Page 39 - Taming Your Gremlin A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way (Rick Carson)_Neat

these words, on what is going on around you, or on what is going on within
you. You can send it into the past via your gift of memory, or you can
frighten or enlighten your psyche by imagining the future. You can let your

awareness pan aimlessly through the meanderings of your mind and use
your mind to analyze, chastise, or aggrandize. You can focus your
awareness with the precision of a laser or broaden it, drawing into your
experience a range of facts, fantasies, and fantastic goings-on. You can shift
your awareness slowly from possibilities to people or let it flit from one
aspect of your experience to another. In each moment, consciously or
unconsciously, you choose. It’s your choice. It’s your life. Your awareness

can lead you or you can lead it. And that choice is with you here and now.

In relationship to your spotlight of awareness, you can be a passenger or
a driver, a victim or a participant, a pawn or a player. You choose. Not once
and for all, but in each moment of your precious life—the life that is
shooting through you now and at every other moment of your existence. To
maximize the richness of the experience of your very own life is to take
charge of your spotlight of awareness right here, right now.

Consciously focusing your awareness requires effort. It does not require

strain. Consciously guiding your spotlight of awareness from its base in the
here and now is a gentle process. And it’s a pleasure.

Consciously is a key word here. You’ve been shining that spotlight
around for years, and sometimes you’ve done it consciously. But if you
were more conscious and sharpened your attention, imagine the
possibilities. Imagine how you would feel. Taking charge of your spotlight
of awareness is about being willing to experience fully your very own
existence, including your unique thoughts and emotions and experiences of

the world, without the contamination of your gremlin’s chatter and without
the filter of preconceived notions or other people’s ideas. It’s about trusting
your own senses in the present moment. It’s about having the courage to
recognize that your life is a time-limited gift given directly to you and
treating it as such in every choice you make. It’s about honing your own

response ability. It’s about taking care, with your life and with your
awareness.