Musings on Awareness

I thought awakening was all about bliss and joy. It’s much deeper than that. Much richer and fuller than that.

It’s about experiencing Life as it is, being Life, with no separation, and experiencing the totality as beingness itself. It’s quite ordinary, actually.

I can walk through a public crowd as no one, as pure awareness, like a camera going this way and that, exploring and witnessing and loving and appreciating what is seen. The camera is not affected by what is seen, nor is there any judgment as to what is seen. Just pure seeing, and a causeless Love inherently intertwined with that which is seen, arising from nowhere.

Love seems to be the pure energetic relationship that integrates with that which is witnessed.

There can be engagement of the body/mind with that which is witnessed, or not, and it really makes no difference. Pure awareness, witnessing itself, seeing movement and stillness, with no real necessity to do or be anything in particular except be that which I am, which is a given.

Movement and stillness are one. They’re actually the same thing.

Watching Movies

I watch a movie and fall over laughing at the funny parts. Look how funny this life can be! Look how funny it is for me (the me-less me) to be in this life! There’s no separation between “my life” (whatever that would be) and the life being shown on the movie.

I’ve written previously about how “snapping out” of the egoic trance is like recognizing that you are the witness of the movie, not the movie itself, but this assumes a duality of observer and the observed.

There used to be a clear difference between the awareness witnessing the movie and that which is witnessed.

And there still is, and yet there is not. The observer and the observed is a non-existent duality. It’s simply a matter of where awareness is focused. I am All of it and what is experienced is simply a question of where awareness is focused. I can be both the subject and the object, for neither of those two labels actually point to anything real.

I watch a movie and tear up at the sad parts. It’s not just seeing a movie on a screen. It’s like literally being in the movie and living that reality. Is the movie an illusion or is it real? Again, another non-existent duality for no one. (Not to invalidate them, reality and illusion are both concepts in the mind. Ultimately everything simply is.)

Watching this movie, the tragedy is experienced as if it were my own, to use traditional language… my sister missing me, my life going awry, my anger, my sadness, experienced so deeply, and yet there’s no one to experience it. That’s why it can be experienced in such a raw way.

Oddly enough, anything can be experienced without resistance and it’s okay, for there’s no one to experience it. Love or fear, it’s all just more stuff to experience. None of it is any better or worse than anything else.

Free from the illusion of actually being a character in the movie, there’s the freedom to dive into the movie fully and enjoy the heck out of the rich and juicy experience that it offers. “My” identity is no longer limited to just the movie, and that is the key. Thus the movie can be experienced, but it no longer actually limits that which I am, even if I want to experience myself as limited.

There’s no fear of experiencing life, for that which I am is beyond all experience and not subject to any experience anyways. No matter what happens, I’m safe! and it’s all good! As many have said, all is well.

Does It Matter?

You know how when you wake up in the morning after a dream, how much of what happened in that dream really matters now? There was an experience at the time, sure, and then it passed. Now it’s all just a memory at best, a wisp of your imagination.

How much of what happened in your own life years ago really matters at this point? Probably not very much.

It feels like that now. An incredibly intimate experience with what’s arising in the moment. Literally no separation, for that is impossible without a second presence to be separate from.

With no one to experience anything, paradoxically all experiences are that much closer. It’s not a “me” experiencing “something else.” There’s no duality within the infinite forms within awareness.

Acceptance and Preference

I can see the value in accepting “yourself” fully as you are and integrating the dark aspects of yourself and the light. You are the totality and can and will experience yourself in a fully integrated way. None of it is any better or worse than any other. In fact, there seems to no longer be a real preference. A superficial preference to experience love rather than fear, sure, and yet recognizing that it is all me, it’s all equally worthy and loved.

What’s more important? Your eyes or your ears? Neither. And yet as a photographer, “I” would rather use my eyes more often. A singer would likely need their ears more often. Is your leg more important than you arm? Of course not. And yet each one has its role within the totality. It’s not so much a preference. Rather, it’s that which is appropriate in the moment. Simultaneously there is full acceptance of all.

Shifting Awareness

What do you want to experience? Shift awareness to that. From a LoA sense, sure, what you focus on expands. Of course. Watching a movie, when you’re in the movie, you experience the movie as if were real. Of course you do.

Yet what’s focused on is experienced in such an intimate way when there’s no longer an intermediary called “me” between awareness and the content of awareness. Just a pure unification between content and context. No “man in the middle” if you will.

There’s really no such thing as “a person with awareness” who can interact with the world. That is simply a concept, an appearance. It’s illusory. It may look real, the way a magician’s trick may look real, but it’s not actually the case.

There is awareness. There is content arising within awareness. And the two are one. There is no separate self called a “me” happening anywhere here except in thought. And when that thought is not believed, where would the “me” go? No where. It never was, and so there is nowhere for it to go.

That which is unreal cannot be destroyed, for it never existed in the first place. It is simply recognized to be unreal, and its solidity dissolves in the seeing.

Whether a “me” exists is not primary. The focus is on awareness. Awareness which would be aware of a “me.” Awareness which is aware of awareness. THAT is the key. Awareness is the key. Awareness is the doorway. Awareness is the gate.

Awakening More Awareness

Awakened awareness seems to draw itself unto itself. I’m not sure if it awakens more awareness, aka wakes up other people, or whether other people who are primed to awaken are attracted to such an awareness, but either way, there is a sort of attraction, on a relative level, of awakeness to awakeness.

Perhaps this is a big part of why people like to see enlightened people. They talk about silent transmission between master and student, and it’s interesting to be on “the other side” of this happening. It’s not anything that’s done deliberately, but rather as an automatic byproduct of that which you are.

By analogy, it feels like you shining your light creates a space for others around you to shine theirs. The candle within your being warms the presence of others. “Oh right, warmth. Life. Fire. This is what it feels like.” And others remember how to ignite their own inner flame, their own inner awareness.

It may appear as if one flame ignites another, but a more accurate way to say this is one flame reminds another of its own inner firepower, of how it feels to be itself. One flame reminds another of its own innate warmth. It is this reminder that fans the flame of the awakening of another.