I was on a silent retreat at Ignatius House in Sandy Springs, Georgia from 26 September through 4 October. This is a brief overview of what I learned…

Awareness depends upon being present, observing, and suspending evaluation or judgment. Awareness is simple, but not easy. During a 20-minute practice session, you might manage to keep your attention on the present moment and observe without evaluation or judgement for less than 5 minutes. That’s okay. Perfection is not possible, but improvement comes with practice.

Awareness makes it possible to see God in nature and in people. All people.

All people are made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). That means I am complete and whole just as I am. And you are too. That may sound delusional if you know me. That may sound delusional if you tend to be cynical like I tend to be, but who are we to question the quality of God’s work? According to Genesis 1:31, God is very pleased with his handiwork.

Our problem is that we confuse something God never confuses. We confuse the nature of a person and the behavior of a person. Instead of seeing the image and likeness of God in every person, we focus on behavior. And often we don’t even make good judgments about behavior. We think we know what is good and bad when really we are floating on a great sea of ignorance.

People operate out of either love or fear. Awareness makes it possible to recognize when we are acting out of fear and helps us to get onto the path of love.

Tony D’Souza led the 8-day retreat that I completed on this past Tuesday. Tony is a doer and not a writer. He has been leading spiritual retreats focused on awareness for decades, but only wrote Discovering Awareness: A Guide to Inner Peace, Strength, and Freedom when one of his American students – Bud Wonsiewicz – pushed him. And even then Tony enlisted Bud as his co-author. The book is great. I expect most of what I write over the coming months to reflect my growing awareness.

This short bio of Tony is well worth seeing: http://www.broadbandliving.org/aware/Tonys_Bio.html