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.