Being Aware of Being Aware

by Rupert Spira

The known shines with...

This veiling, inadvertence or turning away from awareness is known as ‘original sin’ in the Christian tradition and as ‘ignorance’ in Vedanta. The Hebrew word most often translated in the Bible as ‘sin’ is chata’ah, meaning literally ‘to miss the mark’.

With this veiling, ignoring or limiting of awareness and its subsequent contraction into a finite mind, apparently separate self or ego, the peace and fulfilment that are inherent in it are also eclipsed, although they echo within it as a memory for which it longs. This longing for peace and happiness is the defining characteristic of the apparently separate self or ego.

Thus, the forgetting of our true nature is the source of all psychological suffering, and, conversely, the remembering of our self – its remembrance or recognition of itself – is the source of peace and happiness for which all people long.

Once the apparently separate self or ego has exhausted the possibilities for securing peace and happiness in objective experience, it may be open to the possibility of accessing them within itself. This intuition is the beginning of the separate self’s return to its inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled essence of pure awareness, and is thus the resolution of its search.

All that the apparently separate self needs to do to recognise its own essential nature and thus access its inherent peace and happiness is to recognise that its essence of pure awareness is not conditioned or limited by objective experience. In other words, its essence must be clearly seen. That is, aware...

We cannot direct our mind towards the experience of being aware; we can only direct our mind away from it. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that awareness must relax the focus of its attention, or disentangle itself from the objects of experience, thereby allowing its attention to return to or come to rest in itself. Thus, the highest form of meditation is not an activity that is undertaken by the mind. It is a relaxing, falling back or sinking of the mind into its source or essence of pure awareness, from which it has arisen.

This returning of awareness to itself, its remembrance of itself – being aware of being aware – is the essence of meditation and prayer, and the direct path to lasting peace and happiness.

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Our love for God is God’s love for us.

In order to recognise or become aware of itself as it is, awareness does not need to do anything special. Awareness is by nature self-aware, just as the sun is by nature self-luminous.

Therefore, awareness’s knowledge of itself – that is, our knowledge of our own essential, irreducible being – is not a new or special kind of knowledge. It is the knowledge that is inherent within awareness, though seemingly obscured due to the exclusive focus of our attention on objective experience.

Meditation is, as such, the remembering of our self: the pristine, luminous, inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled experience of being aware that we always and already are, which runs ever-present throughout all experience, seemingly but never really obscured by thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions.

Awareness of objects eclipses awareness of awareness.

Only the infinite can know the infinite; only the finite can know the finite.

Meditation is the disentangling of awareness from its own activity.

In meditation the simple experience of being aware is extricated from everything that we are aware of.

Meditation is the subsidence of the activity of mind and the subsequent revelation of the very essence of the mind – pure knowing or awareness – to itself.

Only awareness knows awareness. In the non-activity or non-practice known as meditation, the activity of the mind subsides and, as a result, its essence of pure awareness, having lost its apparent limitations, stands revealed to itself as it is.

Enlightenment or awakening is not a new or extraordinary kind of experience. It the self-revelation of the very nature of experience itself.

Awareness cannot be discovered; it can only be recognised.

As the mind proceeds in this objectless direction it begins to relax, sink or fall back into the source of awareness from which it has arisen. The mind progressively loses its colour or activity until its essence of pure awareness is revealed.

Awareness is aware of awareness.

The mind can only stand as such by attending to an object, so when the mind asks itself the question ‘Am I aware?’ it embarks on a journey in an objectless direction – a pathless path – away from thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions and towards its essential, irreducible essence of pure awareness.

Ramana Maharshi referred to this non-process as ‘sinking the mind into the heart’.

During this directionless journey, the mind sinks or relaxes backwards, inwards or ‘selfwards’. As it does so it is, in most cases gradually, occasionally suddenly, divested of its finite, limited qualities and, at some point, stan...

The path of the finite mind to its fundamental, irreducible essence is not a journey from one place or entity to another, although, as a concession to the mind’s belief in itself as a separate, independently existing entity, this discovery is often depicted as a journey, path or pilgrimage. It is more like the fading of an image on a screen.

Mind is the self-colouring activity of awareness. Meditation is the fading or dissolving of this self-colouring activity and the subsequent revelation of the colourless essence of the mind, pure awareness itself.

Being aware of being aware – awareness’s awareness of awareness – is a colourless, non-objective experience. It is an experience of the essence of the mind after it has been divested of its finite qualities. It is, as such, pure mind – awareness itself – knowing its own intrinsic, irreducible, indest...

The transparent, colourless experience of being aware or awareness itself cannot be known or remembered by the mind because mind – the activity of awareness – is not present, or rather, is not active there.

The mind, at best, overlooks the non-objective experience of being aware and may even deny its very presence. Such a mind is like a wave denying the existence of water.

However, a mind that is accustomed to repeatedly dissolving in its source or essence becomes progressively saturated with its inherent peace. When such a mind rises again from the ocean of awareness...

Such a mind may also be inspired by knowledge that is not simply a continuation of the past but comes directly from its unconditioned essence. This inspiration brings creativity and new possibilities into whatever sp...

Likewise, awareness knows itself simply by being itself, without the need for any other agency. That is, awareness knows itself by itself, in itself, through itself, as itself alone, without the need to rise in the form of mind or attention.

Wow.

Awareness is our primary experience; that is, being aware is awareness’s primary experience. Before awareness knows objective experience, it knows itself.

Awareness’s nature is pure knowing. It is self-illuminating, self-knowing, self-aware.

Awareness knows itself simply by being itself.

Awareness is so close to itself that there is no distance between itself and itself and, therefore, no room for a path. Any path would be a path from awareness towards an object.

From awareness to awareness there is no space, no distance, no time and, therefore, no possibility of a path or practice. Thus, being aware of being aware is a non-practice.

This is why the Direct Path is referred to as a pathless path. In the Direct Path we start with the goal and we stay there. That is, awareness starts with itself and stays with itself. Thus, the highest meditation is simply to be.

For this reason, there can be no effort in this non-practice. Any effort would involve directing the mind towards an object or tryi...

Meditation is the relaxation of the tension in attention and the subsequent return of awareness to itself. It is a dissolving of the mind in the heart of awareness, not a directing of the mind towards any kind of objective experience.