I was reminded while reading the book, What is Your Dangerous Idea?, that we are consciously aware of only 10 percent of what happens in our mind (brain)? Even our thoughts, feelings and behaviour operate largely without conscious recognition, says Professor Banaji, in his article, The Limits of Introspection.

Very seldom are we confronted by direct evidence of the inaccuracies of our perceptions. Why? It is outside our conscious awareness. Then I considered that improving vision is really about increasing perceptual awareness, becoming more conscious of consciousness itself.

The difficulty is that our logical mind compartementalizes the different parts of our lives. I work now. The consciousness part of my life is for later when I am finished. So much of our daily seeing and living is like being on automatic pilot, where we take the easy way out because we are too busy.

Is it possible that every thing we do in our daily routine could be awareness of consciousness itself? In the film How to Cook Your Life, Zen Master Edward Espe Brown shows how food preparation and consumption can be a practice of consciousness iteself.

Today, I am paying attention to my robotic programmed behaviour. I use my eyes to be more aware of my being conscious.

As a young boy, my favourite place to be was being carried on my nanny's back. Wrapped securely with a blanket, I travelled where she went. Nanna's voice would echo sounds of her feelings and glancing sideways I could see the world. I felt safe, nurtured and close to her. Sometimes she would stop and speak to me. Then she would hum her African song of being in the mountains gathering wood. My eyes did not see her as black or white or coloured. She was Nanna. Caring for me, being herself. As I grew older, Nanna had a skin colour. This was my conditioning. To see with eyes that some people had darker skin and were therefore different than me. It still amazes me that we can so easily be influenced by our environment and culture.