Being Aware of Being Aware Quotes

“I am that which knows or is aware of all experience, but I am not myself an experience. I am aware of thoughts but am not myself a thought; I am aware of feelings and sensations but am not myself a feeling or sensation; I am aware of perceptions but am not myself a perception. Whatever the content of experience, I know or am aware of it. Thus, knowing or being aware is the essential element in all knowledge, the common factor in all experience.”
― Rupert Spira, The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter

“Cease being exclusively fascinated by whatever you are aware of and be interested instead in the experience of being aware itself.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“Seeking happiness in objective experience is the activity that defines the apparently separate self.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“Nothing ever happens to the knowing with which all experience is known.”
― Rupert Spira, The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter

“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, its activity makes that peace available to humanity.

Such a mind may also be inspired by knowledge that is not simply a continuation of the past but comes directly form its unconditioned essence. This inspiration brings creativity and new possibilities into whatever sphere of knowledge or activity in which that mind operates.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“when the Indian sage Atmananda Krishna Menon was asked how to know when one is established in one’s true nature, he is said to have replied, ‘When thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions can no longer take you away’.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Myself

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Myself

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“It is the self-aware screen of awareness, upon which the drama of experience is playing and out of which it is made, that becomes so intimately involved with the objective content of its experience that it seems to lose itself in it and, as a result, overlooks or forgets its own presence, just as a dreamer’s mind loses itself in its own dream at night.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“The experience of being aware is in exactly the same condition now as it was two minutes ago, two days ago, two months ago, two years ago or twenty years ago. The awareness with which our experience as five-year-old girls or boys was known is exactly the same awareness with which our current experience is known. Thus, our essential nature of knowing, being aware or awareness itself has no age. It is for this reason that as we get older, we feel that we are not really getting older. The older we get, the more we feel that we have always been the same person. The sameness in ourself is the sameness of awareness.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“mind is awareness in motion; awareness is mind at rest.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“The mind that seeks awareness is like a current in the ocean in search of water. Such a mind is destined for endless dissatisfaction.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“The known always changes; knowing never changes.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Myself

“Suffering ensues when we allow awareness of objects to eclipse awareness of being. Happiness is revealed when we allow awareness of being to outshine awareness of objects.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Myself

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Myself

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter

“Knowing or being aware is never modified by experience. It never moves or fluctuates. It is the only”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“Meditation is what we are, not what we do; the separate self is what we do, not what we are.”
― Rupert Spira, The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter

“The apparently separate self or finite ‘I’ around whom all experience revolves is the true and only ‘I’ of eternal, infinite awareness – the ‘I’ of God’s infinite, self-aware being that shines in each of our minds as the knowledge ‘I am’ – temporarily coloured by thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions but never being or becoming anything other than itself.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“although meditation may seem at first to be an activity that the mind undertakes in order to achieve some new state or experience, it is later understood to be the very nature or essence of the mind itself.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“the presence of awareness becomes increasingly our natural condition, until there is no longer a distinction between meditation and life.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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. 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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“If we are absorbed in a movie it may seem at first that the screen lies behind the image. Likewise, if we are so captivated by experience that we overlook the simple experience of being aware or awareness itself, we may first locate it in the background of experience. In this first step, being aware or awareness itself is recognised as the subjective witness of all objective experience. Looking more closely we see that the screen is not just in the background of the image but entirely pervades it. Likewise, all experience is permeated with the knowing with which it is known. It is saturated with the experience of being aware or awareness itself. There is no part of a thought, feeling, sensation or perception that is not infused with the knowing of it. This second realisation collapses, at least to a degree, the distinction between awareness and its objects. In the third step, we understand that it is not even legitimate to claim that knowing, being aware or awareness itself pervades all experience, as if experience were one thing and awareness another. Just as the screen is all there is to an image, so pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is all there is to experience. All there is to a thought is thinking, and all there is to thinking is knowing. All there is to an emotion is feeling, and all there is to feeling is knowing. All there is to a sensation is sensing, and all there is to sensing is knowing. All there is to a perception is perceiving, and all there is to perceiving is knowing. Thus, all there is to experience is knowing, and it is knowing that knows this knowing. Being all alone, with nothing in itself other than itself with which it could be limited or divided, knowing or pure awareness is whole, perfect, complete, indivisible and without limits. This absence of duality, separation or otherness is the experience of love or beauty, in which any distinction between a self and an object, other or world has dissolved. Thus, love and beauty are the nature of awareness. In the familiar experience of love or beauty, awareness is tasting its own eternal, infinite reality. It is in this context that the painter Paul Cézanne said that art gives us the ‘taste of nature’s eternity’.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware

“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.”
― Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware