Beyond outer awareness into the realm of inner awareness

The practices of Love, Loss, and Forgiveness help us move beyond outer awareness into the realm of inner awareness. Outer awareness focuses on the superficial details of our lives—our physical appearance, our perceived achievements and failings, our financial assets, our children’s grades, our social standing. When we’re preoccupied with outer awareness, we look critically at ourselves and others and judge what we see. Outer awareness involves the mind—analyzing, comparing, evaluating, enumerating. Preoccupation with outer awareness can inhibit love both for ourselves and for others.

When we look into the mirror at ourselves, we usually do so to judge whether or not the image we present to the outer world is in place—whether we look good. Often, this looking is critical and fearful as we search for signs of aging in grey hairs, wrinkles, and other “flaws.”  Our reflected exterior is often so frightening that we may spend a great time and effort masking our aging and mortality, or we may avoid looking in the mirror at all.