Aware: the science and practice of presence — a complete guide to the groundbreaking meditation practice

by Daniel J. Siegel

In the usual state of consciousness in our everyday adult lives, most of us have learned to live in world as best we can by having the five aspects of a FACES flow as a part of how our minds work. To stay in the central flow of harmony within the river of integration allows us to be flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable. To achieve this way of being, we need to attain knowledge, learn skills, and then apply that knowledge and those skills to everyday experience. If we don’t acquire these energy patterns and the symbolic forms of information they create as concepts and categories, and instead live as if we have perpetually just arrived anew, everything will be fresh and novel, yes, but we will be extremely inefficient and ineffective in getting things done. We will stop to smell every rose as if it is the first time we’ve seen and inhaled that magnificent flower—but we will never make it to work or the gym.