Awareness is like a balloon. Who doesn't marvel at a helium balloon rising into the sky? breaking free of gravity and restraints of life's weightiness. The metaphor of a balloon is interesting to ponder. It can bring out our lighter side, or reveal intentions, motivations, belief systems.... So let's take a closer look. Children love to play with balloons. But the intention behind what one fills the balloon with matters. Turns out, the balloon can be a toy or a weapon, even under the disguise of play.
Picture your mind as a balloon. The contents of the balloon determines whether it rises or falls. The essence of awareness resides inside the balloon. We can put all sorts of things inside, depending on our intentions. The energy that fuels our thoughts, feelings, emotions, beliefs, memories, grudges, resentments, attitudes, life experiences, entertainments, distractions, problems, worries, joys, pleasures, gifts of spirit, devotions, meditations, prayers... all these fill the balloon.
The knot keeping the contents inside the balloon is like our belief systems. The knot keeps our self awareness, sensory awareness, spacial awareness, and belief systems (usually thought structures learned in groups) contained and accessible.
The balloon's elasticity allows for expansion/contraction of consciousness.
In our house, we usually just blow up a balloon with air, without Helium. It floats along the floor, according to environmental conditions, being bounces around.
But when a balloon is filled with sand, it becomes solid, dense, rigid. The sand of fear and conflict, sinks like tons of bricks, tethering our awareness to old and often outmoded chains, forged from vices. (Remember Ebeneezer Scrooge?)
When the balloon is filled with water, it is more pliable, but still sinks with gravity. Emotions are also pliable, but can often weigh us down with memories locked away, and more insidiously, color the lenses we see life through. We think we're having fun, but are we ... really? Playing water balloons is fun until it's not.
When it is filled with breath, the balloon floats on water in neutral drifting along the surface. Here lies distractions, entertainment, therapy shopping, evening news, video games, social media and social drinking. No judgements here... Everything in moderation!
Yet there's another medium the balloon can be filled with, which takes more effort. Helium... a rare gaseous element - Helium is invisible, intangible, and changes the properties of sound in the voice, invariably making folks laugh... lightening the mood of any room, and escapes unnoticed.
It reminds me of LOVE. Like helium, love rises upward, allowing the balloon of our awareness to expand and ultimately fly beyond human capacity. Also in this category is being a student in the pursuit of excellence, knowledge, reading the classics, philosophy, music, art, virtues... activities that uplift the mind and heart.
So what will we fill our balloon with to expand our self awareness? How we use our awareness determines if it rises or falls, but it does so from the inside out. Like the human psyche, the balloon does not respond well to too much pressure before it shatters. We humans are designed NOT to be controlled, but to responsibly think for ourselves. But in order for us to think clearly, choose wisely, we need to fuel our minds with something more pliable than sands of conflict.
So when we sometimes talk funny because our balloon is sometimes filled with laughing gas, that's the sound of expanding awareness! That's thinking like a Mystic, who is OK with occasional floating outside old belief system boxes, and sometimes chasing dreams.
What is your balloon filed with?
