Awareness is true power. Use it properly and it will give you everything you need to succeed in life. Why is awareness so powerful? Because your mind has surrounded you like a maze. You have got lost inside and will stay lost for the rest of your life. Your mind has a fantastic power over you, and you are helpless in the face of its might. In fact, you never had any power over your mind at all, simply because you have no clue about what has been happening inside all these years.

When the mind tells you to feel angry you will feel angry, your blood pressure will rise and you will yell like a madman. When the mind tells you to feel greedy, you will salivate and pant for desires you don’t actually need. When the mind tells you that your pride is hurt, you will go into a tizzy and do the most stupid things a human is capable of, then regret it for years. Even while regretting it you remain a victim of your “moods”. I hear this so many times a day, “I am not in the mood”.

What is this? Your “moods” are all emotional implants, hormonal stents shoved inside your cranium as and when the mind feels like it. If you have even an iota of independence, you should be able to pluck out a “bad mood” like a loose thread from a garment and throw it away.

Can you do it? No way. The mind is your master and you are always a mere slave. You are a prisoner of the mind, and since you have been like this from your birth, you don’t even know that you can escape. Awareness is the only key you will ever get to this prison. Awareness will make you open the prison door and walk free.

The mind is a great and fantastic tool, and a great help to cope with the outside world. But you have to own the mind, it should not own you.

So, if you are not the mind, who are you then? Last week, I showed you how there is always a part of you that remains undisturbed and untouched by everything that happens in your mind. Let’s call that the owner. That is the real you. It’s the real master of your being — a passive, gentlemanly owner — who has outsourced everything to the mind and is watching the havoc.

The owner doesn’t know he can call the shots. He crouches into a corner and watches the drama of life unfolding like a mute spectator. The day you walk free, is the day the owner takes charge. It is all a matter of shifting the “you” point from the mind to the owner. Once you learn to see, learn to identify with owner as yourself, the mind comes under your control.

It all starts with awareness. Awareness gives you a map of that maze, shows you your own thoughts and failings, shows you the traps you set for yourself, shows you how one part of your mind tries to win while the other part conspires to lose.

Awareness reveals your secret frustrations, your hidden angers, your locked up emotions, your repressions. Keep at it and it will slowly reveal to you to the one who is watching from the corner- the real You. We started this as advice to a kid who shot off his mouth to a chick on a date and got rejected by her. Oddly enough, I am still on the same subject. See you next week.