Essay for
Nov 2003

Awareness

There is an enormous amount of information concerning awareness. Every religion and spiritual teacher have defined the benefits of pure awareness, although not all use the same terminology. Pure awareness in the Absolute can be defined as God, Allah or Buddha; or in individual consciousness as the simplicity and purity of non-moving awareness. Everyone knows about awareness, as that is the base of individual daily existence. If individuals were not aware they would not exist. What then is this awareness that everyone has, but like the air we breathe to maintain life, is easily forgotten as it is always just there?

Awareness is simply the quietude of your mind when nothing or no mind function is moving, referred to as no-mind. When everything within is in absolute stillness, there is total awareness that rests upon nothing other than itself. Spiritual teachers and meditators point at that awareness as the peaceful and serene center of your existence, but what does that mean? It most certainly is relaxing and beneficial, as nothing is moving to cause a disturbance. You are within total rest and rest is refreshening. With nothing internally moving and your body is relaxed, the restful non-tension benefits can be many.

Besides being restful, peaceful and beneficial what else is there within awareness that causes so much attention to be on what is normal and natural? To begin it may be normal and natural, but few ever want to remain in that space for long periods of time as there is nothing to do. It is peaceful and restful, but apparently there is just so much peace and serenity one can take before requiring some internal or external input to process. Also, being in a state of absolute silent awareness is not as easy as one may believe. Random thoughts regularly drag your awareness off to play at some internal game. When you become aware of the game you bring your awareness back to silence, until the next random thought appears, and off you go again. With continual effort those silent stretches lengthen: these lengthening moments containing and revealing a feeling of something greater than just peace and serenity. It is this something greater that you may not be able to define, but can knowingly experience. It feels greater or beyond what you know yourself to be, and yet it is within. This internal experiential knowledge is the base foundation that begins to reshape your life.

The majority of that subjective experience may be difficult to objectively explain, as language likes borders to grasp hold of but pure awareness has no borders. Over time you begin to appreciate and look foreword to those peaceful and revealing moments. They almost become addictive. But that still does not answer the question why spiritual teachers constantly tell you be constantly aware. Some will go on to describe with great eloquence blissful states of communion with what they may refer to as their creator source. Whilst others receive delightful visions. But what does that do or mean? That question, if followed through to its logical end, ultimately unwinds the essence of awareness. Or, if ignored, continually perpetuates 'things attached' to or within awareness. Espousing the 'things attached' is enjoyable, as it appears to confirm that pure awareness creates a connection that is both within but still apparently beyond or outside what you feel yourself to be. In either case it does remove any sense of isolation you may have felt. But is that it, or is there more than just 'thing attached' that can unfold a deeper meaning or clarification of what awareness is?

What is it that makes pure awareness so potentially revealing? Simply that absolutely everything rises and falls within it. Within pure awareness there is no anger, lust, hate or love, just pure awareness that is pure consciousness with nothing added or no mind functions moving. That pure awareness or pure consciousness is revealing, as it is your stable or unalterable and unmoving center that everything revolves within and around. It is the center of your personal existence, as your experiencer. You cannot shut it off, unless you go to sleep. Then you are experiencing nothing or you are a non-experiencer. Where has your awareness gone when you are asleep or experiencing nothing? The bottom of that question unveils the essence of your existence. Consciousness as your experiencer unwinds back to the absolute purity of primordial awareness where nothing is experienced. But pure awareness still exists, now as primordial awareness that is not an experiencer, or is experiencing nothing. When pure individual consciousness knowingly experiences or unwinds into the essence of primordial awareness, existence expands beyond descriptive language into the language of metaphors, similes and paradoxes, exposing the living heart of creation.

Your pure experiencer, awareness or consciousness has no likes or dislikes, no aversion and no desires. It is absolutely neutral. This unveils the obvious that something within your awareness creates what you love or have an aversion to. And it is this something else that you refer to as yourself, which is once removed from your pure awareness. The something else is an addition: a self-creation arising upon pure consciousness awareness that rises and falls within it, and upon demand.

Your life revolves around this addition and is ultimately controlled by it, and yet you may have little experiential knowledge of how that addition was created, why it apparently controls and what it controls. It is the addition that creates your aversions and your loves, while pure awareness just remains as it always has, apparently unconcerned with what you do with it or create with it. Your pure awareness allows you unconditional use, allowing you to create the conditions that you then impose upon yourself, normally as some form of security. This, of course, is ignoring the absolute security that exists within pure awareness. Being once removed from pure awareness, and ignoring the unconditional security it offers, you use the addition to hunt for security in the transitory world you live within. Being once removed separates you from what is natural and normal. The addition is hunting, for what it naturally has, in a world that cannot provide it, except in transitory fashion. And the transitory will always threaten any security you may discover there.

Back to the beginning, why study awareness? Because that is your unmoving, unalterable center that contains all there is. Studying awareness exposes the addition as a created illusion that controls your life without you even being aware of the controlling entrapment. When you experientially know the illusion, then pure awareness — the base of your existence — comes under investigation. Studying awareness brings you back to where you began, with nothing added. Your investigation then takes on an intensity to discover or uncover what is this awareness that never seems to alter, but is simply always there.

It is here within the depth of awareness that you can expose how your consciousness awareness operates and functions. Consciousness is you, and you have all the tools to discover how you work. This becomes the exposure of your consciousness construction. That construction is self-referential allowing you to create the controlling addition: an illusion that you think or believe you are. That construction is the framework of your existence. Without knowing that construction, all your discovers will be placed into created or adopted constructs or beliefs that will be in opposition to another's constructs or beliefs, potentially creating and recreating endless cycles of conflict and violence, which is of course counter to your security. As consciousness is self-referential the addition or illusion equally becomes self-referential, and the transitory world feeds the illusion to maintain it. It is total entrapment.

Without having clarity of consciousness construction knowledge the addition will hang on to everything your awareness experiences, claiming it as its own and using it for its own purposes, continually inflating itself by that knowledge. It goes nowhere and does nothing beyond self-indulgence, potentially leading into self-destruction. But if you can place your discovers into a consciousness construction framework you can experientially know that those same discoveries will confirm your eternal existence in such intense clarity of knowing that it is irrefutable. The sense of separation that the addition creates is gone, as now there is a personally discoverable connection to the source of your existence, that is within as your awareness. That form of knowing is personal and can only be pointed at, but never explained. If explained, the explaining takes you one step beyond what is explained, and the explanation is easily lost in knowing the words and not the experience.

Knowing or studying your awareness unwinds your existence into experientially knowable components that are your tools to know the experience. Knowing how those components function creates clarity in what they produce. That clarity removes the created illusion that controlled you, and your life perpetually exists within experiential knowing that far exceeds the simple form of restful peace that you have discovered in the beginning.

If you do not study awareness you will forever be trapped by the addition-illusion without even being aware of the entrapment. This is a travesty as the addition sucks the life out of your life, creating a withered replica in place of what you could have been. And what could have been, strangely enough is what you already are: pure consciousness awareness. It is a delightful paradox of dying to discover life.

RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE