – Acrylic painting on canvas panel.  ( w:it:Aurora Mazzoldi, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) to download from Wikimedia Commons click on the photo

But can scientific understanding of what constitutes anxiety, or existential crisis, or dissatisfaction, help me get over them?

Here we have changed levels and moved from matter — and its low vibrational energy — to the mobile energy of emotions.

At this level, knowledge can help me keep my emotions in check, but it cannot to solve my emotional problems.

To do that, I have to become aware of them and understand them. How can I do that? I can do “introspective research.”

Knowledge and self-awareness

But how do I know myself?

I know that I have emotions because I feel them in me every moment. I live with them. They make my heart beat faster and make my organs react and contract.

Therefore, I know that they affect my body and the environment in which I live.

But if I am aware of my emotions, then I know that I am not my emotions, but that they control and condition me.

What can trigger them? Why am I seeking a particular emotion? I know that I provoke the situations I get into. I know how I manage my relationships with others to live with a certain energy.

Self-awareness reveals the part of the iceberg that is underwater, but which supports and moves the other part on the surface.

Awareness is a subtle shift.

It never ends. It gets thinner, wider, and deeper.

On its own, self-awareness might be enough to change our lives, but it’s not that simple.

Why is that?

Intent to Understand

Because it is subordinate to our intention to understand things, to evaluate and revise our schemes.

We speak of intention and not of will. Will is actually in the hands of our ego. It is not enough even to have even a momentary desire: “Come on, I’ll try… then I’ll see!”

Self-knowledge stops when we stop paying attention to it, when we stay in comfortable situations.

Occasionally, we even accept uncomfortable positions, just to avoid suffering or giving up something.

To gain self-knowledge, you need continuous choices and small changes. This is the only way to move forward.

We have found that knowledge alone is not enough. To manage emotions, we need both knowledge and awareness.

Aurora Mazzoldi

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