Awareness is first and foremost about realizing that each person is a tree, planted among a big and open field. It is about the realization that most people are only ever thought to grow by hunching and hurling their branches over other neighboring trees. They are not aware that they are growing sideways, they simply believe that is the way normal trees grow. Eventually, since we grow unaware and seemingly unable to support ourselves by our own root, we go on to not only hope but expect that others will be so kind as to keep themselves growing horizontally as well, just for the maintanence of our miserable, sideways existence.
In most of society, there are so many trees that grow in such horizontal planes, that they form a thick wooden surface not more than a few meters high from the ground. This surface blocks all light from reaching the ground and thus there is no shade to be given, no life to sprawl, since all is dark beneath the surface.
Awareness simply exposes the option to let these far-stretching branches go for the present moment, and to allow yourself to grow vertically, just by yourself, just for this moment, and to be curious about what shape of tree you might develop in this short span of time. You do not have to understand exactly what that means or how that happens. The most important thing is that you realize that is the natural inclination of your being, and you allow it to happen for a single present moment.
If your branches grow tall enough they might even grow wide as well, which might then mean that they intersect another nearby tree. This time, though, you do not depend on it to support your own weight. Though you are delighted by its visit, you accept its impermanence and are happy if your intersecting branches eventually diverge again.