Is there any moment during the day or night that you are not aware? Is there any activity during your daily chores that is not performed in awareness? Do you need to go to church, the ashram, or the temple to be in awareness? No you do not.
To be in meditation day and night there is only one thing you need to do, be mindful that all your doing is in awareness. Mostly we do our chores routinely and unconsciously. It is no different than our breathing, which we can do consciously or unconsciously. Simply be aware of your movements, your thoughts and consider if any could be outside of awareness.
To be in meditation at any time, simply be mindful of that activity being in awareness. Every motion, every feeling, every thought is in awareness. Notice that you are that awareness.
The preacher, the priest, the guru is no closer to awareness than the householder or the street urchin. All are being and doing in awareness. Where could awareness go? It is closer than your breathing and you're seeing, your thoughts and feelings.
If you do this faithfully, a time will come when you see that the person you appear to be is an appearance, an object, in awareness. When you are conscious of this, you know, and you know that you know.
Since all beings are objects in awareness, and you are aware, can you be anything other than that awareness? When you drop your body, only an object has been removed, you, awareness, go nowhere. You were not the doer, ever, but you were always aware.
Be awareness itself in your doing. Your daily chores will then be the meditation that brings you to realization. The coverings of being this or that can be seen through. You are that awareness whatever position or station you may have in life, and none is greater than another. There is nothing more to realization than knowing, I am that awareness.
To be in meditation day and night there is only one thing you need to do, be mindful that all your doing is in awareness. Mostly we do our chores routinely and unconsciously. It is no different than our breathing, which we can do consciously or unconsciously. Simply be aware of your movements, your thoughts and consider if any could be outside of awareness.
To be in meditation at any time, simply be mindful of that activity being in awareness. Every motion, every feeling, every thought is in awareness. Notice that you are that awareness.
The preacher, the priest, the guru is no closer to awareness than the householder or the street urchin. All are being and doing in awareness. Where could awareness go? It is closer than your breathing and you're seeing, your thoughts and feelings.
If you do this faithfully, a time will come when you see that the person you appear to be is an appearance, an object, in awareness. When you are conscious of this, you know, and you know that you know.
Since all beings are objects in awareness, and you are aware, can you be anything other than that awareness? When you drop your body, only an object has been removed, you, awareness, go nowhere. You were not the doer, ever, but you were always aware.
Be awareness itself in your doing. Your daily chores will then be the meditation that brings you to realization. The coverings of being this or that can be seen through. You are that awareness whatever position or station you may have in life, and none is greater than another. There is nothing more to realization than knowing, I am that awareness.
9 comments:
Thanks again Maury, I've saved a few pages off your blog, I like to go back and read them again time to time. This page is another one.
Sean
So nice to hear that, Sean. Every writer likes acknowledgment now and then. Maury
Did self-realization happen for you also with noticing everything appearing in awareness?
I've had experiences where everything literally felt as one. It was myself coming toward me from across the street, and myself going into a theater down the street. Those experiences are significant and they point to the truth, but they do not last. They are more like a very direct message of the truth. For me, realization is the point at which one understands and is convinced that all is one, and is an appearance in consciousness. When this occurs, it doesn't matter what experience one is having, the knowledge stays firm.
I see!
But did you "get" this permanent knowledge by practicing so called resting as awareness, seeing yourself in awareness during activity?
Or did it happen to you by some other way?
No. As many have said, you don't have to practice resting in awareness because you are already in awareness. This is why they call it a "realization." You realize something that is already the case.
Say you wake up in the morning and you want to work on your yard. Then you look out the window and see that it is raining. You didn't have to practice being in the rain. It was already the case, you just didn't know it.
Many sages have used the word "understanding" as a substitute for realization. The tradition says that ignorance is the problem and knowledge is the solution. That is why inquiry, reading, and contemplating are recommended.
Too many people have the idea that some grand experience is going to happen that will enlighten them. Not likely. It can be an instigator, but one has to extract the knowledge from the experience. Why? Because experiences come and they go.
In my case, I live with the understanding that I and everything in the universe is in awareness. I do not live in a feeling state of all is one. I just know that it is so.
My felt experiences of oneness, as grand as they were, did not stay. One returns to a normal state. However, the normal state is now less stressful because there is the understanding, the realization, that all is one, regardless of what I am seeing, feeling, or experiencing.
Does this make sense? Maury
I see!
But that understanding is not intellectual I assume?
But a real moment to moment direct knowledge understanding that doesn't leave or come?
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts... I am struggling to get beyond just my intellectuel understandings and sigh,feel a little lost in the dark woods...could it be I am not meant to get beyond where I am now ? It seems you and someothers are just further along on the path of oneness ?--and yet I feel drawn to becoming who I am
blessings
Judith
I wouldn't worry about getting beyond where you are. Just keep contemplating and don't criticize yourself by thinking you just have intellectual understanding. Keep in mind that one of the paths laid out in ancient times was Jnana Yoga. That is the path for thinking people with a natural intellectual skill. It is considered the most difficult path. But if the intellect is naturally your primary method of knowing the world, that is the tool you should use. Remember, intellectual discovery leads one to feel it in the heart. Philosophers have heart!
In the end, it is the knowledge that you ARE the impersonal awareness. That knowledge, deeply known, deeply felt, is enlightenment.
You are not just a person with awareness. There is a personal shape to awareness via your body-mind, but that is just a personal perspective reflected in pure, unadulterated, unaffected, impersonal awareness.
Use your intellect to wrap your head around this knowing. When it sinks in deep, you will feel that you have gone beyond the intellect and into the heart. You are that eternal, infinite awareness.
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