You cannot become what you already are

We often hear that we must be more mindful, more aware, more conscious. We strive to attain perfect mindfulness, perfect awareness, perfect consciousness, as if that were something apart from ourselves that we have to create or manufacture in order to be 'better' or 'enlightened'.

Instead of spending time and effort (and ultimately frustration) in attempting to 'create' awareness, just see that all your actions and thoughts already take place in awareness naturally and spontaneously. Even your effort to produce awareness happen in awareness.

The fact that you know you are - that you are conscious - is the clue.

Awareness or knowing happens spontaneously, it is not produced by an individual. In fact the sense of a separate self arises within that aware space as a known thing, for no-one can deny they lack self-consciousness. Your sense of self is therefore only an uninvestigated assumption a which arises and falls within the net of awareness.

Awareness or knowingness does not rise and fall. It is the condition for all further conditions, the paper upon which the words are written, the very material of which your thoughts and actions are made and known. It is an infinite net from which you cannot escape, it is not something that a so called 'individual' can produce.

So, does an ocean need to be more like water? A flower more like a flower? Does awareness need to be more like awareness?

See what you are and be what you are.

There is only recognition

What we call the world is made up of a lifetime of experiences. All experiences are made up from perceptions. All perceptions have the inherent quality of knowing or awareness (e.g. We know that we perceive).

To reverse this order:

What we call perceptions have the inherent quality of knowing or awareness (e.g. We know that we perceive). Perceptions make up our experiences. What we call the world is made up from a lifetime of experiences.

Therefore to recognise that the world is ultimately only awareness and that awareness is none other than the world is to see the non-duality of reality.

Ultimately there is only recognition.

To recognise this is freedom.

Freedom has no name.

No distinctions, only being.

Any distinction between experiences is only ever the minds interpretation, a learnt label added after the fact. So whether your experience may be the product of drugs, dreams, or dzogchen, the raw immediate fact of the experience is always its being (the fact that it is). You could say that being is appearing as a hallucination, nightmare or deep meditation just as the ocean becomes tidal waves, cross-currents, or flat calms.

The 'out there' is also only a label for what is; a learnt distinction. There is only this raw nameless perception which is simultaneously a know perception. Perception has the character of knowing or awareness. We may say 'I perceive' but really, there is only perception which is itself aware - an action which has no actor (try looking for the so-called person who claims awareness).

If we really see the ordinary directly - as it is - we will discover that actually it belongs to no-body and that therefore no-one can become attached to it. This world of ours is a floating one, without an anchor or base. Just awareness or being bubbling up into apparent forms before fading back into nothing.

But this is of course not something that the mind is interested in hearing.

February evening rain,
Homes light up
Like lanterns.

Failure

Everything I've written here fails.

Any description of this points in the opposite direction. Words like emptiness or fullness, being, awareness or no-self, become objects for the hungry mind to hunt down and capture so that it can 'know' the truth, possess the truth.

It fails to recognise that those very labels are themselves only ever sounds and images appearing in the vast suchness to which they attempt to point.

And look, here I am leading you astray again..

Home

This is my home -

My walls have fallen down,
Flowers and weeds overrun my garden,
Animals roam where they please.

But I'm past committing to repairs.

Jobless and free,
I let nature be my care-taker.

Conviction

Everything is Awareness,
- There is only Home.

Only openess

The swoosh of a car
- passing through me

Like space
Slicing through

Space.

Space

Only space
- Dreaming.

Dirt

Even your fear, your shame,
Is a clot of gold.

(With thanks to John Steinbeck).

Miraculous thoughts

Thought is not your enemy
- It is a miracle.

The Answer

The answer lies in the falling away of questions.