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This was written for the 177th issue of The Culture of Awareness Weekly Newsletter.

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To begin for this week – What does it mean to live consciously? We hear a lot about it in the spiritual community, and like other things, it can make you wonder what conscious living really is and how it can be done.

In my eyes, to live consciously is to be cognizant of our thoughts, feelings, words and actions in every moment.

When we become aware of how we’re thinking and acting and if those thoughts/actions are in alignment with our path, we can make choices that reflect the level of awareness we want. It’s simple, but the mind can complicate things until we’re no longer aware of what’s right and wrong.

Some people live in an environment that gives them a distorted view of right and wrong from day one, and while they tend to be lost later in life, they have the potential to become aware and make a change if they can realize their environment was distorted from day one.

Love helps us become aware of our thoughts and actions so we can make the necessary changes, but it isn’t required for self-awareness or conscious living.

Our evolution will inevitably make us aware of love, but not everyone needs it at first. I didn’t know anything about love when I first started this spiritual journey, and it took me a while to realize that it’s more than a romantic notion and it holds high spiritual significance.

Along with self-awareness, conscious living usually entails some form of social or spiritual awareness. I started my journey by learning about ascension and the third eye, whereas others start theirs by learning about government and corporate corruption.

In any case, some form of awareness is discovered and embraced, and this usually happens before we become self-aware and try to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

One thing that really helped me was my newfound awareness of higher dimensions of consciousness that we can connect with from here on earth.

I always had a sense that there’s more to life than what we see around us, and by the time I discovered these alternative spiritual themes, I was fed up with the world’s limitation and ready to see what else is out there (and within).

This awakening helped me become aware of the corruption in the world and the necessity to do something about it, and self-awareness presented itself later. I’m still trying to become self-aware, and I make as many mistakes as anyone who tries their best while confronting limitation and routine self-defeat.

Most spiritual seekers are still in the midst of their personal development, and we’d be enlightened if we already had it mastered. We chose to take on the world’s darkness knowing full well we’d end up with staggering personal limits to work through, and as difficult as it can be, it’s a part of the journey and our work isn’t in vain.

A lot of conscious living advocates talk about healthy eating, and it too can be difficult. It isn’t easy for those who are conditioned early in life to eat certain foods; especially if their environment still contains the foods they were raised on.

For me, it helps to remember that the food I want to eat is not only nutritious, but enlightening.

Natural foods assist our physical and spiritual development. They give us the energy we need, and they gradually raise our vibration in the process. Food doesn’t provide a sole path to enlightenment as far as I know, but it helps us get there by keeping us where we need to be, nutritionally and spiritually.

The energy we get from natural foods can boost meditation as much as exercise or anything else, and they generally help us feel better. Eat something natural some time and see if you feel better and more connected with a higher consciousness, because it might be just what you need.

In my opinion, the most important aspect of conscious living is the willingness to sow love into the world. Giving love to the world not only raises our self-awareness and brings us closer to a higher consciousness; it allows us to raise the collective vibration by impacting others.

Everyone needs love; especially the most wicked and twisted people out there. The world is suffering from a lack of love, and we can bridge the gap by giving it unconditionally to those who’ve been starved of it and don’t know a life free of hatred.

Living with love is true conscious living, regardless of what you eat, how much you meditate or how aware you are of your actions, and love mitigates the pain that tries to drain our light. We just have to search deep within to find what’s been missing this whole time, and then, we can share it with others and encourage them to light up the world too.

Source:By Wes Annac, Culture of Awareness, December 15, 2015 – http://tinyurl.com/joc2bdk