Awareness

All-inclusive, ever-changing completeness

When we look back (or deep inside) with open attention to find what it is to which the word “I” most fundamentally refers, we find nothing at all—no center, no subject, no little entity, no thinker authoring our thoughts, no chooser making our choices, no doer behind the doing, no observer. And yet this center-less no-thing is not a dead nihilistic void, but rather, a generative emptiness brimming with absolutely everything! This everything is infinitely diverse and varied while also being seamless and undivided. Prior to our name and everything we’ve learned second-hand, the “I” to which we all refer turns out to be the no-thing-ness (or emptiness) of everything, the nondual wholeness that has no opposite, the awaring presence being and beholding it all—the open, unconditioned spaciousness and freedom Here-Now that is without limits.

Relatively speaking, we have the everyday reality I call the movie of waking life. But we can come to realize the non-substantiality of it, the thoroughgoing impermanence in which no “thing” ever actually forms, the dream-like nature of everything that seems to be happening, the absence of any actual separation, the seamless unicity in which everything belongs. We can come to recognize that no-thing is everything, and everything is no-thing. (Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.) This doesn’t invalidate everyday life—in fact, it sees the sacred in all of it. But it doesn’t take the storylines so seriously or so personally. It recognizes that what “I” truly is, is vastly more than a character in a movie. “I” is no-thing at all. But it’s not nothing.

This whole magic show is self-aware. Awareness is the light behind attention, the wholeness in multiplicity, the listening presence that we are. Awareness says YES to everything. Like unconditional love, it resists nothing and clings to nothing. It sees only itself everywhere, in everything. It is a felt-sense of openness, spaciousness, vastness, emptiness, inclusivity, acceptance, completeness, wholeness, freedom from all limitation or constraint. It is boundless and limitless and yet also most intimate, closer than close. Awareness is the light that illuminates everything, the light that everything is, the space that allows everything to be as it is. It is unconditioned, free from all habitual patterns, so it has space for the new and unexpected to emerge. Awareness is infinite possibility and potential. It is the groundless ground, the essential nature of all experiencing, and it is what remains in deep sleep when everything perceivable, conceivable and experienceable has disappeared. It is pure magic.

The deepest truth is not in any of these words. It is in the openness, the freedom and love to which they point, the silence, the stillness, the listening presence that is free of all ideas. It is right here in the aliveness of being. This self-aware intelligence-energy, this primordial light is shining forth everywhere as everything. And every thing in this magic show is vanishing as soon as it appears—it has no actual substance or persistence. The only continuity is in the no-thing-ness, the seamless awaring presence, and that is not a thing apart from what appears. There really are no “things” in the way we imagine.

Feel what is being pointed to here, don’t think about it. Let all the words go. In simply being here, wordlessly attentive to the living actuality, this all becomes clear and obvious, and all our problems and conundrums dissolve—until we start thinking about all of it, trying to figure it out. And then suddenly it all seems very confusing. We seem to shrink down into the sense of being an encapsulated, separate entity. Something seems to be missing. There is a sense of unease, contraction, straining to get something or to have some experience other than the one we are having. We puzzle and argue over words and try to reconcile seemingly contradictory pointers. We compare one teaching to another. We think and think and think, trying to sort it all out. And all the while, the peace, the relief and the joy we are seeking is right here. It has never been absent. But we overlook it. We turn away from it.

Awakening is always NOW, and it’s simply about seeing how we turn away, how we get lost in thought, how we seem to become a separate somebody—noticing all this as it happens. And in the noticing, there is the possibility of letting go, falling open into the utter simplicity of what is.

Love to all….