Living in Awareness
We think we are our experiences, aspirations, thoughts and feelings. We identify with this accumulated knowledge.
Together with what’s happening in our lives right now, we have thoughts and feelings leading to desires. To have something leading to more joy. For example, a want to lose negativity, guilt, shame, a want to have more money, love, happiness. Even to say: I want to just go with the flow and be at Peace, is a thought, a desire. Even the seeking for Enlightenment or Awakening is a desire, a human emotion.
By internally expressing and voicing our emotions, we crystallise these thoughts and feelings into things. We objectify our thoughts and feelings from fleeting energy into long-lived mental concepts which we treat as Our Truth, Our Reality. We then have to manage all these mental material as our Emotional Baggage.
When Life bangs against Our Truth, Our Reality — we suffer. Can you see how all this effort to want and to avoid, leads to suffering? And then we try to avoid our suffering through enormous emotionally stressful efforts eg 24x7 careers, excessive eating, obsessive exercise, procrastination, religious prayer and conformity, education of yet more knowledge, toxic love, being a doormat to our loved ones etc. We set up boundaries, control our triggers, seek validation with others especially online such as on Facebook. We march to religion and spirituality to get in touch with God, Allah, Vishnu, Archangel Michael, Pachamama etc.
Worse still: Seeking answers from suffering, leads to yet more suffering.
All the above because Life bangs against our long-lived mental concepts of Our Truth, Our Reality.
Welcome to your Ego, my friend.
Yet we can’t just dump the process above as that’s human nature. It’s how we’ve been programmed. As the Buddha said: Life is Suffering. That doesn’t mean we should kill ourselves (though that’s the tragic path for some tragic few).
The key observations of the above are that:
1. We identify with these accumulated thoughts and feelings and experiences and aspirations. Because that is who we think we are! We identify with Ego.
2. We turned thoughts/feelings into something “real” by labelling them with words (for example, used the words “guilt” , “shame”, “awakening” etc for the thoughts of guilt, shame and awakening etc).
Words are labels. The word “cat” is a label for the animal, a cat. They are ideas. The words “stabbing device” can mean a knife or a pencil. They have changeable subjective meaning when applied to concepts. What does “love” mean to you? Words are pointers to Facts, but words are not facts. Through our inner-voice, our minds are often overwhelmed by these words.
Fact is Truth. Unambiguous knowing which paradoxically often can not be defined by words! Furthermore, this Truth doesn’t have to be experienced! To experience means an Experiencer experiencing a thing. When that experience is labelled it becomes a concept an idea which can exist on its own. If the Thing can’t be labelled hence identified then can it be experienced? Hence, can it be known through the way the our Minds like to operate? (The answer is no and no).
This is why our Minds shirk paradoxes and absurdities. Because the Truth cannot be expressed. But you can be aware of the Truth. Awareness which is known but without labelling, expression or conscious experience leading to direct knowledge.
Consider the statement of the thought: “I feel unworthy”. It is an idea. An abstraction. I can play with the meaning of the label “Worth” as applied to my situation. This play is a rabbit hole leading to a maze which taxes our emotional energy.
Now consider: “I am aware, that I feel unworthy” is a Fact. This is because the statement is an observation, not a judgement. There’s no dispute, no need to investigate further. No more wasted emotional energy. Please try this for yourself. What you will notice is that the thought “I feel unworthy” will dissipate. Like a passing cloud. That thought was an illusion. Yet Awareness remains! I repeat: The thoughts change yet Awareness remains.
But earlier we said that Ego is our thoughts/feelings on accumulated experiences & aspirations etc etc. If the thought is a passing illusion then what’s Ego? Answer: Ego is an illusion.
But if I have identified with Ego and Ego is an illusion, what then? Answer: The “you” is the label of your Ego. Your “Ego” is a label to your illusive thoughts/feelings.
Then if I am not the Ego then who am I?
Answer: The choice (the only choice) is simple: Does one identify with their bodymind ego or do they identify with the Awareness? This is not a fair question becuase you have no choice: You are already the Awareness.
Awareness, the non-judgemental, timeless, loving observer. Yet Awareness, is self-aware. There is no separation of Observer and the Observed because the Observed is just a thought. Everything happening externally and internally is simply the process of Life. The wondrous beautiful intricate interconnected Flow of Life that the Universe is a Happening, through your bodymind being.
What happens next?
Answer: Immediately nothing outwardly. But internally, we are at peace. We continue to live yet we are unrestricted and without emotional efforting. We can fully utilise the skills and experience Life has given us so far. We can relax into this action, be joyful that the Universe is in control. Even Death of our bodymind is a non-event, since we as the Universe are timeless.
Bills to pay. Children to grow. Relationships to cultivate. Art to create. Careers to build. Finances to secure. Dreams to realise…these are all plays of the Universe, God, Allah, Brahma, call It what you will….which we as the Awareness, can observe. Because we are the Universe, aware of itself and Love is the result.
Rumi: I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.
Amen. Inshallah. Jai Shree Krishna. Peace.
🤗 ❤️ 🙏
