When you maintain awareness, you become conscious of the stories and beliefs you tell yourself as being nothing more than that – stories and beliefs.
Awareness is beyond thought. It is a place of consciousness where you begin to become the observer of yourself, and of your thought processes.
Sitting outside the thought processes allows you to step outside an identity that has been created by the mind and all the restrictions that mind creates. Becoming consciously aware creates a dramatic shift that changes everything around and within you.
For a start the stories no longer have power and control over you. As their impact diminishes your reality shifts, because remember, reality is constructed by you – as within, so without – so you are able to be with others in a non-dysfunctional way. You can maintain a level of detachment from what is happening around you but still stay completely aligned with the present.
When you are ready you start to develop this awareness that allows you to stay present but detached.