Being Aware of Being Aware

by Rupert Spira

Until this is recognised, meditation will seem to require an effort, and if this is the case, and for as long as it seems to be so, we should make the effort. In time it will become clear that we cannot make an effort to be or know our self – we can only make an effort to be or know something apparently other than our self – and at that point our effort will come spontaneously to an end.

It is only because the clenched fist seems to be the natural condition of the hand that an effort seems to be required to open it. Once it is understood that the natural condition of the hand is one of openness, it becomes clear that the opening of the hand did not require a new effort but rather the relaxation of the previously undetected effort of closing it.

It is this recognition that is referred to in the Sufi saying ‘I searched for God and found only myself; I searched for myself and found only God.’

The journey that the mind takes from the objective content of its experience to its ever-present, innermost, irreducible essence is known in the Eastern traditions as meditation and in the West as prayer. It is sometimes referred to as the inward-facing path or the path of discrimination. This is not meant to imply inwards into the body, but rather inwards, away from the objects of experience, towards the irreducible essence of the mind.

As the mind ponders these questions, it becomes progressively refined, travelling back through layers of objective experience, gradually purifying itself of all objective, limiting qualities. In this way self-enquiry or self-investigation gradually loses its dynamism and gives way to self-abidance, self-resting or self-remembering, in which its own essential, irreducible essence stands revealed.