The Expansion of the Self: Cultivating Awareness, Resilience and Belonging through Mind Training

In this presentation we will engage in a conversation about the nature of “self” and how the human brain’s proclivity to absorb cultural messages and its evolutionary history of tribalism-based survival makes the development of our sense of identity shaped by both genetic propensities and our shared societal ideas. One of these memes is of a “solo self” in which we come to believe that who we are is defined simply by our body and its brain, or by a small group membership, processes that create an identity of separation we can suggest is at the heart of personal isolation and despair, interpersonal violence, international conflict, and ecological destruction. A common factor of such learned filters of consciousness that construct this separate-self identity will be discussed. Contemplative practices that distinguish the knowing of being aware from the knowns of consciousness may offer one way to invite individuals to experience an expanded sense of identity. Findings from a study of thousands of individuals engaging in the Wheel of Awareness meditation that places the knowing in the hub and the knowns on the rim of a visual metaphor of the mind will be reviewed and insights from that survey offered to explore the nature of awareness, identity, and belonging. The Wheel offers one example of a general notion that contemplative practices that integrate consciousness may offer practical ways in which becoming more openly aware can facilitate an expanded sense of identity and the direct experience of belonging as part of a larger humanity and membership to the system of life on earth.