awareness

Awareness is the key to transformation: awareness of oneself; awareness of one’s mind; and also awareness of the present moment, of the sensations, the senses that are being received in this moment.

Ordinarily, our mind plays tricks on us. It is rather cunning in its ways; with layer upon layer of unconscious processes; with a mayhem of conflicting motives and desires, some known, some unknown. You know it all: the projections, seeing things in others that we do not want to see in our ourself; the self-justification with post hoc reasoning, believing we did something for a reason that was not there until after the event. All sorts of nonsense is going on inside our mind ordinarily.

Dropping judgement of ourself and others; bringing some stillness into our life; perhaps simplifying it in some ways; we can begin to shine the light of our own awareness on the machinations of the mind. In this way, we become detached from that crazed process of thinking. Slowly, by and by, we begin to see the truth that underlies the falsities of the thinking mind.

We can shine the same light of intense awareness – unmoving, neither grasping nor rejecting – we can shine this same light onto our senses, onto what we are perceiving in the moment: the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the touch sensations which are coming to us; the feelings within the body, the sensations of energy.

This awareness can come to hold our energy, our feeling of ourself. In this way a detachment comes and an equanimity to all that is. Then we can look deeper into ourself and, with that same awareness, get closer and closer to our centre; until we become just that awareness alone, consciousness. By and by, the separate witness melts away, leaving only the undivided universal consciousness, utterly still, silent, infinite and yet, holding the potential of all of existence. The way to this – our home – the way is through awareness.