If there's conflict in your awareness of yourself then you are out of the awareness and into the drama of the taking of sides within your thoughtforms. This is a subtle difference and changes the whole dynamic. Then you are in the struggle and are wasting energy through the illusory struggle of thoughtforms: one over the other. There is freedom when we are not trying to 'change' What we see. You can feel it because you are trying to change what you see. You do not 'like' what you see and therefore you struggle against it. This is not awareness. We 'want' this and we 'do not want' that. Just to observe is enough. You are that. It is your 'baby', whether it is beautiful or ugly. You are looking with care and interest; you are looking in a way that It is telling you all about itself: the nature and temperature and characteristics of what it is made of. When you look in this way without any outcome desired, free from all expectation, the energy changes, but not if you are expecting it to change or wanting it to change.
Real freedom is seeing what is without any attempt to change it, for the desire to change it is part of the same machinery that is being observed. There is no accumulation of knowledge in this state. The one that accumulates is also part of the same machinery. Seeing this is integral. It is a living state of constant learning; there is no resting place.
Watch your conflict without trying to resolve it and you will see it go through a metamorphosis without any effort. To realize that you are that, as a fact, changes the nature of the observation from something that you are trying to act upon to something that you are--that cannot be 'acted upon', for it is 'you'. This is to realize that the observer is the observed. When that happens in the moment, then there is nothing to act upon; there is nothing to do for you realize that you are that and a natural transformation takes place without any effort, but it cannot be 'hoped for', 'wanted' or 'desired' because in that state you are back in the machinery of conflict.
To watch 'hopes' and 'dreams' within yourself without any movement of thought away from them; judging them, chastising them, praising them, pushing on them or pulling on them, but just to observe them exactly as they are is to start to understand yourself and in that neutral, free observation is the beginning of understanding.