A NOTE ON WAKING UP
(The following is a reply about awakening I’d like to share with the NDL community. Have a lovely Christmas! James)
…Hi F, thanks for the note. I’ll try with words to convey the wordless; please do not read this with your mind, but with your innate knowing, like a letter from a lover who you know you have met, but forgotten – lost in the fog of getting caught up in the worlds activities.
Waking up is not a strategy. It’s not necessary to hold your arm up in the air for years, or to “do” anything (though, of course, it happens) There is no way or method to become what you already are, which is awareness. So there is no point in any form of trying or making efforts to become what you are. Dropping the question “Who am I?” deeply and sincerely into the depth of our being, can help us see for our self that we are not, and have never been, what we think we are. It’s that “aha” moment, when – suddenly or gradually – the veil is lifted on reality.
For me, there was a simple direct recognition that I am not my body and also, with that seeing, there was the realization that I am not my mind. I am not a thought or a bunch of organs. They are the human expression of something far greater – the divine, or spirit. So I am, and you are, not limited by these human aspects of our being…we are also divine…both and One. One spirit in multiple expressions.
What remains is what I am and you are – this awareness only. The body and its five senses function within this awareness, as does the mind. These six (6) senses are observed by awareness which is not personal, but intimate and affectionate – always compassionate and loving, peaceful and delighted with the simple truth of pure existence.
In other words: No James or F, no problem or limitation.
You are the same spirit. You already are awareness, so any attempts and efforts to be this, takes you away from what you are. This truth, this reality, is not some thing that can be perceived: it is lived. Spirit is alive. Everything is spirit. It is not a concept or idea, not a body or thing to be grasped or understood by the mind. Mind is binary – it conceives in twos, in either/or, right/wrong, like/dislike. Awareness has no preferences; it sets no conditions and has no expectations. It simply is.
Awareness, or being, is that which observes the mind and body, and all things, happening. It is that source which is reading this, before thought, before opinion and beliefs, before and behind the working of the six senses. We have innocently assigned our identity to the body and mind; all we need to perceive is what we are not, and seeing this falseness, what remains is what we in truth, are. So it is not useful to “try to achieve understanding” when, in fact, awareness is not an understanding or a feeling, but a seeing of reality, a being what we are – spirit.
It’s like God or Buddha, or Love, is a potter using red clay to make absolutely everything including our thoughts; everything is made of the same red clay. So, in fact, what we perceive or conceive, is entirely created by consciousness, and that which is always observing all this, is what we are – awareness. In so many words, we are aware of consciousness.
Be the uninvolved spectator of your thoughts. Leave the field and go up into the spectators chairs. Simply watch thought and feelings come and go, without judgement… let them chatter away like it is a TV or radio switched on in the corner of your awareness. Do not try to turn it off! You are the watcher. More accurately, you are the watching of all this phenomena, as and when it happens.
In this, our permanent, infinite awareness, all thoughts and body functions continue to come and go like clouds in the sky without you believing they are personally “yours”. You are the unmoved, the perceiving and constant Sun, the primary source of all that flows in consciousness.
You are loving awareness, whether there is awareness of it or not. Stop, look and listen, and this awareness – of – awareness will present itself simply and directly. And you will recognize how obvious all this is. And wonder how you ever thought you lost “contact” with that love.
Love, and Be well my friend.
James
