1. AWARENESS AND EXPERIENCING
There is what is ‘going on’right now, all that you are experiencing and whatever it is you are doing, thinking, feeling, saying etc. And there is the awareness of what is going on –the awareness of all you are experiencing and whatever it is you are doing, thinking, feeling, saying etc. This awareness embraces not just what is happening in the here and now but its larger where and larger when – the overall situation and larger life context within which it is going on, goes on, and out of which it is emerging. Ultimately this awareness is a divine-universal awareness embracing and pervading all of space and time.
To ‘meditate’ is to give ourselves time to identify with the pure AWARENESS of all that we are experiencing – all that is ‘going on’ – and not with any element or aspect of it.
That is why the truly aware person does not think to themselves ‘I think this’ or ‘I feel that’ but rather‘There is an awareness in me of this thought’ or ‘There is an awareness in me of this feeling’. Thus they would not think ‘I feel glad’ or ‘I feel sad’ but rather ‘There is an awareness of gladness in me’ or ‘There is an awareness of sadness in me’.
The first thing a truly aware person does if they feel even the slightest sense of physical, emotional or mental discomfort or ‘dis-ease’ is to not to seek to distract themselves from it or give it less awareness but, on the contrary to give it more awareness - full awareness – feeling it as pure quality of bodily sensation. Only in this way can they come to identify with the pure awareness of the discomfort or dis-ease rather than identifying – unawares –with that discomfort or dis-ease.
2. AWARENESS IS INNATELY THOUGHT-FREE
We do not need to effortfully ‘empty’, ‘clear’, ‘free’ or ‘purify’ our minds of thoughts in order to enjoy a meditative space of pure thought-free awareness.
That is because the awareness of a thought is not itself a thought - and thus innately thought-free.
The awareness of a thought or of any ‘thing’ – whether a sensation or perception, emotion or impulse, need or desire, impulse or action - is not itself a thought or any thing, and therefore innately thought-free and thing-free.
AWARENESS as such, being distinct in principle from each and every element of our experience, each and every ‘thing’ we are aware of, is innately thought- and thing-free. That is why AWARENESS is FREEDOM.
3. Everything is an Awareness
A sensation or perception, need or desire, thought or feeling for example, is not simply something we are aware OF. It is itself an AWARENESS of something or someone else.
Similarly, things in the crude sense are not mere insentient objects. A rock or tree too, is not just something we are aware OF. Instead it IS an awareness in its own right. Cells, molecules atoms and particles of all shapes and forms are expressions of patterns of cellular, molecular and atomic AWARENESS, each with its own particle nature or particularity.
The most self-evident empirical and scientific ‘fact’ is not the objective EXISTENCE of things but a (subjective) AWARENESS of them. The most basic fact of individual life is not our own existence or being but an intimate and primordial AWARENESS of being.
4. 'God' IS Awareness
What we call ‘God’ is not a supreme being ‘with’ awareness. Instead God IS awareness - an awareness absolute and unbounded, one that is not the private property of any being but the Divine source of all beings. All things and all beings are a part of God - unique, individualised portions of the Divine Universal Awareness that IS God.
5. awareness has no ‘causes’ or ‘explanations’
To seek the cause of ‘consciousness’ or ‘awareness’ in the body or brain is like seeking the ‘cause’ of a dream and of dreaming as such, in some particular thing we happen to dream of. Awareness cannot – in principle – be explained by or reduced to the property or product of any thing we are aware of, whether awake or dreaming.
6. Awareness is not our private property
Awareness is no more private property than space or time. Yet both science and religion are permeated by the unquestioned assumption that awareness is the PRIVATE PROPERTY of individual persons or beings - human or divine – or else the mere PRODUCT of some ‘thing’ such as the body and brain.
7. Awareness as 1stPrinciple of All That Is
The Awareness Principle is the recognition that AWARENESS as such (‘pure awareness’) IS the 1st principle of the universe – the ultimate reality behind and within all things. That is because awareness as such cannot– IN PRINCIPLE – be reduced to or explained by anything we are aware OF. For awareness AS SUCH is the pre-condition or ‘field condition’ for our consciousness OF anything at all.
8. Space & TIME
What we are aware of as space is but a spacious field OF AWARENESS - one unrestricted and unbound by anything we are aware of within it.
SPACE IS CO-PRESENCE OF PHENOMENA IN A FIELD OF AWARENESS.
TIME IS THE PRESENCING OF PHENOMENA IN THE FIELD OF AWARENESS WE CALL ‘SPACE’.
‘Time’ is the non-extensional SPACE of awareness, more or less contracted, pressured and stressed, that we feel within the Moment.
‘Space’ is the extensional TIME we give ourselves to open up and expand the freedom and spaciousness of the awareness we feel in the Moment.
Only by giving ourselves TIME TO BE AWARE can we expand the TIME-SPACE of our awareness and breathe freely within it – giving ourselves ‘breathing space’.
EXPANDING THE SPACIOUSNESS OF OUR AWARENESS ALLOWS US TO BREATHE THE VITALITY OF AWARENESS THAT FILLS SPACE.
9. AWARENESS IS VITAL AIR AND BREATH
SENSING THAT WITH EACH BREATH YOU ARE BREATHING IN THROUGH YOUR ENTIRE BODY SURFACE, YOU ARE ABLE TO ABSORB AND FEEL THIS VITALITY FILLING YOU.
Whether we call it PRANA, CHI, KI or REIKI this subtle ‘energy’ is nothing but the immanent vitality of pure awareness as such, present throughout space. Only one method of breathing allows us to instantly draw this spiritual vitality into our body – by sensing the infinity of cosmic space around us and feeling as if we are drawing or ‘breathing’ its vitality in through our entire body surface - that is to say, through every pore of our skin and into every cell of our body.
The skin is our principal organ of respiration. That is why no method of breathing involving only the inner anatomical organs of breath – nose, mouth, diaphragm and lungs can draw on the vitality of pure awareness that surrounds us as space.
10. The egoic ‘I’ SUBStiTUTES FOR AWARENESS
Through the use of the single word 'I' - indeed in the very act of uttering it in speech, the ego seizes upon, grasps and appropriates all experiencing as its own personal private property - saying to itself and others: "I think this" or "I feel that”. The ego’s delusion of owning its experience is the essential block to higher awareness known in the yogic tradition as Anavamala. In owning or appropriating all experiencing for itself, the ego both traps our everyday self in identification with 'its' personal experiencing, and expropriates that experiencing from that trans-personal awareness that is its divine source - and the ultimate experiencer.
That is why if, when instead of thinking:
"'I' think/feel/sense this or that” or we say to ourselves:
"There is an awareness of thinking/feeling/sensing this."
In this way we prevent the egoic 'I' from owning or appropriating experience as its private property and recognise awareness itself and as such as the sole experiencer of all that can be experienced.
‘Enlightenment’ is not the destruction of the ego as such but transcendence of the PROPRIETORIAL or POSSESSIVE ego – that ‘I’ which takes conscious experiencing as its ‘own’ activity, takes all experiences as its private property– and treats ‘its’ body and brain as a material ‘means of production’ of experience.
Out of this trans-personal awareness of experiencing comes an entirely new experience of awareness and an entirely new experience of self - an experience of that Self that is awareness and of that awareness which is our deepest Self - identical with the Divine. The liberated ego no longer immediately seizes upon, grasps, owns and ‘appropriates’its experiencing as ‘our’ own. Instead it is itself ‘enowned’ -reowned and reappropriated by that trans-personal awareness which is our divine Self.
THE LIBERATED EGO OR ‘I’KNOWS ITSELF SOLELY AS A MINDER OR ‘CARETAKER’ OF THAT AWARENESS OUT OF WHICH ALL EXPERIENCING ARISES - NOT ITS OWNER OR 'SUBJECT'.
The higher truth is that it is not 'we' that experience or 'have' experiences, nor ‘we’ that experience or 'have' a self. Instead all experiencing, including our self-experience, belongs to and arises from the Divine Awareness - as
ITSself-expression and ITS self-experience. To be able, in everyday speech and communication, to utter the word 'I' in this sense - from out of an awareness transcending it - is the highest and most demanding accomplishment in the Practice of Awareness that is The New Yoga of Awareness.
11. FREEDOM IS AWARE ACTION
Free action is aware action because only out of awareness comes mindfulness of more than one possible action and free choice between them.
Every single thing you do without first giving time to be aware of what else you might best do at this time, how else or in what other manner you might best do it, and when else might be the best time to do it – every such act is an unaware and unfree act.
Unaware action is unfree action because it does not come out of an awareness of alternative ‘whats’, ‘hows’ and ‘whens’ - and therefore is not an act of free choice but rather one determined solely by ego or impulse.
12. AWARE ACTION IS RIGHT ACTION
Aware action is right action because it comes from giving ourselves time to weigh up and feel out the rightness of different possible actions in awareness– and let awareness decide rather than ego or impulse. Action positively‘decided’ by the ego without meditative awareness is itself mere reaction to external events and surrender to inner impulses.
Whether we act impulsively, ‘in the heat of the moment’, or use reason to coolly rationalise our actions, makes no difference. For if we do act and speak without meditative awareness and mindfulness of alternative possible deeds and words, all our actions remain unaware, unfree and purely reactive. Unaware, un-pre-meditated actions are like actions engaged in ‘spontaneously’ in a dream– without the lucidity and freedom of choice that comes from awareness that we are dreaming.
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