By John Astin,
http://www.johnastin.com/blo
Awareness is Experience
Published on May 23, 2016, by admin in Uncategorized.
In many teachings, an emphasis is placed on “recognizing” or “resting
as” awareness. In this modeling of reality, awareness (i.e., that which
knows) is portrayed as a special, separate privileged domain apart from,
untouched by and free from its perceived content (what’s known).
However, this purported separation is simply not the case, at least not
experientially.
In direct experience, awareness and phenomena never
appear alone but always co-occur. The perceiver and perceived always
arise together and therefore represent a singular movement or reality.
They arrive as a package deal. There is never actually a perceived
object without a subject that perceives it, nor a perceiver without
something being perceived. While the two (perceiver and perceived,
subject and object) appear separate and distinguishable, in point of
fact, they can never be teased apart. The subject literally depends upon
the object for its existence and vice versa, awareness and its content,
each known by the presence of the other.
Now some teachings will
claim that there exists a domain of “pure” awareness, an awareness that
has no phenomenal content in it. However, a content-less or object-less
awareness is really an abstraction for in order to exist as an
actuality, awareness must be experienced. And the moment it is
experienced, that experience (of awareness) becomes the content of
awareness. It may be an exceedingly subtle, barely perceptible content.
But it’s still content, still experience, still an “object” of awareness
that is known, even if that object is awareness itself.
From this
vantage, we can say that to experience anything is to experience
awareness (i.e., the faculty of knowing or perceiving) for awareness is
inseparable from whatever is being experienced. They are one and the
same reality. And because experiencing never comes to a stop (i.e., it’s
continuous), recognizing awareness must also by definition be
uninterrupted. In other words, there’s no need to try to sustain
awareness for awareness is self-sustaining as the flow of experiencing
itself, a flow that is always happening!
And so there is no actual
place to go to “find” something called awareness that we can rest in, no
need to quiet or stop thinking in order to recognize awareness.
Awareness is simply this, this perception, this thought, this feeling,
this sensation, this present experience. After all, what else could
awareness possibly be?
This
Published on April 22, 2018, by admin in Uncategorized.
Spiritual traditions tend to speak about awareness and its content
(experience) as two distinct domains. And while there is often an
acknowledgement that these are really just two sides of the same
indescribable non-dual coin, most traditions tend to emphasize this
distinction, pointing again and again to the ever-present
knowing/cognizing that underlies every momentary experience.
However, as powerful as this awareness-based emphasis can be, what I and
others I’ve worked with invariably bump up against is that the
recognition of awareness seems to come and go; sometimes it feels as if
it is being recognized but sometimes not. And then whenever it seemed as
if it has slipped away, there is this understandable effort to
re-capture or re-recognize awareness.
But some years ago, it began
to dawn on me; the experiences I was labeling as “awareness being
absent” were actually 100% present. What is thought of as the
non-recognition of awareness is simply another experience that is being
recognized! Whatever we might call it—experience, reality,
existence—something is always present even if that which is present is
constantly slipping away, constantly morphing, constantly refreshing
itself. This presence, let’s call it experiencing itself, never goes
away. Sometimes it appears as awareness recognizing its ever-present
nature; sometimes it shows up as awareness seemingly slipping away. But
the experiencing is relentless.
And so in large part because of
this, I find myself in my teaching emphasizing the experience side of
the non-dual coin. I point to the fact that experiencing itself never
turns off and that this ever-present, unstoppable flow of experiencing
is actually the revelation of awareness. Two sides of a single coin,
awareness and experience.
I find my favorite word to point to this
singularity is This. Just This. This momentary flash that dissolves no
sooner than it appears. This that is ever-present yet in constant flux.
This that can never disappear and yet is constantly disappearing. This
that cannot be characterized and yet appears as all characterizations.
There are no words for This, no finite descriptions or pointers that
could ever hope to capture Its infinite, unresolvable, indescribable
nature. This, just This, This constancy that appears as all
discontinuity and change…
Part of the challenge in talking about
this is that when we hear words such as awareness or the ground of
being, we imagine these are pointing to some dimension of reality that
is distinct from other dimensions. In other words, if we have a term for
something (awareness, ground of being), that MUST mean there is
something that is distinct from the reality that word or phrase is
pointing to. Otherwise, why even have the words in the first place!
It’s like the word God; the very existence of the word suggests there is
something other than whatever entity or being or presence of divinity
that word is referring to. But really, there is no God because there is
ONLY God! From this vantage, all words are effectively synonyms for the
same “thing.” Sorrow, joy, recognition, non-recognition, self, no-self,
clarity, confusion… all the display of This.
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