What is spiritual awareness?

Spiritual awareness is the deep recognition of your own inner consciousness: the silent witness that sits behind thought and form.

It is the ability to watch the ego, the mind and the five senses at work without becoming their slave. From that watchfulness, our actions stop serving personal gain alone and begin to serve the greater good of all.

The lotus and the ladder

The picture I use for this is a lotus. It begins in mud, which is ignorance. It grows up through water, which is aspiration and daily practice, the sadhanas. It opens in air and sunlight, which is illumination, the awakening.

Alongside the lotus runs a ladder of consciousness. At the bottom is survival mode, self-centred and afraid. Above that come sense pleasures, then personal wishes for wealth, respect and control. Higher up, a person begins to love and accept others regardless of their faults, then understands that good and bad are both part of one whole. Near the top is the state of witnessing the world as a play, acting from the inner conscious. At the very top is union with universal consciousness, which the traditions call Brahman, Sachkhand or Sahasrara.

As awareness rises up this ladder, the sense of "I", the ego, evolves with it. That is the whole journey.