If you’ve been around the spiritual block, you’re no doubt familiar with basic pointers, such as:
You are the ever-present consciousness/awareness.
You’ve probably heard this and every other variation many times. And yet, you might still be searching for something.
But this positive pointer: ‘You exist and you are aware’, is not a step to something else.
It’s basic and it’s also the end of the search.
“Advanced” spiritual aspirants and advaitaddicts breeze over this essential point like it’s something for “beginners.”
It’s not. It’s the main point.
Sure, we can get all technical about it (and some might benefit from it) and endlessly argue about the terminology, but all we’re doing then is losing the plot even more.
A pointer is not an airtight concept that should cover all the bases. Nor is it part of a fixed “teaching” that you need to preach religiously. The words matter less than the living presence those words are pointing to.
Pointers aren’t the only way to go about recognizing your true nature, but if you’re reading or listening to pointers then it makes sense to notice what they’re pointing at and not get lost in the lingo.
This is the point of pointers.
If you notice some doubt about “you” getting it and tangle yourself up in the doubt, you’re not looking where the pointer points. Instead of focusing on the doubt as if it knows something you don’t, notice that there is a knowing of that doubt. And that knowing cannot be doubted or contradicted. It’s the same with or without doubt. So doubt is actually a confirmation of the pointer.
As you can see, no matter where you fall off the train, you can always get right on it, regardless of where you are. That is the beauty of it. Our true nature is always right here, ubiquitous, and the only way to miss it is to believe you’re missing it.
Yes, it’s this. It’s always been this. Stop pretending it’s not.
Let’s say it categorically and unequivocally: You are literally the one and only reality. You are what is. You are all there is.
Saying “you are all there is” might sound a little too esoteric for some, but notice the simple obviousness of this. Try to find anything outside awareness. You might say that you’re not the Orion belt or your husband’s dirty underwear, but where would the Orion belt and your husband’s dirty underwear be if not in awareness?
Notice that I omitted the “your” and just said awareness. Don’t get hung up on thinking awareness is something that belongs to you.
Any apparent ‘you’ belongs to awareness.
Any appearance belongs to awareness.
Not because appearances are separate or different from awareness but because there is nothing outside or apart from awareness.
Get clear on this and everything else follows on its own.
Many people have a glimpse and instead of recognizing that what they have glimpsed is what they are, regardless of circumstances, try to recreate an experience. Don’t equate ‘awakening’ to a particular experience. The point is not the experience. It’s a shift in viewpoint and whether that shift comes with a vision of your favorite sages in tutus doing a little ballet show for you or with a hearty belly laughter at how silly you have been doesn’t matter.
Don’t think you get it just to get lost in concepts again. Or get lost as many times as necessary. It’s all fine.
What we’re talking about is present whether you are in the highest states of ecstatic bliss or whether you are in the lowest states of dreadful despair.
If you do get this point, the point that what you are is the non-conceptual whateveryouwannacallit, and still feel like you are not really getting it, then pay attention to what is happening.
You recognize that what you are is that which is.
“But there is still all this other thought and emotion stuff going on,” you say. And exactly in that moment, you’re back to seeing yourself as a conceptual entity. You believe there should be different thoughts and emotions or perhaps even no thoughts and no emotions.
Do not draw behavioral or cognitive conclusions from this as if to say, “Okay, awareness is what I am and it’s unaffected. Therefore, I shouldn’t care and I shouldn’t feel this and think that and do the other.”
No. No.
That is identifying yourself with concepts again. Stay with the basics for a little longer.
No need to rush. No need to get anywhere else.
You want your mind to reach some closure and then stop doing what it does.
But mind will do what mind does and mind itself is only a concept.
What there is is thought after thought after thought. One by one. And your non-conceptual being is unaffected by it.
Again, get clear on what you are. This is so freaking simple that I’m sometimes baffled that pointing it out just once isn’t enough. It’s kind of like standing in front of a paper-thin screen and believing you can’t punch through it.
And yet, if I could go back in time and try to convince my past seeking self of this, I probably would be scoffed at.
Anyway, it’s simple and no matter what thoughts are saying, get clear on what you are. Do it now, please.
And from that vantage point see that “I” and “me” are only thoughts. And then recognize that the thoughts and emotions you consider to be a problem are only a problem because they are for and about “I” and “me.”
But “I” and “me” are only thoughts.
Can a thought have problems?
Can a thought think other thoughts?
Can a thought feel?
Everything appears inside and as this which we call awareness. Awareness is wholly unaffected by appearances but isn’t divorced from appearances. And awareness is also what the word “I” truly points to.
And that’s not a special insight or attainment. It’s obvious. It’s unavoidable. But it’s not irrelevant. It’s most magnificent.
You go from believing you are a small little person in an unimaginably vast material universe, to knowing you are the consciousness-awareness that makes it all possible. How could it not be magnificent?
Awareness is not an entity though. It isn’t anything but appears as anything. Nothing is outside or apart or other than that. It’s the basic space of phenomena, spontaneously and timelessly present. (I’m paraphrasing here, from The Precious Treasury of the Basic Space of Phenomena by Longchen Rabjam)
It’s existence itself. Existence is and existence doesn’t exclude.
And you are that.
Luka
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