Self Awareness: The levels of Self-Awareness Self-awareness is the ability to perceive ones own existence, including ones own

traits, feelings and behaviors. In an epistemological sense, self-awareness is a personal understanding of the very core of ones own identity. It is the basis for many other human traits, such as the trait of consciousness and accountability, and as such, is often the topic of debate among philosophers. Self-awareness can be perceived as a trait that people possess to varying degrees beyond the most basic sentience(capacity for basic consciousness -- the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness.) that defines human awareness. This trait is one that is normally taken for granted, resulting in a general ignorance of one's self that manifests as odd contradictory behavior. This ignorance of one's own self is viewed in existentialism and Zen Buddhism as the source of much human suffering, as noted by the famous saying from Zen Buddhism "we are each the source of our own suffering." However, sometimes, we may perceive self-awareness in the private or public self-aspects of life. In private self-awareness, subjects like emotions, perceptions, goals, motives, physiological sensations, depression, low self-esteem, confidence, over-confidence etc. are the examples that one is aware of the hidden aspects of oneself. Meanwhile, in public self-awareness, behavior, physical appearance, a teenager who blushes and giggles after tripping on the road, showing off our jewelries in public, speaking English on the phone loudly, driving big and luxurious cars, wearing branded and expensive clothes, making gestures like snapping of the fingers, squinting of the eyes, and closing of eyes when you forget to get something are the models whereby one is temporarily aware of the ones public self. In further discussing self-awareness, there are four levels in this concept namely unconsciousness, consciousness, self-awareness and

meta-self-awareness.

Unconsciousness. According to Oxford Advanced Learners dictionary, unconsciousness is referred to as unaware and not sensible. In other words, unconsciousness also means being non-responsive to self and environment. It is also an aspect of mental life that is separate from immediate consciousness and is not subject to recall at will. Due to this statement, many who face this problem deny the existence or prefer not to talk about it. They presume this problem as pure nonsense and they can often be found telling others to stop moaning about this unconscious problem of theirs and get on with life as there is many more servings in life to be attended to. Although Sigmund Freud (1856-1935) did not originate the idea of unconsciousness, he regarded the unconscious as an inundated but gigantic segment of the mind. In his point of view, unconscious was composed of the id which is responsible for the instinctual drives, acts as the driving force or catalyst in human behavior and contains desires and wishes that the individual hides or represses from conscious recognition. In his study of the unconscious, the key factor that Sigmund Freud used was repression. He believes that majority of us repress or hides painful and scarring memories deep into our unconscious mind. He also found out that repression varies among individuals and that the act of repression did not occur in the pretext of a persons consciousness. Therefore, people are usually off guard of the fact that they have buried lost recollections or disturbing experiences. Freud also distinguished between the three concepts of the unconscious: the descriptive unconscious, the dynamic unconscious, and the system unconscious. The descriptive unconscious referred to all of the features of mental life in

which people are not intuitively alert. The dynamic unconscious, a more definite assemble, referred to mental processes and contents that are forcibly removed from consciousness as a result of contradictory attitudes. The system unconscious brought up the idea of when mental processes are withdrawn; they become structured by the ideologies that are different from those of the conscious mind, such as concentration and displacement. To tap the unconscious, Freud, used a variety of techniques, including hypnosis, free association and dream interpretation. To him, dream is the royal road to the unconscious. This means that dreams bring about the illustration of logic of the unconscious mind and is the form of "wish-fulfillment" attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the past. However, because the information in the unconscious is in an uncontrollable and often alarming form, a "censor" in the preconscious will not allow it to pass untouched into the conscious. During dreams, the preconscious is more laidback in this duty than in waking hours, but is still attentive: as such, the unconscious must disfigure and distort the meaning of its information to make it through the censorship. Thus, images in dreams are often not what they appear to be, according to Freud, and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on the structures of the unconscious. Next, is the theory from Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), a German psychiatrist. He distinguished and expanded the Freudian concept deeper. The former student of Sigmund Freud, who later became Freuds colleague and ultimately Freuds estranged rival, stated that the idea of an inherited unconscious, known as the collective unconscious is part of the unconscious mind. According to Jung, the unconscious can be divided into two which are personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is a box and keepsake of material that was

once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed. The collective unconscious is the deepest level of the psyche, containing the buildup of inherited psychic structures and typical experiences. There is considerable two-way traffic between the ego and the personal unconscious, such as when one's mind wanders to thoughts irrelevant to the current situation. For Jung, the personal unconscious was similar to the totality of Freuds concept of the unconscious. However, for the collective unconscious, Jung saw imageswhich he called archetypesthat were, he claimed, related to personal, cultural, and spiritual growth. In fact, Jungs followers have made a sort of pseudo-religion out of unconscious functioning.

Besides Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, another psychoanalyst and psychiatrist from France, Jacques Marie mile Lacan (1901-1981) understood the unconscious better than anyone. Lacan, emphasized the relation of language to unconscious functioning. Lang uage, being metaphoric and symbolic, is one stepone large stepremoved from reality, and in the gap between the real and the symbolic is all the dishonesty, lies, and fraud of human social existence. Although it might seem, on the surface, that our lives are structured simply by conscious thought and speech, we are really more influenced by that gap between the real and the symbolicor, in other words, by what is missing from our lives simply because we filter all our raw experience through our social dependence on language. Therefore, the unconscious is a side-effect, so to speak, of our separation from raw reality because of our use of language. Lacan saw clearly that, because separation leads to desire, the unconscious is primarily governed by the desire of the Otherthat is, by the social world (the Other) around us. Thus desire could be thought of as the unspoken and hiddenaspect of our speaking lives. Next is consciousness. The definition of consciousness is focusing attention on the

environment, and processing incoming external stimuli. Consciousness also refers to our own awareness of our unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations and environment. It is subjective experience, awareness, wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. Consciousness signifies the state of being awake or being aware of anything if it is external objects. However, if it is focusing on mental events, it will signify as a private selfawareness. Our consciousness is constantly changing and shifting from time to time. For example, we are listening and focusing to the talk. Our consciousness may then shift or change to the memory of the tragic accident that happened a few hours before we attend the talk. After that, we may be moving to the left and right to change our posture. This shifting or changing activity will happen from a moment to the next but we will experience it as though it is a continuous process. Nonconscious mind is also under the concept of consciousness. Nonconscious mind is a "part" of our mind that stores repressed memories. Some people will have such a bad memory or unforgotten memories which are too painful for them to remember. This also causes some people to create their own world and change in behavior. However, there is a fact that some conscious perception goes on without self-consciousness. It is possible to be not aware of having experienced something and unable to remember the experience, but still give evidence that one has had the experience. There is some example of people with non conscious mind after having brain-damages. The first example is a person who is blind but he or she is not aware about that due to the severe brain damage that results in the person being unable to think correctly. The second example is people who speak unintelligibly but he or she did not realize it. Due to the fact that the individual still thought that he or she is still speaking as a normal person. The last example is a person who has such a critical brain damage until they cannot speak out

everything that they want to say. They only can write it down correctly. Ecological and interpersonal self are also related concepts to consciousness. Ecological self is more like intrapersonal which is they learn best independently. Ecological refers to the self that picks up and acts on the perpetual information presented by an object in the environment. The interpersonal self, refers to that aspect of self that arises in interaction with other people. This means that interpersonal self is established through social interaction. To avoid the distinction, it is differentiated like this, whereby the part of the self that know the world independently from interpersonal relationships is the ecological self and those that arise in interaction with people is the interpersonal life. Core affect provides the emotional quality to any conscious state. Core affect is the neurophysiologic state consciously accessible as the primary feelings most evident in moods and emotions and emotionally charged moments. It is always accessible as simply feeling good or bad, energized or enervated. Core affect blends with perceptual, cognitive and behavior processes in forming of the stream of consciousness. These various processes happen to form a pattern for a specific emotion. For example, mood, much but not all mood can be subsumed by core affect. Like core affect, most moods are nonintentional or one simply feels depressed, agitated, chipper etc but anything without any specific object. Sometimes the word mood allows an object, although of a vague sort. For example anxious mood can be core affect of unpleasant arousal directed at the future. Irritability is a state in which negative core can be directed at almost any object. The third level in the self-awareness concept is self-awareness itself. Self-awareness is defined as the focusing of attention on oneself and processing private and public self-information. One of the key concepts in self-awareness is the self-awareness theory. The

self-awareness theory states that when we evaluate ourselves, we focus our attention on ourselves; and we assess and contrast our current behavior to our internal standards and values. We become aware and self-conscious of ourselves as we become the objective evaluators of ourselves. Various emotional states are growing by self-awareness, and people sometimes try to reduce or escape it through things like television, video games, drugs, illegal racing etc. However, some people may seek to increase their self-awareness through these channels. People are more likely and have the tendency to bring into line their behavior with their standards when made self-aware. People will be adversely affected if they do not and cannot live up to their personal standards and expectations in life. Humans differ from most other species in the way they are capable of using their self-concept, which is our very own knowledge about who we are, and they usually do this by taking in the self as the main subject or focus of attention. The very fact that we, the Homo sapiens are able to be self-aware of ourselves enables and helps us in evaluating ourselves and the way people evaluate themselves. People can compare themselves to internals markings and standards and then assess whether they are readily and sufficiently physically attractive, intelligent, caring, sociable, clever or anything attributes if themselves that are positive, accurate and good in the eyes of the entity and of the people. However, if any problem or differences takes place between your behavior and your inner standard which is your inner self, then a huge change of behavior will occur. When this situation arises, it will try to create a balance and harmony with your internal standards and values. Therefore, the ability of evaluating oneself is a very crucial part for identifying the different parts in the self that can either be improved or mend. Once when your self-awareness is low, the relationship or bond between the self and the internal standards

is incompatible and hence, the internal standards become unclear and disrupted. Attention has to be put on the oneself in order for the person to establish connections within the outer and inner standards of the person. However, if the unawareness still haunts the person even when attention has been forced down upon him, then any unbalance between the self and the internal standards has to be ignored and no successful and motivational penalty or consequences to the self that would encourage self-improvement or change in behavior. On the other hand, if the person has a high level of self-awareness, the person is able to distinguish the similarities and differences in the selfs current state of mind and their internal standards. As a result, a person is able to identify the positive and similar in temperament relationships to the ones that are negative and incompatible. Moving on, when these differences are made the prospective for conflict with the acknowledgment system, the methods in which people explain the main reason of their behavior and the behavior of others arises and the probability for self-improvement arises. So, by being self-aware, you start to analyze the cause of your own behavior and then only will you be able to change your behavior and yourself in a positive way or also known as self-improvement. Many types of environmental cues and situations provoke awareness of the self, such as mirrors, an audience, or being videotaped or recorded. These cues also increase accuracy of personal memory. In Demetriou's theory, one of the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, self-awareness develops methodically right from birth through the life span and it is a prime factor for the development of general hypothetical

processes. Furthermore, a number of recent studies showed that self-awareness about cognitive processes participates in general intelligence which is on par with processing competence functions, such as working, memory processing, speed, and reasoning. In all

theses hype, there can also be the downfall in evaluating and comparing your behavior and your internal self as in the way by which people are able to get a grasp of possibility that they can fail, too engrossed in the evaluation and analysis of oneself can disturb the task performance and also by the way of making people defensive and distrustful of themselves. Self-awareness can also be seen in theaters, for example, self-awareness refers to an actor who has broken character (slips out of character and behaves as his or her actual self. This is an acceptable occurrence while in the process of rehearsal, but is unheard of and it is extremely unprofessional while actively performing in front of an audience or camera) perhaps by breaking the fourth wall (imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a theater through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play.). The actor acknowledges to the audience in some fashion that he is playing a character. Unintentional self-awareness is extremely unprofessional, though it often acts as a comedic device when done intentionally. Self-awareness can prevent the audience's suspension of disbelief (willingness of a reader or viewer to suspend his critical faculties to the extent of ignoring minor inconsistencies so as to enjoy a work of fiction.) besides in theaters, self-awareness is also valid in science fiction. In science fiction, self-awareness describes a crucial human property that bestows upon "personhood" onto a non-human. If a computer, alien, gadgets or other object is described as "self-aware", the reader will have to presume that it will be treated as a totally human character, with similar rights, capabilities and desires of a normal human being. The words sentience (capacity for basic consciousness -- the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness ), sapience (the ability of an entity or organism to act with intelligence) and consciousness are used in similar ways in science fiction. Self-awareness in animals is

also visible. For example, there is proof that certain animals have the ability to be self-aware. Among the animals are the bottlenose dolphins, apes, elephants and more to come. A recent study from the Goethe University Frankfurt shows that magpies may also possess self-awareness. There are also speculations that many more animals are believed to have the power to be self-aware of themselves. Nevertheless, self-awareness is also available in psychology. In psychology, the term self-awareness is used differently. First, it is defined as the sense of intelligence whereby self-awareness is the understanding of ones knowledge, attitudes and opinions and secondly, it is referred to as the self-efficacy that builds on our varying degrees or levels of self-awareness. The last level of self-awareness is meta-self-awareness. Metaselfawareness refers to being aware that one is self-aware. It is all about the impression, thoughts and feeling. This is the one what make a person to stay up and being conscious. It is also called as private because it is perception of internal events and not our surrounding. Our mind will receive everything if we were being aware. Extended self is also under Metaselfawareness because it is that of a self that is located neither inside nor outside the brain or body, but is instead constantly enacted in-between brains, bodies and things and thus irreducible to any of these three elements taken in isolation. The extended self is based primarily on our personal memories and anticipations which is the person who had certain specific experiences, who regularly engages in certain specific and familiar routines. This stage is about the experiential in nature and marked by or remembered by or internalized activities with family playing a major role in its development. The extended self is the self as it was in the past and as we expect it to be in the future, known primarily on the basis of memory. The extended self becomes increasingly

important as we grow older. Most adults develop a more or less standard life-narrative that effectively defines the self in terms of a particular series of remembered experience. Recent studies suggest that elderly people have particularly rich and accessible memories for the period of adolescence and young adulthood. In conclusion, self-awareness is hesitant in reminding people of their misfortunes, and as a result of being in these situations; people try to avoid these shortcomings we need to evaluate how preventative beliefs and desires will affect the way we deal with the imbalance of our self and of our internal standards. We should know where these standards came from and if they can be changed. Therefore, when a person becomes lost in between what actions are right and wrong, a dose of self- awareness is not such a bad thing because it makes you more aware of your morals and ideals.