new site
24 12 2007 
I have started a new website called OneWord.
I am very happy with how Eternal Awareness evolved from its modest beginnings on Blogspot/Blogger to its modest place here on WordPress. And I also like that my very first post is still here, because it helps give me perspective. I can go back and see how I’ve changed or improved, whether in terms of self development, writing style or focus.
It’s funny, because in starting another site, I found myself wondering if I had abandoned Eternal Awareness. Eternal awareness is not, however, something that stops or goes away.
Eternal awareness is something that grows. In the beginning it is like starting a fire by hand - you get a few sparks going and then carefully nurture those first, timid embers into a warm flame.
My awareness fire began with very small sparks, so small I swore they weren’t there. But they were, and as they grew I realized a flame called deeper awareness was actually coming into view.
I have never presented myself or this site as an authority on eternal awareness. The name came about from a class I took. My original blog was inspired by my teacher, but the name was changed after I took a class on the Bhagavad Gita.
In the Gita, Krishna tells the forlorn Arjuna that he simply doesn’t understand the nature of what’s going on. Arjuna is faced with a terrible dilemma: his small army is facing a larger army whose ranks are filled with old friends and relatives. In awful despair, Arjuna is caught in a spot where he is powerless to fight. Krishna reprimands him, telling Arjuna it is not only his duty to fight, but his eternal duty to fight - that there is something of a higher perspective that he is supposed to kill.
To paraphrase Krishna, “Arjuna, you need a change in perspective. And the first thing you have to do is to become aware that you are an eternal being.”
I started thinking about that, and decided to try to do my small piece out of respect for Krishna and Arjuna’s great story. So, one of the things I did was to change the name of my site to Eternal Awareness. It’s funny how something small like that can help focus you. Eternal Awareness became a daily, weekly and monthly meditation - a working, everyday life mantra.
This site will stay up, and it is likely that I will become active here again. In the meantime, and through all of time and beyond, I hope your sparks grow into deeper and deeper awareness.
Great to see something new on EA, although I love 1Word, too!
Merry Christmas, Mark!
You are someone who has generously shared his own personal development in a very public forum with a global reach (that can be scary at times!). I came across Eternal Awareness at a time of flux in my own spiritual seeking with many questions, a time of vulnerability, and also honestly a time of pain. Though the questions will I suspect never end for me, I have appreciated watching, and learning from your willingness to give so deeply of your own journey and process, of your deeper self. There have been times when I have been intimidated by the material, often times feeling dense as things weren’t making sense, staying out of the conversation as a result, and yet your blogging has shown courage in sharing your stumbling blocks, challenges and self doubts through your many years of training, all of this being very helpful to me as it has brought the material into my own life in a more accessible way and made it more “relatable”, especially because I have no martial arts background and no understanding of the deeper principles it teaches.
Many bloggers, when moving to another site, or starting a new blog, feel the need to delete the past, looking back on it feeling embarrassment or self doubt. In some ways I understand this, and in other ways it is unfortunate, as to delete those parts of their own pilgrimage is also to eliminate the progression and growth and change, and much of the opportunity for teaching, and for others like me, to learn.
Some of the first posts I read on Eternal Awareness were in your Art of Giving series. Much of that series, as I struggled through understanding it then, has done a lot of soaking in, even in some of the terminology you used, corrections you made when your teacher evaluated your writing, and being an observer to this process has helped me learn about these principles and bring them in to my own awareness in a more concrete form. I appreciate that you have kept all of your posts up and active, for I know that there are times that I do refer back to them for deeper understanding.
Your new site appears to reflect the same you, but also a different side of you, as we all have different sides. Your 1Word blog is both humorous and heartfelt, and even in its more lighthearted moments teaches the same important principles, clearly evident for anyone who has read Eternal Awareness for any length of time, and also adds another dimension, an important one I think, the ability to look at ourselves and laugh. Spiritual people often take themselves very seriously. This is not to say that our spirituality is not a sacred thing to those of us who seek, but it is to say that sometimes we have to get out of our own way and realize that laughing at ourselves is also a path to more deeper awareness.
Congratulations on starting a new blog, and thank you for coming back here too. As companion sites, I think they compliment one another very well. Eternal Awareness is, and continues to be, a place that gives, teaches, inspires, and shines, and 1Word is another extension of the same teaching, and the same giving person behind the words.
I offer my heartfelt thanks and wish you a very Merry Christmas.
A Very Big THANKS for this site. I’ve read just this post as for the current moment, but I think I’ll stay here a little bit longer. Probably a big “little bit”…
Thanks for adding some light to the Net.