Unaccompanied Awareness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Woman in the Park’ – Ion Theodorescu-Sion, 1919 – WikiArt

Nothing is more beautiful than to be aware choicelessly, effortlessly, without involving a self, a thought that wants to do awareness, to control it, to achieve it. After all, awareness is by virtue of its being, and cannot be rendered more aware than it already is. So awareness blooms when it is left untouched, virgin of a self, free of an ambition or desire to be aware. Awareness is the kind that enjoys being alone, unaccompanied. It doesn’t like to be mimicked or carried by a somebody that feels superior, in charge of being aware. And yet this is what we are doing all the time, being like a commander, a figure of authority. No wander awareness is leaving the show, retreating in the background, he that has no desire, no ambition other than being, she that feels whole and sufficient, in no need of an other to possess her. You’ve got to let go of wanting to be awareness, for that desire is made of scattered little pieces of ego gathering together in a desperate attempt to keep some control on the situation. There is no desire involved in being aware, for the simple reason that awareness has no desire other than to simply be and shine. Awareness is here now beaming in and as our experience. Noticing is all we can do about it.

But noticing already implies awareness. Don’t think that you are the one who is going to notice awareness. The noticing is awareness itself recognising its own presence, acknowledging it, giving it the freedom to just be. So there is only awareness — no one here that is aware, or even noticing to be aware. That would imply that awareness needs a clutch, a somebody to be aware. This somebody is fictitious, fortuitous, disposable, redundant, not required. Awareness relies on itself only. It is bound together with itself. That’s why it can be depended upon with confidence. If you are awareness, well then you are awareness. Let yourself be taken in the embrace of it, without a second look for yourself. See that there is here and now only the activity of awareness, and renounce to your own, which is no renouncing at all, since there is here no such a thing as a self that is separate from awareness. Just see that you are not there, not at all. There are thoughts, sensations, perceptions, but of a self you won’t find any trace. If you do let go of the idea of a self, then you will come to see that what is left here is awareness alone, which is the only thing there is and that is in capacity of selfing.

So awareness is outrageously simple, since it is the only thing experienced, whether we know it or not. What is complicated is what is entangled, intertwined with awareness, that which has set itself up as an other, may that be a single thought… that’s enough. A single thought is enough to render yourself blind to awareness. Since awareness, or this quality of pure knowing, is all there is, then in a strange and fascinating way, it can be easily displaced or darkened. It needs only the slightest interference, the remotest identification, the minutest belief to be something — a self that has awareness — to send it into the hiding. Thoughts and perceptions have become experts in mimicking a self, stealing the space of awareness for their own purpose, and deceiving ourself into being an entity, a self. There is no self here separate from experience. There is but a plunge into your own being, a sea of awareness without an end or a limit, a free fall which no self could ever cope with, or grasp, or comprehend. This empty being with no objective quality is yourself, all there is to yourself, and its tissue is made of pure awareness. Experience then is realised to be only an appearance devoid of its own individual reality. It is made of that presence which is our essence, whose nature is awareness with nothing beside it.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Ion Theodorescu-Sion (1882-1939)

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Website:
– Ion Theodorescu-Sion (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
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Humanness

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘The Human Mountain: Towards the Light’ – Edvard Munch, 1927-29 – Wikimedia

There is no human being. This is quite extraordinary to think of it, and even positively mind-blowing. But turn it around as much as you may, the true self of man is not where a body is. It doesn’t take shelter there. A body, or even a mind for that matter, is way too small and inappropriate to house your beautiful being. There is no room there. For how could the infinite enter something that is finite, limited, prone to decay and death? How could something that knows no beginning and no end, be contained in a passing thought, in a mind which is changing, developing, forgetting, believing, cheating and being cheated? In being, you won’t find the beginning of a change, won’t find even the possibility of death. In being, there is no forgetting who you are. Only a mind can forget its own nature, not because there is something there that can forget, but because thoughts, feelings, perceptions, when they are believed to be yourself, are hindering your true nature, rendering it as if absent. What is left is only a cheating thought that believes itself to be real as self, when it is not.

There is nothing depressing in not being a human being, and nothing demeaning. Being is such a malleable thing that we still retain the illusion of being a human being, a person, as we do now, but with the difference that this illusion won’t hide the reality that is behind it, and that is our true identity. Losing our identity as a person doesn’t mean that we won’t feel compassion for another, or love for our beloved, for love is not contained in being a self separate from an other. Love doesn’t need to be directed. We are not doing love, let alone giving it. Love is the expression or signature contained in our simply being. It is the feeling of being that irradiates in every directions, and that is shared as that which we are here and now. And don’t think either that you will lose your ambition, but it will be reoriented to be not your ambition, but the very contagion of being in every aspect of your life and world. And don’t think that you will miss out on happiness, for happiness was never yours, never your expression, never contained in achieving or obtaining a thing that thought has said you desire. Happiness is the very feeling of being, that we cannot contain or limit, but which splashes over to colour life with a golden hue of oneness.

So there is only being taking momentarily the clothes of a human being. But being itself has no qualifications, no colours which would render it a definable entity. The colours and the qualifications are not pertaining to being. They are the property of everything that appears in being, but is not being. They are in body, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, in all the existing things that come and go, dancing to make the form of a world, of what we call a human, a dog, a mountain, or the parking lot in which we park our car. To be being won’t diminish our feeling of being a person. It will enrich it, for being is the essence of a person. Being is the essential of our experience as a human being, only we don’t see that, don’t know that. Our focusing on the belief to be an objective entity that thinks, feels, and perceives has made us blind to our reality. So let’s remind ourself that there are no limited human beings, but only one unlimited being. This knowing and feeling of being only one unlimited being is a source of constant awe in life. And this vision is what gives its true colour and reality to our imaginary humanness.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Edvard Munch (1863-1944)

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Website:
– Edvard Munch (Wikipedia)

Suggestion:
Other ‘Ways of Being’ from the blog…

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