How Can Being Conscious Help Us To Not Harm Others Along The Way?
Tags: Mindfulness, Kindness, Consciousness, Understanding, Awareness

“Kindness is more than deeds. It is an attitude, an expression, a look, a touch. It is anything that lifts another person. ~ Plato

The more we can become conscious, aware, and mindful, the less we will hurt others, or ourselves. Perhaps it is obvious, but it is important nonetheless, as we see the simple and obvious lessons are often what we miss.

It’s easy to see awareness and increased consciousness as a means to a more successful life, but a successful life that is unkind is not a reflection of a higher state of consciousness. And a means to an end is not a mark of enlightenment. Consciousness is not in what we have, but how we live. So, it is not possible to discern our quality of consciousness merely by our abundance or lack thereof. Our abundance or lack of kindness can, however, show us a lot about ourselves.

People have said it in many ways and it remains true, that pain can be caused in a heartbeat and yet can cause so much damage. It is important to think, reflect, and meditate on the way we handle life, and how this may affect others.

When we reflect on our past, we can see the times where our unconscious thoughtless actions have hurt others. We may also see how our insecurities, if not dealt with, end up causing havoc for other people. The less we deal with our problems and heal our darkness, the more we send it out into the world unconsciously by projecting it onto others. We may not mean to hurt anyone, just like we don’t when we leave a banana peel on the floor. But when someone slips on our unconscious mess it will still hurt them.

If we stop to reflect on our day, our interactions, thoughts, feelings, words, and actions, we will uncover the state of our consciousness. When we look back at the seemingly little things in the day, we can see how we could have hurt others or contributed to harmful situations. This reflection can help us improve our awareness in the future. We do ourselves and others a favor when we learn to reflect, think, feel, and sense before we speak or act. As we do this, we close the gap, and will be able to think, sense, and feel more kindly while we are acting or speaking. Our words and actions are creating reality all the time.

Our quality of awareness makes a difference in the lives of others — it can make a helpful or harmful difference. When we are more aware and conscious, we can sense the ways we can help a situation, or just not hurt a situation. But when we are unaware, it is easy to jump into unhelpful reactions, to let situations trigger our issues, and to add fuel to the fire, so to speak. Wherever we go, there we are — we cannot remove our energy from the people and situations we encounter. So, our energy needs to be cleansed and purified, if we are to keep from harming others.

Try to be mindful of your day. We can try to reflect at the end of the day on all our interactions and how we handled them. Did we get distracted by others, and how did we respond to these distractions? Could we have offended them by being rude to protect ourselves? Is there a kinder way to communicate our truth? Why do we feel like we need to protect ourselves — what are our fears that cause this? Did someone gossip to us, and how did we react? Did we encourage slander by being entertained by others’ pain, or did we show some empathy towards the story, and encourage support and love?

When we worked, were we honest? Did we promote trust by honoring our commitments? Did we apologize for our wrongs, and provide some faith in humanity’s humility? Did we thank those who have helped us by being patient with us, appreciating us, forgiving us, sharing with us, and by acknowledging us? Were we accommodating of others, or did we bulldoze our way through the day? Did we scream at the dog or the cat when he or she wanted to love us? Did we achieve our goals with others or against others?

What good did we not do when we knew we should? Did we walk past some litter unconsciously? Did we not say hello to the teller at the bank? What unconscious harm did we do without realizing it? Did we join in the mocking of someone? Did we share a disrespectful joke? Did we like a judgmental post on social media? All these little things affect the consciousness of the world because we too are the world. If we cannot help, let us not harm either. Focusing on improving our consciousness, awareness, and mindfulness — leading a spiritual life — is not a selfish endeavor or a piece of life, it affects everything, as a more enlightened person lightens the burdens of others.