Awareness: A periodical approach.

What is awareness? Or more precisely, what does it mean to be aware?

The Dictionary of Psychology defines awareness as, “the perception or knowledge of something”, further explaining “…the accurate reportability of something perceived or known is widely used as a behavioural index of conscious awareness …it is possible to be aware of something without being explicitly conscious of it (e.g., see blindsight)”. This definition puts good emphasis on perception and/or knowledge of something as awareness, which negates the narrative of awareness being largely dependent on knowledge but also, perception.

OK, now what?

We were ushered into this earth with an unhealthy, but cute amount of innocence, or more realistically – ignorance. It is in our evolution as humans that our personalities and characteristics are shaped by our experiences. You touch a stove as a baby, and even though your body might have been able to register the feeling as pain, your young innocent (and ignorant) brain in that very moment has no clue or idea what emotion is to be attributed to that feeling, and in a likely situation, the external reactions from family or anyone around would provide your young brain with its first reference point for that feeling. Consequently, in the aftermath you become consciously aware of hot stoves and what you shouldn’t do with them. I argue that awareness, in its most basic form, presents itself to us in our evolution at different levels. However, I think that as humans all thread uniquely differently from others, so do these introductions of levels of awareness.

Level 1: Conscious Awareness.

I believe that the first level of awareness presents itself in the form of the birth of our consciousness, the very moment we become intrinsically conscious of our surroundings. I’m talking about your earliest memory of light, if you can remember, or at least try to. That was probably your first hint of consciousness, besides the medical spank you get when they’re checking if you’re alive immediately after birth (you most likely can’t remember that). That consciousness is followed by our earliest indicators of awareness, when we start picking up cues from our environment, mimicking behaviours around us and what not. This when we start knowing what we like to do and what we don’t like to do, our first acts of independence when we start asking (or moving, babies don’t steal, sorry I don’t make the rules) for ice-cream and candy because we’ve realised – “yeah, I like that”. I believe that drawing a realistic range for most of us to encounter this first level to anywhere between 0–9 year(s) old.

Level 2: Sub-Conscious Awareness.

The key differences between this and the earlier level, if the name isn’t explicit enough, is when the scope of awareness evolves from learned and remembered knowledge to a more preceptive form of awareness. In this level, we are already familiar with a lot of things we know to and not to do, we know a whole lot of what we want and what we don’t. However, we’ve come to realise that we don’t need to have everything spelt out before a response is prompted from us. In the earlier level, our awareness level recognises most of the basic things for survival (survival here is subjective to environment), you now know that you don’t want to die or get injured and act (to a good extent) accordingly. The exponential nature of the first form of awareness showed that you had the ability to register knowledge, and as your capacity broadens, so does your expectations. Sub-conscious awareness takes some burden off our guardians as we no longer need to be told some basic things, mostly after a lot of repetition. You now know that it is of importance to wash your mouth (do you? 😂) and bodies every day, muscle memory now informs you to get rid of that morning breath as perceived. Similar to the earlier level, registered capacity translates into potential expectations. You begin to take up more responsibility than before,‎” you’re no longer a baby! “plays all day or most days, and if that sort of encouragement did the trick for you, you adjust accordingly.

This is a very sensitive period because of the weight of expectations placed on you, greater than you’ve ever experienced, largely because at this stage in life, you must align to a societal standard of what your peers are doing/expected to. The age range for this is extremely dependent on how much capacity you were able to accumulate at the previous level. Some are early bloomers, while others aren’t, as though this level might be the briefest, it plays extremely importantly into the next level that holds the power to define your entire life. I set this at 10–13,14 years old, a period where you’ll probably be entering high school and should probably the period that changes your status from kid to child.

Level 3: Intentional Awareness.

Building on the earlier level and my ending paragraph, at the inception of this level you’re probably in high school, you have your first true of taste of independence, that good ‘ol naïve independence. At this level you’re now aware of the awareness, though not literally, you have a good idea of what’s wrong and right, you also have knowledge of the consequences attributed to both perspectives, but ultimately you now possess the discerning ability of choice. Choice is very potent to this level, because for example, you probably woke up in boarding school one day and didn’t brush your mouth and noticed the sky didn’t fall like you probably assumed giving how your guardians echoed it in your earlier years, you do that a couple more times and then you unlock real power, choice. As I have stated sparingly, most of this largely subject to environment, some developed countries groom intentional awareness from a very young age, and that’s not in terms of teaching what should and shouldn’t be done, but by allowing the children to understand and grasp the power of choice and intent. The earlier years sees you forgoing pleasure to achieve a greater satisfaction, a patience that is almost non-existent in the first and arguably, second level. You start working on your assignments and schoolwork on your own prerogative and not via guidance or excessive direct pressure, you start attaching reasoning to actions, creating reason (positive and negative) for actions, etc.

Why this level is described as intentional awareness is largely because you have recognised, consciously or sub-consciously that you have the ability to wield your own narrative. You’re more aware than ever before how your actions can be translated to fit a wide array of perceptions, so you try, at least in the earlier stages, to be more imposing, subtly, or not, to define what perceptions are categorised to you. Understandably in the early stages of this level, as a pre-teen or teenager, you’ll make your fair share of mistakes, especially without relatable guidance – you’re going to mess up, but hey, that’s life. The responsibility and power translated into this level is dependent on the quality of reasons to attribute to your actions, if you find yourself attaching greater reason to your actions, you’re more likely to build on them quicker than you would’ve had you attributed a weaker justification to the action in question. This stage differentiates the winners and losers in this game called life, most of the people that went on to achieve notable successes in their lives built good foundations by starting from early in reflecting constructively on their reasoning behind their actions. Those who went on to achieve reasonable success in let’s say – music, started from early to channel and satisfy their curiosity on music in attributing greater meaning to music as it meant or felt like something of larger importance.

I believe that as the meaning of fulfilment and happiness with one’s life transcends different qualifications, the best type of life to live is a life lived intently. The problem with these awareness levels is that, for all the sense it is probably making now, there aren’t so many places where it’s articulated to this level of understanding. Without the knowledge of this, the awareness of awareness in these groupings is non-existent. For this very reason you can see people travelling through the course of life, negligent to the intention behind their actions, doing things for the sake of doing them, without any introspection on the greater consequences if any on their actions. It is also possible for someone to be aware of awareness in this light and still deliberately do negative things, in full knowledge. Summarily, it could be argued that this level can be broken up to allow for disparities between the age and experience of individuals within, but to counter that, we’ve seen a lot of teenagers achieve things that people in their 40s could only wish to. I set this at 14+.

So?

You’re more in power than you might accept. Though you may not be in control of all the things that happen to you, you can always be intentionally in control of reactions and how those things affect your life moving forward. The quality of your life isn’t going to improve overnight, but you would be better of when you decide to live a more purposeful life and that can be achieved by wielding your intentional awareness positively. With more reflection on things that happen around you and to you, you can make more of yourself by translating your experiences positively towards whatever goals and aspirations for yourself. You failed? Try again and fail better – that’s progress.

Ekele Imebuogu, 2021.