Hi DAPA,
Sorry for my late reply, I only just saw your comments. Thanks, I'm pleased you enjoyed the writing.
quote:
Everything that arises, arises and subsides in awareness, awareness does not arise nor subside, it is the only thing that is constant and it is the true self.
I believe I can be able to be aware of awareness,,, but I can't, it would just be another object within awareness ? Awareness isn't an object so it can not be experienced, it is what is experiencing ? As long as I am looking for some sort of experience (a deep seated habit) I will overlook this most obvious thing.
Exactly, you are absolutely clear here.
quote:
How then is it possible that you and others experience yourselves to be pure awareness ?
The answer here is, this is where practices that cultivate inner silence and practices that utilize inner silence for the purpose of self-inquiry come in.
Here are descriptions of three states:
1. Duality, Identification: I, a physical body, experience an external world. There is me (inside), and world (outside).
Characteristic: There's identification with the body/mind, which is taken to be one's self.
2. The Witness: I, awareness, or pure consciousness, Always Present, Always Now, Timeless, stand unaffected, as sense perceptions, thoughts (including memories) and emotions seemingly create an experience of a person, moving through time and space.
Characteristic: The sense of a 'me' has dissolved. Identification is instead with the pure consciousness itself. Reality is seen as an arising within consciousness.
3. Non-dual: It's hard to speak too much of this, particularly as I only really glimpse the non-dual. But the subtle duality of witnessed/witness goes.
quote:
How then is it possible that you and others experience yourselves to be pure awareness ?
So the clear answer is thus.
First inner silence is cultivated. It is cultivated through meditation. Have you had the experience where in the midst of a thought stream, perhaps one that's not entirely pleasant, you suddenly 'wake up' out of being lost in it, realizing you are simply witnessing that thought stream? Identification with it suddenly ceases. Maybe a pleasant sense of freedom arises. You come back into the Now. I expect you almost certainly have. This is in fact, a mini-awakening, a mini-dropping away of the identification with form, and a direct product of inner silence.
Inner silence is like an acidic rain, washing away the bonds of identification with form, and the related suffering. But Self-Inquiry can be like a pick axe, where a few hard strikes lead to a collapse of the entire structure (if inner silence has weakened the structure enough to precipitate a collapse).
So secondly, meditative self-inquiry may be deployed. This is where an investigation, undergone with genuine curiosity (instead of result-seeking), such as What Am I? May be useful. Am I a thought? Am I thought that says I'm the thinker of thoughts? Am I sensation? Am I an emotion? Am I the concept of a person held in the mind? Am I this sense of being a "me"? Am I this emotionally charged belief which insists I am this or that object?
There tends to occur a point, where suddenly one realizes, ah-ha! Even this sense of a 'me' is simply another object, arising to the Self, Awareness. Then one is no longer caught up in identification with this sense of 'me', realizing it to be simply another object. Then the sense of me can tend to go away, it's been seen as illusory. A lot of good stuff can happen here, particularly a dramatic decrease of fear and suffering. I'm no longer an object, which lives and inevitably dies, I no longer have to take life personally.
There is also a third technique: Becoming aware of being aware.
quote:
"What you need is to be aware of being aware" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
seems contradictory to me. Can attention rest upon awareness and make that which is experiencing experienced ?
"Can attention rest upon awareness?" It's a good question. Can it? Try to direct your attention to awareness.
The whole process: Conceiving of this thing called awareness, trying to direct attention towards it - this is just another experience which arises to awareness, is it not?
So technically, no. Attention can only go towards objects. The experience of attention going towards objects, is itself an object of experience, of which the experiencer is awareness.
But there's something beautiful about this realization, because in realizing the un-graspability of awareness, we are causing ourselves to remember and become aware of its presence. We are observing it, in a manner of speaking, or it is observing our attempt to observe it, and our knowing of this is increasing our awareness of awareness's presence. Here's another way to recognize the present of awareness.
Slowly, meditatively, walk up and down with your eyes closed. Notice how physical/body sensations seem to move and change. Notice how sounds seem to move and change. Ask yourself: Does awareness, to which these sensations/sounds/thoughts arise move or change?
In this way, we don't exactly come to rest attention on awareness as an object (for this isn't exactly possible), but instead we continually come into the remembrance of the presence of a witnessing subject, noticing that even that remembrance is an object witnessed by the witnessing subject. Awareness becoming aware that it's aware.
As we increasingly come into the remembrance of the presence of a witnessing subject, identification retracts and dissolves, and the suffering and heaviness that came with it.
In this way we become aware of being aware, and the nature of experience changes from 1. Regular Duality to 2. Self-realization/freedom from identification with form. Now this is not to be done forcefully or mechanically. It's a very subtle meditative process, requiring sensitivity. The kind of sensitivity that only comes from inner silence.
What happens is we fall in love with awareness. We love to know to it's always there, effortlessly witnessing experience. We love to simply rest in that witnessing. We become less inclined to engage in identifying with the mind and all its worries and stories, they don't really concern us anymore. It becomes an absolute joy to remember the presence of a witnessing subject, no longer seemingly having an attention which is always drawn outwards towards objects, promoting a sense of separation.
This remembrance of the presence of a witnessing subject becomes stronger and stronger, until it becomes almost constant. It becomes very hard to get identified with thoughts, like the types of thought that make us feel worry and stress. Sometimes the sense of me, as a physical object, dissolves altogether. And so on, it just gets deeper. Remembering the presence of the impersonal, witnessing subject, in a ripe practitioner, tends to provoke some deep states of samadhi. Yet at the same time, our attention isn't caught up in attachment to these states, because they are objects of experience, and we are too caught up in a flow of love and remembrance of the witnessing subject, to be too concerned about or interested in temporary experiences.
The whole process of self-inquiry and recognizing the presence of awareness should be like a love affair.
If life draws you towards this love affair, I suggest some teachers like Bentinho, Rupert Spira and Greg Goode. Anything which brings you back to this remembrance of a witnessing subject.
This bentinho video is a good place to start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KpyQc5kvMThe most beautiful thing about this: Awareness is the concept which ends concepts. It's almost a sort of self-destruct program for the mind. The guides to meditation ranging from the "Be still and know that I AM God" to "get in touch with your inner self", "be present", "cultivate stillness" and such expressions are rather ineffable.
They are useful when you start out. Something in your intuition says "there's something in this!". The problem is, the mind conceives of some object - a state of presence, a feeling of inner stillness, ecstatic bliss (etc) and says "Ah! This is what I need!" And reaches out towards it. Or it can say, I haven't got this! I'm not present/I don't have inner stillness etc. Now all objects/experiences, like feeling stillness, joy or bliss, are temporary.
Desiring subtle objects such as greater inner stillness or ecstatic bliss can be quite good. If it leads to regular practice, it's probably quite helpful! That's why Yogani's encouragement to practice because it naturally improves life is a true and good encouragement. Practice does free you! It works!
But it can be an imbalance: as we keep desiring these objects, we become a spiritual seeker or spiritual control freak. Always trying to cultivate and maintain states, which by their very nature, are impermanent.
Anything which can be experienced is impermanent. So instead, desire inverts, and failing to be satisfied with temporary spiritual experiences, we start loving and constantly remembering the only permanent aspect of experience: the witnessing subject, which itself is not an experience or an object. Rather it is the knower of experiences and objects.
"That which the mind cannot know, but by which the mind knows, know that alone to be Brahman. Brahman is not that being which is worshipped of men.
That which the eye cannot see, but by which the eye sees, know that alone to be Brahman. Brahman is not that being which is worshipped of men.
That which the ear cannot hear, but by which ear hears, know that alone to be Brahman. Brahman is not the being which is worshipped of men. "CONSCIOUSNESS!And then the mind ceases conceiving of spiritual objects it needs to be satisfied, and instead wakes up to the remembrance of what is already, always here, the witness of the search.
Love,
Josh
