What are the advantages in our life of being present and alert? Why it is important to have these qualities in our life and what does it feel like. Often people say, it is not what you are doing that is important, it is what you are being.

Being awake and alert is something we take for granted as our natural state of consciousness.

There are many advantages to becoming conscious of this state of being, for a few minutes each day. Being conscious of that inner state of being, feeling the presence of the electromagnetic field of energy that permeates our physical body and forms the aura around the body, is very important.

By becoming aware and conscious of this field of energy, we set up feedback loops which help to increase its presence and strengthen the flow.

So what does it feel like to be present?

After reading this, try closing your eyes. Allow your awareness to settle, and relax. Look within yourself and, using your feelings, see if you can feel the energy flow within your body. See if you can feel or become aware of the presence of the aura around the body.

You may feel this in many different ways.

If you look deeply within yourself you may feel the inner bliss, the liveliness within the silence. If you smile you may feel the energies flow in a different way around the body and face. If you become conscious of your breathing, you may feel the life force coming in with each inbreath.

You may become conscious of the various flows of energy around your body: the flow which causes your lungs to expand and contract; the flow which pulses to create your heartbeat.

You may become aware that strong thoughts may cause a physical sensation or pulling in the flesh somewhere.

There are many ways to become self-aware. It is more the process of self-awareness that is important: the turning of consciousness back on itself to gain self-knowledge.

All things in the universe display intelligence, have orderliness within them. But it takes the human mind to turn this intelligence back on itself: by becoming self-aware, to convert this intelligence into intelligentness.

By becoming self-aware we become intelligent and can make choices. Also, it is only when we become aware of our gifts that we can start to use them.

If you get good at this process of self-awareness, you may start to become aware of the matrix that makes up your flesh and bones.

Become aware of the layers of energy and their energy fields at the level of the organs, cells, molecules and atoms of your body and their associated levels of awareness.

You may transcend matter altogether and become aware of the light body that interacts with the zero-point energy of space itself, which permeates all things.

You may realise that you are this space, the life force itself, and not the physical body at all. You are the eternal continuum of life, which is unmanifest and non-changing: the silent witness to all that happens in your life.

You may choose to take the awareness out of the physical body altogether and go astral travelling around the universe, flowing into and out of the various dimensions.

You may realise that you can look through the eyes of an insect on a wall in a far distant land and do remote viewing. You may choose to become conscious of what is in the next room and effectively just walk through the wall with your awareness.

When your awareness is within the quantum field of space, the zero-point energy or neutral energy, you have total freedom. This is a field of all possibilities and you are only limited by your own creativity and imagination. You have become aware of yourself and mastered yourself.