How to Become Aware of Our Way of Being in the World
We can cultivate our artistry by becoming more self-aware.
Posted September 10, 2025 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
The wisdom of Buddhist psychology describes how we, not unlike all living creatures, seek a sense of safety and certainty in our lives. In the human experience, safety and certainty translate into familiarity and control. In our unique way, we each construct an understanding of ourselves in the world through a particular mode or mood that brings us a sense of familiarity and control. When this mode is challenged or disrupted, we can feel a severe sense of threat to our existence, to our sense of self. Emotions are the lived experience of thoughts and beliefs, and when a belief that brings us a sense of control and security is challenged, the emotional experience is often intense. In human experience, a threat to how we view who we are is indistinguishable from a threat to our lives. We experience the vulnerability of our notions of who we are (ego) as severely as we experience our physical vulnerability. In Buddhist psychology, we understand that an existential threat is not merely a threat of physical mortality, but primarily a threat to the mortality of the story we want to believe about who we are.
In his book of lectures on Buddhist psychology, The Sanity We Are Born With , Chogyam Trungpa explains how we can understand the doctrine of the Six Realms as a way of understanding six general tendencies that humans fall into, which provide a sense of familiarity and control. These can be understood as styles of life through which we engage with the world and gain a sense of security in knowing who we are. This game of identity politics is the lens—the mode of existence, which gives us a sense of being someone of value and worth in the world. However, not unlike the neurotic character styles described by Erich Fromm, living in what Sartre described as bad faith , these six realms or modes of being carry unintended side effects and real-life consequences. The psychological modes provide us with familiarity and control, but distort our experience of others and the world.
The six realms illustrated in the Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Life are the God , Jealous God , Human , Animal , Hungry , and Hell/Anger realms . Trungpa teaches us that we can understand these six realms as orientations towards the world, ways of viewing ourselves and others that provide us with a sense of familiarity and control. Each lifestyle brings a sacrifice in reality for security. Understanding the characteristics of these six realms in which we dwell can help us to understand others and to help us become more aware of the inauthentic fictions that we trap ourselves in for the sake of a sense of control.
Trungpa describes the god realm as dominated by a preoccupation with the self. This is often characterized by pride and narcissism and a desperate fear of failure. This style of life is a way of being in the world and organizes how we experience reality. Trungpa notes that those trapped in the god realm often fluctuate between an extreme sense of “I am a success” and “I am a failure”.
The jealous god realm is characterized by sensitive pride, intense paranoia , and suspicion of others’ intentions. Those who dwell in the jealous god realm are typically intelligent and defensive.
Those who dwell in the human realm have a strong need for the sense of control that comes from logical reasoning and objectification. A tendency towards overachieving comes from a sense of never being “good enough”. These people often do things to prove their value to others, which they can experience as evidence for value in themselves.
The animal realm describes someone who tends to be impulsive, reacting rather than acting, narrowly driven by whatever is in front of them. This is a restricted view of life to immediate and glutinous satisfaction of base desires.
Viewing the world from within the hungry realm leads to a worldview driven by having rather than being. The focus can be on getting rich, knowing rather than thinking, and clinging to a hoard of wealth or knowledge. Jealousy , one-upmanship, and competition are all characteristics of this style of life. This style is often admired and viewed as successful in contemporary society, but there is a dark function that keeps us from an authentic experience of ourselves and others.
The hell or anger realm is marked by hostility, anger, and aggression . This is a style of life that maintains a sense of security and control through perpetual hatred. The person is attempting to eliminate pain through aggression.
As psychoanalytic literature describes, we are unaware of the realm in which we dwell. We can become aware of our style of life only when we pause to consider the possibility of our tendencies in one direction or another. Opportunities for opening a glimpse into our tendencies often come when we feel a sense of defensiveness, when we feel it necessary to prove to another that they got us wrong. The intense emotional reaction of defensiveness can be taken as an opportunity to look into what fiction we might be clinging to about ourselves.
Another opportunity to glimpse our habitual way of being in the world is our emotional reactions to others. In psychoanalytic terms, we often project onto other aspects of our nature that we do not wish to see. Exploring the possibility of projection is an opportunity for self-awareness.
Art, literature, films, and music often serve as mirrors in which we can see ourselves. When we speculate (from the Latin 'speculum', meaning mirror) on art, we catch a glimpse of our own reflections in the work. This process of reflection can be both enlightening and inspiring, offering us new perspectives on our own lives and experiences.
Trungpa, Chogyam. (2005). The Sanity We Are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology. Boston & London: Shambhala.
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Matthew Tyler Giobbi, Ph.D. , studies and teaches music and Buddhist psychology.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.