Awareness Games: Playing with Your Mind to Create Joy

The (Your) Name Game Imagine your parents haven't given you a name yet. Who are you? Then imagine they give you a name and didn't tell you what it is. What does that have to do with you? Are you the same with or without the name? What if I had no name?

Could I Not Be Aware? Play with this: Is it possible to not be aware? To not be aware of anything? Do you need to actively choose to be aware? Are you ever not aware? The idea of this game is to see if you have to do awareness, or if it does itself.

When awareness is expanded as much as possible, include awareness itself.

The mind is the organ of separation. Its job is to scan the environment and distinguish between the good stuff and the bad stuff—the stuff that will help us survive and the stuff that's dangerous. But the mind is a tool—it's not us. It's something we use—it's something we're aware of—it looks at objects. In fact, thought itself is an object. What's

It’s not something you have to learn to do. It’s already doing itself. You simply notice it.

things work and certain other things don't work. We're experimenting—we're playing—we're stumbling—we're hoping to accidentally fall into this well because we're playing around it.

Because finding the well of joy within is not something with correct answers, set rules, reproducible steps.

Contract your awareness down to one thing: a toe; a thought. Expand to include more and more of what you are aware of. Play with expanding and contracting—how small can you contract to? How large can you expand to? How fast or slow can you expand and contract? Go back and forth. Fiddle with it. Play with it.

When this happens try this: Just for a few seconds, don't try to fix it or make it go away. Imagine the emotion is showing up in awareness. In other words, there's the emotion, and there's awareness of the emotion. Include more: What else is in awareness other than this nasty unwanted feeling? Sounds? Sights? Sensations? Other feelings? Thoughts?