Questioning assumptions and becoming more aware
(Not well written)
One must clearly understand the basic assumptions he makes in evaluating anything in his life. In order to even perform basic things, one needs to evaluate what he likes, and what is better according to him; and doing this involves making many underlying assumptions -- which are not very obvious.
For example, every morning you wake up and think that -- "Lets go to work". Why do you think that? Why is that "good"? Why did you choose it?
Or you think that "Tit for tat. He didnt help me -- now handle this."
Or "He doesnt even respond to me. What a jerk."
All these thoughts and decisions, if understood to a depth, give us a better understanding of this human world, and lets us more deftly adapt to changing space and time as regards to society.
Even assuming that life is better than death without specific deliberate thought is closed-mindedness.
Even assuming closed-mindedness is bad without sufficient logical reasons that satisfy self, is blindly following it.
The basic subconscious that society creates in us, is most of the times sufficiently correct, and you dont need to question fundamental assumptions. But often, it can misguide you, especially when the world is becoming a global village, and societies with very different fundamentals are trying to play along with each other, and when technology is slowly but steadily changing basic social machinery.
The primary activity that leads us to heightened awareness is trying to climb "meta" levels. (Level, sort of indicating a realm consisting of particular thoughts and their logical connections)
A meta level being one which is a level higher, and can "observe" the level below it from a distance, thus having the ability to understand and analyze it; in other words, gives you the ability to ask "Why" to it...
Take the basic social layer; which everyone is very familiar with. Now add a layer on top, which asks "why" to everything on the lower layer. The most important things in the lower layer to which you should ask these questions apart from other things are your own judgements, actions, and your general behavior.
Now to this second layer, which will collect all the answers to the first questions, add another layer, and ask "why" to that. Reason should be pursued for the answers as well as the action of pursuing answers. Thats how it works -- you ask "Why" to even the act of asking "Why".
The more layers/levels we climb, we tend to become more aware.
After doing this process for a few months, when you reach some concepts/answers which now become more or less stable, and dont give in to any questions; you will start understanding life more closely.
Sometimes, I feel that, all it takes to becoming a spiritual master (like say Asaramji Bapu) is climbing to higher and higher levels of meta-layers for a very wide variety of concepts and actions. (among other secondary things like: knowledge, etc)
Is Enlightenment (as in Gautama Buddha) just a very high form of such awareness?