Kali

Awareness is both the lover and executioner of all forms

Concept-Consciousness

A concept is a lens through which Awareness becomes conscious of itself by objectifying itself. The duality this produces and the original unity it springs from are both, simultaneously, true.

Feast

Don't get caught in any particular expression or flavour of seeing 'this'.

Life is a shifting flux of flavours and qualities.

Sometimes it appears to be complete fullness, love and bliss, or a heart-wrenching compassion. Sometimes it's just emptiness and silent aloofness.

Sometimes it is the thought that 'I am Enlightened' or 'I have the answer and can tell others about it', other times it is a total disinterest in thinking or talking about 'this'.

Sometimes it can be an almost fervent desire to communicate and share this with others, to scream it from the rooftops. Sometimes, not to be able to share this is a cruel loneliness.

Sometimes it's the impossibility of ever understanding this; a kind of lostness or confusion, which happens to no-body. Other times it may appear that there is someone there to be confused.

There are many experiences arising and passing endlessly.

But they cannot catch you. They will not cut you. Their blades are blunt.

They come and go in awareness as awareness.

It is this play of spices which gives life its profound and unique flavour. And...you are only ever tasting yourself. So enjoy the feast. Eat well and drink well.

The banquet is just for you.

This is Empty

It’s not that there is a you perceiving these words but rather that perception is perceiving itself. All perception is only ever awareness which is itself empty both in-itself and as apparent forms. Therefore, ultimately, emptiness is perceiving itself.

Clothed with Nakedness

Awareness is the material from which each perception is made.

Its creativity allows it to be tailored into any and every experience.

Yet – and here’s the confusing part – this so-called cloth just doesn’t exist...

See-through

There are no objective appearances.

There is no objectivity.

Only Awareness-Awarenessing.

This is your inherent and obvious freedom.

Only awareness arising as this, this, this....

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.

Conviction

Everything is Awareness,
- There is only Home.

Sign above the entrance to the Universe:

WELCOME TO EXISTENCE:

- Everything is Awareness -

(although appearances may vary)

Flame

The invisible flame of awareness
burning even the concept
of 'awareness'.

Open Essay I

The world as we think of it is only a web of concepts and associations which exist as mental translations of sensation and raw experience. In this sense we could say that there are two worlds, the one which exists in our heads and which we imagine to be real, and the one which exists simply as it is without need of concept or translation.

Without the habitual translation of experience into thoughts, memories, comparisons etc, there is no 'World' and without a world there is no 'Me' and no 'You'. There is just what is. It has not changed, but it is not weighed down and buried beneath a life-time of labels and attachments. Without belief in labels, things come to life as life itself.

The borders, boundaries and limitations such as 'out there is the world' or 'this is a bad feeling' or 'this is a chair' or 'I am inside this body' all fall away when the inadequacy of labels are seen through. The imagined separation between ourselves and the universe then ceases to be, and the mind-altering revelation occurs that up until now we have been experiencing life through the narrow and energy sapping lens of mental concepts. Most of our experience is channelled into thought and the energy of these thoughts have distracted us from the raw simplicity of life which - if we look at it directly - we find as spontaneous, free, formless, intangible and boundless.

Indeed once this is seen, the world in which we live seems dream-like, incredibly fragile and transient, yet heart-wrenchingly beautiful and profound. We may still refer to ourselves as an individual, but the belief in these concepts as realities falls away. Language and concepts are for our convenience only, not for leading us to reality. All language is therefore poetry and poetry cannot tell us the truth, but only, beautifully, point towards it.

Thinking continues but its authority has been exposed and it's hypnotic power is weakened. We may use it to read a map or talk about our day, but we will not use it existentially to search for reality, God or Truth. Even if we do it will be with a clearly marked caveat: Life itself does not require a name.

Ultimately, even the thinking mind and belief in concepts and labels are but facets of the intelligence of life. They are not to be forcibly removed or denied or even surrendered to, because when seen clearly we find that the some-one who would repress, silence or deny the mind is itself just another thought. We do not have to get rid of a 'Me' or stop our thoughts. We just need to look directly at our experience to see that there never was a 'Me' and never will be.

The 'Me' is the ultimate label, the Queen of concepts, and yet it has no root, no core, no connection to reality. The 'Me' is but a dream, a thought which comes and goes. Once this keystone concept is seen as essentially invalid all thoughts pertaining to this imagined entity weaken, for we do not hold conversations with ghosts and we do not continue to wait up for Santa Claus after we discover him to be unreal.

All that remains is this. But even this has a variety of concepts and labels associated with it such as flow, being, suchness, life, consciousness or awareness. These may give a flavour of reality, but are really only more refined pointers. This cannot be named and never has been, it is the slayer of words, the destroyer of unreality. Our entire lives we have been one-ness, yet our thoughts convinced us that we were separate. See these thoughts as the dreams they are, look at what is happening right now and try to see if there is any separation between you and the world, between your thoughts and the awareness of them.

There are no gaps in reality and these very words - although but a collection of dreams - are in fact none other than yourself; One-ness staring back at one-ness.

Remember: you can't forget.

Another knot for the mind:

In trying not to get lost in thought or day-dreams we create a frustration born of an enforced duality. Sitting in meditation we attempt to remain as a mere witness, passive yet detached, but this apparently 'more spiritual' state/experience is unfortunately lost every time we become unintentionally absorbed in thought/thinking. This absorption happens so easily and naturally that we cannot see it happen. Only afterwards when the thought has passed do we realise that we were absorbed in thinking and our detached witness state, lost.

Being lost in thought is the meditators bete-noir.

But what is actually happening here? What does it mean to be 'lost in thought'?

It seems obvious that in trying to maintain a detached witness state we are in fact enforcing a dualism onto experience. Actually becoming absorbed in thought and loosing that dichotomy between subject (witness) and thought (object) we are effortlessly lost in a real unity where the observing and separate I is 'lost' in thinking. The I becomes merged with thought. Subject and object flow effortlessly into one.

Thinking itself seems to happen spontaneously and yet so does the apparent act of 'seeing' or 'witnessing' a thought, and the act of being 'lost in thought'. One minute you are contemplating a thought/memory, the next you are 'lost' in a day-dream. This all seems to happen quite naturally and easily.

In attempting to maintain the witness state through practice we try to control our thinking as (we have been told), thoughts distract us and we loose ourselves in the realm of illusion. And yet the idea that the witness state is better than thought/thinking also lies within the realms of illusion.

What is thought but awareness/consciousness appearing as a fleeting mental form or ephemera. Thoughts themselves are awareness, just as the witness state is. Absorption in thought and forgetting the witness state - day-dreaming - is awareness too.

Now, how can awareness loose awareness? If both witness and thought are awareness appearing as witness and thought, then there can be no such thing as 'forgetting'.

The important point is that there is in fact no-one who can 'forget' the witness or become 'absorbed' in thought. The whole process is happening without reference to an 'I'. Only a separate individual could loose its awareness and become 'lost in thought', which is experienced as 'other', separate and troublesome: a distraction from the pure empty witness we have read so much about.

Only a separate 'I' can try to maintain this lofty witness state and it therefore takes on certain 'spiritual' practices and rituals/repetitions in order to do so.

The illusion of an 'I' attempts to extinguish the illusion of separate thoughts which block the experience of the true unpolluted witness. Take away the notion of an 'I' and all we have is awareness: awareness watching itself (as apparent subject and object)and awareness 'forgetting' itself by absorption into itself. There is only 'remembering' and 'forgetting' to an apparent individual. Really, there is no individual and therefore no-one who can control the movement of awareness and the forms it takes.

Awareness is easy. It is natural, effortless and spontaneous knowing. It is what you are. But whenever you 'remember' that you are apparently an individual separate ego you believe in your fragmentation and therefore experience a fragmented version of reality which is always pure, deep and whole.

There is no object
Without awareness,
There is no Moon
Without Sun.

The Greatest Trick of Them All

I Know that I exist. I am the only measure for what I call 'existence'.

Yet everything arises within myself; my senses and perceptions happen not 'out there' but 'in here', these trees only appear on the back of my retina, nowhere else.

In this way all perception arises spontaneously within myself. Even the concept of 'myself' arises from a deeper silent presence which I will call awareness.

This means that you, dear reader, are but a dream arising from myself like the beautiful surreal images which arise from my deepest sleep.

And yet, for you this is true also. You know that you exist, undeniably so, for perceptions, thoughts, smells, ideas, feelings, emotions and memories arise automatically within you, instantly known by your innate immutable awareness.

In this way You are no dream at all, but the very eye of reality. Indeed for you, I am but a figment, a dream image conjured from your deepest self.

You are my dream
I am yours.

This is the greatest trick
of them all.