such as Self-awareness. The simplest form of meditation that Vipassana prescribes is observation-of-breathing, which is, in other words, making one aware of one’s being. The process of being alive, the event of being alive, that which the aspirant has to experience firsthand. Perhaps the biggest reality of life that has been taken for granted. The fact that you are alive, that this body is not cold dead but is responsive, is being brought to focus and is being made the subject of contemplation. And then there is this (one of my favorites) one of the simplest Zen meditation of one-to-ten. These are constructive practices that construct a mirror, if you will, inside the self, inside the psyche, using which you are being watched all the time, all the way, everywhere. You are being watched by your Self. This is Self-awareness. It is like putting a CCTV camera in every room of your mind. You can run, but you can’t hide. And that is a sort of an experience that many have had without any spiritual distillation or aid from meditative practices. “Someone” from inside makes you stand accountable, and demand answers for deeds that you have done (or have not done). A spiritual take on this situation means to suggest that if you are a “good” soul, that is, less or no amount of bad karma from your past lives have been wrapped around your soul and that you have carried forward into this life, your inner voice would be more pronounced.
"...it is like putting a CCTV camera in every room of your mind. You can run, but you can’t hide. “Someone” from inside makes you stand accountable..."In other words, being Self-aware is like producing a kind of an extremely thin membrane that, in initial stages observes your thoughts as they roam around your conscious mind. Later, the transparent membrane is transformed to start filtering your thoughts as they pass by. Then, it starts interfering with and influencing the thoughts as they come and go. In its advanced stages, the membrane manipulates the origin of thoughts such that you think only that is good for you.
As Rumi said - Every word of every thought is a prayer; begins with you; ends with you.
The membrane is sub consciousness.
In the process as the membrane is being “installed” and slowly put to use, it may produce a slight lag in reaction-time of the mind. This delay is very tiny, measurable only in say milliseconds. But by doing so it attains another purpose also, namely, to intentionally produce a lag in instant reaction process of the mind. And this is the very definition of Yoga as per the original Sanskrit doctrine. Based on this, one may argue also that both, Yoga and Self-awareness practices, aim for the same goal which is introducing a membrane within the conscious activities of the mind. That is to say, arousal of sub consciousness and introducing it within the conscious thoughts.
The journey of experiences is wonderful...