Being Aware of Being Aware

by Rupert Spira

Happiness is our very nature and lies at the source of the mind, or the heart of ourself, in all conditions and under all circumstances. It cannot be acquired; it can only be revealed.

We cannot know happiness as an objective experience; we can only be it. We cannot be unhappy; we can only know unhappiness as an objective experience.

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.

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.

Mind is the activity or creativity of awareness in which awareness itself seems to become entangled. Awareness seems to lose itself in its own creativity; it veils itself with its own activity. 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 not something we do; it is something we cease to do. Thus, it could be called self-returning or self-resting.

That is, only gradually, in most cases, will it become clear that meditation is what we are, not what we do, and that the separate self or finite mind is what we do, not what we are.

once our true nature of pure awareness has become apparent, we realise that no effort is required either to return to it or to remain there. In fact, we become sensitive to the subtle effort that the mind almost continuously makes in order to maintain the illusion of a separate and independently existing self. As an inevitable corollary to this understanding, to remain knowingly the presence of awareness becomes increasingly our natural condition, until there is no longer a distinction between meditation and life. Effortless being is our natural state.

the Sufi saying ‘I searched for God and found only myself; I searched for myself and found only God.’

Balyani said, ‘Whoever knows their self knows their Lord’.

‘I travelled a long way seeking God, but when I finally gave up and turned back, there He was, within me.’

It is only when we ‘give up and turn back’ – only when we cease seeking peace and fulfilment in objective experience and turn the mind in the directionless direction, allowing it to sink deeper and deeper into the heart of awareness from which it has arisen – that we begin to taste the lasting peace and fulfilment for which we have longed all our life.

the finite mind will continue to arise from its source or essence of pure awareness, but its sense of separation and limitation has been neutralised in the clear light of this self-recognition. Although its ability to mislead us may linger for some time through force of habit, it is only a matter of time before it fades.

‘When thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions can no longer take you away’.

Rumi said, ‘In the existence of your love, I become non-existent. This non-existence linked to you is better than anything I ever found in existence.’