In short: I haven't discovered a way to be completely aware of everything I'm not aware of, so I would say it's a continuous journey. What helps is other people, who see it first, noticing the roller coaster and the tumble dryer, the clues in the body, the question running in the background, and imagining what it's like to be on the receiving end of me. I don't think we are meant to do it completely on our own.
Watch the full video above.
Someone asked me this: "How do I become aware of the parts of myself that I don't even have the awareness to see yet?"
The short answer, from my experience, is that I haven't discovered a way to do it completely. I'm speaking for myself there.
Can I ever be completely aware of what I'm not aware of?
That would be a higher level of awareness, like having consciousness of all the things we're not conscious about. If there was such a thing as done, I guess that would be it.
So it's a continuous journey for us mere mortals, the non-enlightened versions of ourselves.
Why can other people see my patterns before I can?
I'll start by saying it's always easier for others around us to see it, hear it and feel it first, to get a sense of it before we have a sense of our own. Which is why I would suggest community is a really powerful element.
If you have someone facilitating the process, someone who has hopefully done enough work on themselves, they may not have been through exactly the same thing, but they have some version or variation of it. They have the ability to see it from an external perspective and say it in a way that can be received. They also have the skill set and the experience to guide you out of that place, from lack of awareness of the pattern to awareness, and then doing something about it, whether that's overcoming it, resolving it or healing it.
I think we were not built to operate as silos, completely disconnected from everyone and everything. When we come together, we're much more powerful than a single unit.
And maybe sometimes we don't have access to a community, for whatever reason. Then it's about guiding yourself.
What does it feel like to be inside a pattern?
Picture a roller coaster. If it's the first time I'm going through it, I will have less awareness of it, so maybe I'm not aware until the roller coaster has ended and I've gone back to the starting point of the pattern. It's like a tumble dryer. I get tumbled around and around and around until it stops, and then I'm like, oh, I was in a tumble dryer. That was not comfortable.
The second and third time there's a bit more awareness, because then we can say, hmm, this looks a little bit familiar. Then we get better and better at seeing it, and we can catch the pattern out much earlier.
One of the powers of our mind is that it's a pattern recognition machine. So this time I can make maybe a different choice, and the choice might just be not going down the same path. Not participating with it is already a different choice, and you could say that in and of itself is practising awareness.
Does my body notice before my mind does?
The body gives clues normally before we realise it on a mind level. It tends to give more direct, instant feedback. When we're experiencing things emotionally, there's a physical component to it as well, so we experience things in our body too.
That's why, in our body of work, I've not separated the physical, the postural practice and the yoga practice, from the transformation work or the meditation. The meditation can help with awareness, with stepping out of the roller coaster and seeing it. The body awareness comes from practising body awareness, so we can start to sense what information the body is giving us. That helps with pattern recognition, and with pre-empting the patterns at earlier and earlier stages, before we actually find ourselves in the tumble dryer itself.
Enjoying this? Get my latest sent straight to your inbox.
Weekly inner work tips, plus first word when AWAKEN opens. Unsubscribe any time.
What question am I asking myself in the background?
On the level of the mind, I would suggest there's always some kind of narrative playing out. Normally there's a question being asked in it, or an answer to a question, the background questions like why do I always.. or why does this always happen to me, or why can't I, or why is it so hard.
Firstly it's paying attention and realising, okay, this seems to be the question I'm asking myself. Sometimes it helps to say it out loud, or just say it in my head. Why am I not good enough, for example. Why does this happen to me all the time.
Then it's asking a different question, because questions are very powerful. Questions direct the mind. When you see me doing interventions with people, I would normally ask questions, because I want to guide the mind to finding certain answers, to come out of the entanglement of the mind.
Sometimes it's just a flip from a why to a what, maybe, or a how. Instead of "why am I so bad at this?", it's "how could I get out of this situation, or resolve this with ease?"
A question I've practised asking myself a lot over the years is "what am I not seeing yet that maybe life is trying to show me?" What is it that I can't see from the perspective I'm in, the angle I'm viewing this from, from where I'm standing? If I change where I'm seeing it from, can I see it from a different perspective? That gives me a different light, a different awareness of it.
What is it like for someone else to be on the receiving end of me?
If others can see it so much more easily, can I pull myself out of it enough to put myself in the perspective of someone else looking in from outside at my situation? The mind is good at imagining things. This one is a little bit harder, but I think it's possible.
In other words, what is it like for someone else to experience me like this, or to be on the receiving end of this communication, or lack of communication, or whatever the situation is?
All of this is teasing out a different perspective on what can seem like you're in the roller coaster, and it's active, and you're trying to pull yourself out. It's hard the first time. It does get a little bit easier every single time we go through it, because there's a little bit more space. You could say we're not in the roller coaster so much the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time we go down that pattern.
How do I feel the emotion without drowning in it?
When I talk about the body, I also mean paying attention to emotion. What's the emotion I'm feeling right now?
Even though I talk a lot about frameworks like feel, heal, manifest, and yes, feel it, I would say feel it in as much as we don't drown ourselves in the emotion. I've caught myself where I'm just drowning in the emotion because I've felt it so much.
There's a time and place to feel it, to become aware of it, to acknowledge it. And then there's a time to move. Start to take action, or start to create movement in the direction of the result I'm after. It could be anything. It could be resolving it, or healing it, or having some space from it, whatever it is.
Can I do all of this completely on my own?
So those are some things I'd offer: breath, body, emotion, mind, and then external.
I still haven't, at least in the last 20 years, found a way, with myself or with others, where we could completely do it for ourselves, completely, 100%. And I don't think we are meant to.
We have a map in our own world, and there are other people who have a different map of the world. We are meant to collaborate, co-create, cooperate, support each other and contribute to each other. And therefore we start to lift each other up, to elevate each other to different levels of awareness.
What would past me and future me say?
I understand that when we're in it, it's really hard to see it, and it can help to hear it again. So one more part of it. If all my inner work is being viewed through the awareness I currently have, how do I see beyond the edges of that awareness?
One more exercise I've found is a different lens of it, the lens of time. If past me came to visit me in the situation I'm in, what would he or she say? And if future me came back in time and visited me while I'm going through this thing I'm struggling to have awareness of, what would he or she say?
Even though it's you, it's a different version of your past and future, and there are many versions of past and future that can offer a different perspective.
If future you came back to offer up a solution, or an awareness, what would they say? What kind of questions would they ask? What insights would they offer? I think future me can generally give us a pretty good perspective. If future you has already solved present you's challenges, which they have obviously, because they've made it there, they will have something to offer.
Questions People Ask
How do I see my own blind spots?
Dylan Ayaloo says he hasn't discovered a way to be completely aware of everything he's not aware of, and he's speaking for himself. What he suggests is that others around us see it first, so community or someone facilitating can help, along with the clues in the body, the questions running in the mind, and imagining what it's like to be on the receiving end of you.
Why can other people see my patterns before I can?
He says it's always easier for others around us to see it, hear it and feel it first, before we have a sense of our own. Someone facilitating can see it from an external perspective and say it in a way that can be received.
How do I know I'm in a pattern while I'm in it?
Maybe you don't, the first time. Dylan Ayaloo compares it to a roller coaster, or a tumble dryer, where you only notice once it stops. The second and third time it looks a little bit familiar, and you can catch the pattern much earlier. He adds that not participating with it is already a different choice.
Does my body notice before my mind does?
He says the body gives clues normally before we realise it on a mind level, and that it tends to give more direct, instant feedback. Practising body awareness helps us sense what information the body is giving.
What question can I ask myself to see what I can't see yet?
One he has practised asking himself a lot over the years: "what am I not seeing yet that maybe life is trying to show me?" He also suggests noticing a background question like "why does this always happen to me?" and flipping it from a why to a what or a how.
How do I feel an emotion without drowning in it?
Dylan Ayaloo says there's a time and place to feel it, to become aware of it and acknowledge it, and then there's a time to move, to start taking action in the direction of the result you're after.
Start your 7-day free trial
If you'd like company for the daily practice, that is what elev8 Premium is: yoga, meditation and inner work with me, every day, and a community doing it alongside you. Calmer, more present, more energy, more space. Start your 7-day free trial.
Come and sit with us
If you'd like to explore this kind of thing live, I hold a free satsang every Friday at 6:30pm inside the free Elevate Community on Skool. You bring the question, we look at it together.. come and be in the room.
Big love, Dylan