The author has been influenced throughout his time in mathematics education by the work of Caleb Gattegno. Gattegno made extensive use of the word awareness whereas much educational literature from a psychological perspective talks about memory (for example, Justicia-Galiano, MartÌn-Puga, Linares & Pelegrina, 2017). This has, amongst other things, led the author to consider the relationship between the two and resulted in a model called the "Ring of Conscious Awareness." In this article, the author gradually introduces this model and how it can offer an image for four different ways in which we learn. He begins by considering the ways in which the terms 'memory' and 'awareness' are used, and will build the model from there.