How do we open our conscious awareness?

When we want to maintain conscious awareness, it takes moving into a state of being honest with how we're feeling.

Transcript | Maria Furlano, DMQ (China), MTOM, L.Ac. | Episode #072

0:01 Welcome to the Art of tuning in podcast with Maria Furlano, sharing insights, tools and conversations to inspire your energetic well being.

0:12

Hello, everyone, welcome. This is Maria Furlano. Thank you for joining me today in episode number 72. On the art of tuning in podcast, it's great to have you here today.

0:23

I want to share some insights about consciousness and remaining conscious and why it's so important right now, to think about what consciousness means for you for all of us. So I want to go into that a little bit today. And I want to thank you for being here. If you've been listening to my show for a little while, you might have noticed that I have not had a show in a few weeks, and I was traveling unexpectedly traveling and so I didn't get a chance to give you all a shout out. But it was nice, my husband and I got to go away. For a little while. It's been a really, really long time, as I'm sure it has been for many of you with COVID. And all that's been going on, we got a chance to have a little time and see the world again in a new way. And just kinda experience life again. It was really nice. So I'm back and I'm recharged and very happy to share. And if you're new to my podcast welcome. Thank you for joining me today. Please be sure to hit the subscribe, or follow button. So you don't miss an episode. I'm a physician of Chinese Medicine, a doctor of Medical Qigong and a spiritual intuitive. And I work with people to help them learn how to cultivate their energy, and to cultivate their intuitive gifts. I have a studio membership, which is a monthly membership where we work on those things cultivation, energetic growth, spirituality, intuition, health, well being mind and body. It's called The Art of tuning in studio. And I would love to have you join us if this is something you would like to put into your life.

2:10

But I also have another announcement to make before we get started today. And that is that I am teaching a live online five week workshop called Personal Peace.™ It starts on April 3, which is very soon from now it's going to be on Sunday mornings and you can get all the details on the art of tuning in calm. If you're not an email subscriber when you go to the art of tuning in.com Please subscribe because email subscribers get a special discount on all of my live workshops. And for this workshop, there's a special $50 discount that I'd love to be able to offer you. When you subscribe, you will receive that discount in the email and you'll be able to apply it to the workshop. Now if you are new to Qigong new to energetic practices, or maybe you're just a little bit timid or new to all of this know that my workshops that I teach a few times a year are designed to introduce people to mind body practices. They're designed to help you get in tune with your breath with your alignment with your energetic focus, the exercises are gentle, they're extremely nourishing. And the whole goal of this particular workshop called Personal Peace™ is to move us into a state of more personal peace, especially dealing with the stress that we've dealt with mental emotional stress, but also the physical health issues that have been around these past two years now and aligning our energy in a way so it gives us a stronger foundation. We'll be working together for 75 to 90 minutes for for live classes, you get a bonus of three months access to all of those classes so you can actually integrate it into your real life, which is what I'm all about. I want people to be able to use tools to align their energy to shift how they feel at will and when we practice these practices, it becomes absolutely able to do that so please visit the art of tuning in comm like I said we are starting on April 3 and sign up become a subscriber get your discount it will send you to the page to sign up these workshops tend to be intimate and I like to keep smaller numbered because we do work on Zoom and I like to have a personal contact with each person taking the class so I would love to meet you and support you and of course if you have any questions at all, just go to the art of tuning in.com and you can contact me there I'm very happy to answer them.

 Click > HERE to join my community and get free access to my 4 min. seated practice that calm the mind and resets your energy AND subscribers also get discounts on all workshops I offer! 

5:00

So let's jump into consciousness. Why is consciousness important? Why is remaining conscious important? That's really what I want to focus on today. Why is remaining conscious important? And the big question that I want to ask you? And then I'm asking myself every day is where do I lose my consciousness? So where do you lose your consciousness?

5:31

So let me explain a little bit about that. I was listening to a great workshop by Eckhart Tolley, and somebody had asked a question about money, and finances, and, and spirituality and how all that fits in. And he began, of course, to talk about the energy of money and giving and receiving, but he also spoke about consciousness. And one of the things that he said, is that people lose their state of consciousness. And I may be paraphrasing slightly here, so please excuse me, but people lose their state of consciousness a lot around financial issues around money. And it was a great question about where do we personally lose our consciousness around different topics, it might not be money for you, it might be something else.

6:25

And so first, what is consciousness? Well, if you were to look it up in Wikipedia, you're going to find a definition that says, aware of and responding to one's surroundings awake. But if we look at spiritual consciousness, or having a higher state of consciousness, what I believe that the definition of that is, is that we are personally awake to our reactions and our responses. And so when we talk about losing our own consciousness, or a state of consciousness, or losing that state where we are divinely aligned, as I like to say, where we are in alignment, so that we're able to access this broader knowing this higher self, and be able to make decisions in our life from that state of that higher self. That, to me is spiritually conscious, it's spiritually being aware, it's consciously being aware.

7:29

And when we lose that state, when we lose that state out of fear, or worry, or overwhelm, or we get thrown off, or we get angry, you know, emotions definitely push us out of that state. That's why practicing alignment is so important and why it is a daily practice. Because we have things coming at us all the time.

7:50

Our emotional responses, tell us how in alignment we are, and you can be in alignment in energetic alignment. And when I say that, what I mean is that we are in alignment with our true self, we are in alignment with a higher state of consciousness. And when we're in alignment with this higher state of consciousness, answers tend to come to us in a very calm, simple and clear way. We are more focused on the solutions than we are the problems. We are more focused on remaining calm and having a broader view, not only for ourself, but the broader view of what is really good for the whole for the collective, whether that's your family, whether it's your neighborhood, whether you're thinking even broader with your country or your world. There's a consciousness of alignment of knowing that everything is connected. And when we are able to remain in that state of consciousness of that conscious awareness, we take our time, we allow the information to unfold and we're not reacting and responding in very high emotionally tainted ways. 9:08 When we're out of conscious alignment. We usually don't feel that great, you know, when we're not in our spiritual awareness when we're not in our true center, or not in our heart, when we're not aligned with a higher state of knowing. We tend to feel disempowered, we can feel of course, all the emotions have a heightened response, you know, anger, sadness, doubt, fear. Fear is the biggest reason I think that we move out of consciousness.

9:42

So what happens when you feel the fear and yet you want to be conscious? What do we do? Well, fear, of course, is only one example. There's anger, there's sadness, there's grief, there's sorrow. It's really the emotions that we feel disempowered by We feel like we have lost some of our power. And we're seeing something in front of us from a very narrow viewpoint, instead of a fully conscious viewpoint. So what I have learned is, I must recognize what's happening first. Because until I recognize what's happening first, then I can't make different choices.

10:22

So let's say that I'm in fear? There's a topic that moves me into fear, which in turn, as we're saying, moves me out of a real conscious alignment, I must feel that fear, I must move through that fear I must recognize first, I am really feeling fearful right now. I feel disempowered right now. And I know that if I'm feeling fear, and I'm feeling that disempowerment, that I'm not in my true conscious self, I'm not in that state of awareness that has the broader knowing of all things, right, that real consciousness that does exist for everyone. And so I feel that feeling I don't try to push past it, because another thing that people will do is they will tend to numb out or they will do things to ignore how they feel thinking that maybe they can move through it faster, or go to the next topic, what tends to happen is we never lose that part of us. And we're kind of it's kind of like chasing us. So that fear is still there, you know, you can think of it like something kind of attached to the back of your coat, and it's just kind of blowing in the breeze. It's still there, it's still with you, and you're trying to kind of run ahead of it into something new, it will catch up with you.

11:45

So the best thing to do is to feel the emotions, always feel the emotions, but recognize, hey, I'm feeling a lot of fear right now. And I know that if I'm feeling a lot of this fear, there's a reason for that. And I'm sure there's a good reason for that. So I'm going to honor that fear. But I'm also going to know, for myself that I want to let go of that fear and heal that fear and transform that fear, into consciousness so that I can move into a conscious alignment, so I can make my choices that I need to make from this situation that I'm feeling fearful, from a conscious place, not an afraid place, not a place where I'm acting from disempowerment, or a place where I'm acting from a place that can't give me the results that are really best for me, because I'm not coming from the place that is really best for me, I'm coming from a very reactionary place out of the fear. So sometimes we see this in relationships when we're having a discussion with our loved one. And it can be a topic that can you know, change the name of the topic, the words can change, but it tends to be the same themes over and over again, that we are acting out or that we're arguing about, or that we're worried about, or that we're feeling sad about, or we're feeling victimized about. And when we are in the States, we are not in our consciousness, we are not in our conscious alignment. And in order to change any kind of state like that, like a consistent conversation that's in a relationship or a consistent pattern that continues, is to recognize that it is a pattern, it is to recognize that we may be saying different words, this may be a different topic, but we're reacting and responding in the exact same ways that we always do. And we're not really in alignment with our consciousness.

 Click > HERE to join my community and get free access to my 4 min. seated practice that calm the mind and resets your energy AND subscribers also get discounts on all workshops I offer! 

13:46

Because once you recognize patterns, that's how you start to become in alignment with your True consciousness, you start to recognize what is really serving you, and what is really not serving you and how are you responding and acting in certain situations?

14:05

So are you responding from a place of love and alignment and a broader view? And are you able to listen from a broader view and also to speak or take action from broader view? Or are you reacting from a smaller space within yourself a place that is a fear or a place that is contracted? Or a place that is scattered? You know, there's all kinds of ways.

14:29

One of the things that I do with myself, when I am feeling like I'm not in my center, let's say that, you know, I'm worried about something, I now can actually feel my self so begin to separate from my center. I can actually feel my energy move a little bit to the side, and it feels like I'm being pulled apart. I don't feel very good. Some people will move up and out of their body. Some people will contract and move in their body and they'll get very stuck and frozen. That has also happened to me, where you just kind of contract and you go deeper within. And what happens is, is you cut yourself off really from receiving a higher sense of guidance, where you actually begin to have solutions to what you're worried about. And you focus more deeply on the problem, which, of course, is not a state of higher consciousness, because higher consciousness is always in alignment with a solution or a flow, to solving what it is we need.

15:38

So I bring this up, because if we can recognize our own personal patterns, that is, you know, 99%, of being able to shift a pattern, everybody responds differently. And you can be responding differently on different topics as well. But you should feel yourself actually begin to in some way to disconnect from yourself or to get really stuck, or again, like to leave numb out, distract yourself, and not be very present.

16:11

So again, consciousness means being awake. Awake is being very present, and awake to our reactions and responses awake to how we are moving through life through our words.

16:26

Are we consciously aware when we are responding to something on social media? Do we take a moment? Do we tune into the greater consciousness of what is in front of us? Or are we just reacting and responding from emotions?

16:42

I think this is so important right now that we really stay very attuned to how we're feeling, and how we are reacting and responding in ourselves. Because how we react and respond in ourselves and the actions that we're taking with our thoughts first, radiate out into the rest of the planet radiates out into the world, then, of course, the physical actions that we may take, as far as actually doing something, is another step of that.

17:16

But our first thoughts and our first emotions and how we're viewing the world, how we're viewing a situation, how we're viewing each other, is a ripple effect of energy that's coming out from us. And if we're out of alignment from our own divine consciousness, then that energy is just all over the place. And if we could all begin to align our emotional consciousness to a broader view to a higher frequency, than we would have a much more streamed lined emotional vibration that is coming out from us that will truly support each other, that will truly support everything that's going on in the world, not only support ourselves, because we will be in our true empowerment, we will be in our true alignment, which means that we will be guided in a very different way in our life.

18:11

And so anything that we're dealing with, that we're afraid of, or things that are coming up for us, will also have a very different support a very different container of support for ourselves.

18:24

But then, of course, when we have that container of support for ourselves, we're able to support our family differently, our friends, were able to support our work differently. And we're able to support the container, the vibrational container of the Planet of the world, of the earth, of its people of the animals of nature. It truly works that way. But it only works if we constantly catch ourselves. If we constantly learn to tune in to ourselves and to how we're feeling and what's happening, not to be ashamed of what's happening. A lot of times, I think when we're dealing with something that is totally uncomfortable for us, we try to run away from it, because it's totally uncomfortable, and we don't want to deal with it. But there's no shame in how we feel. If if you're having a difficult time with something, if something is constantly an issue for you. There is no shame with getting help for that, or speaking to someone about it and seeing a different point of view. We repeat patterns over and over and over again, because we don't reach out and ask for help and get a new viewpoint. Sometimes just one new viewpoint can shift everything about how you're thinking about something. But we get stuck. You know, it's like we have these blinders on. And we often can't reach past that to a new alignment. And so we never get back into our consciousness.

20:03

Please remember that when we're out of conscious alignment, we are cutting off a part of ourselves that has access to information that is truly there to support us. Now I'm talking about spiritual guidance, but I'm also talking about how we meet other people and gain the support and answers that we need.

20:21

As always, I thank you so much for being here. I hope that this topic supports you this week. And I wish for us for our world for each person on this planet to really move into the highest elevated state of conscious awareness. I know it will support us. Thank you for being here. And if it calls to you, I look forward to meeting you in the live workshop personal peace beginning April 3, just go to the art of tuning in calm, and I can't wait to meet you and to support you on this journey. Thanks for being here and I will see you in the next episode.

20:57 Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to learn more and elevate your energetic well being I invite you to visit the art of tuning in.com where you can learn all about our online studio. I look forward to meeting you there.