And this ‘knowing’ is our self, aware presence. In other words, all that is ever experienced is our self knowing itself, awareness aware of awareness.
Understanding is the dissolution of the mind into its support, into its ground. It is the experience of Consciousness knowing itself, returning to itself knowingly.
When the doors of perception are cleansed, everything will appear as it truly is, infinite.
It is prior to all thinking, feeling or perceiving.
Awareness is inherently whole, complete and fulfilled in itself. Thus its nature is happiness itself – not a happiness that depends upon the condition of the mind, body or world, but a causeless joy that is prior to and independent of all states, circumstances, and conditions.
Just as the screen does not share the qualities, characteristics, or limitations of any of the objects or characters in a movie, although it is their sole reality, so the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known does not share the qualities, characteristics, or limitations of whatever is known or experienced. Thus, it is unlimited or infinite.
Awareness takes the shape of thinking and appears as the mind; it takes the shape of sensing and appears as the body;.
Our true nature of eternal, infinite awareness is never completely forgotten or eclipsed by objective experience. However agitated or numbed objective experience may have rendered our mind, the memory of our eternity shines within it as the desire for happiness, or, in religious language, the longing for God.
Nothing ever happens to the knowing with which all experience is known.
The great secret that lies at the heart of all the main religious and spiritual traditions is the understanding that the peace and happiness for which all people long can never be delivered via objective experience. It can only be found in our self, in the depths of our being.
What remains when we have let go of all thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities and relationships? Our self alone remains: not an enlightened, higher, spiritual, special self or a self that we have become through effort, practice or discipline, but just the essential self or being that we always and already are before it is coloured by experience.
There is just knowing. And what is it that knows that there is knowing? Only that which knows can know knowing. Therefore, only knowing knows knowing.
Cease being exclusively fascinated by whatever you are aware of and be interested instead in the experience of being aware itself.
Knowing or being aware is never modified by experience. It never moves or fluctuates. It is the only.
Seeking happiness in objective experience is the activity that defines the apparently separate self.
We do not have to eradicate a separate self in order to be knowingly eternal, infinite awareness or God’s infinite, self-aware being. There is no separate self to be eliminated. To attempt to dissolve or annihilate a separate self simply perpetuates its illusory existence. To discipline the separate self is to maintain the separate self.
The mind that seeks awareness is like a current in the ocean in search of water. Such a mind is destined for endless dissatisfaction.
Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. It is the only form of meditation that does not require the directing, focusing or controlling of the mind.
Allow your self to be coloured by experience temporarily, but do not become limited by it. To say and identify with the statements ‘I am sad’, ‘I am lonely’, ‘I am tired’, ‘I am hungry’, ‘I am a man’ or ‘I am a woman’ is to allow infinite being to become limited and personal.
The known always changes; knowing never changes.
Love is the experience of our shared being. When we love another person we feel, to a greater or lesser extent, that the separation between us dissolves.