Awareness

(An edited transcript of the mp3 entitled Awareness on the Listen to Satsang page)

I invite you to just take a moment and just sense the awareness in this room. Just sense the awareness right where you're sitting, and the awareness all around. Very simply, awareness is a kind of brightness that lights things up, that notices things. This is simple awareness. It doesn't stop when I stop talking. There's still this simple awareness, simple noticing. It might be a little more relaxed than normal just because we've been sitting quietly for a while. Or it might be scanning around, noticing this, thinking about that, having this thought, that thought, noticing this sensation and that sensation. You can notice the simple ordinary awareness that's here tonight.

I'd also like to suggest that everything that you've ever sought or wanted or desired is in that awareness. No matter what the awareness is landing on right now, everything you've ever really sought for, all the peace and joy and satisfaction and fulfillment and richness of existence that you've been seeking -- that you've looked for your whole life -- it's all here right now in the flow of  awareness. If you were going to hide these things, awarness is a really good place to hide them because it is right out in the open. It's the last place anybody would think to look. We never think to look in our ordinary experience, and yet all of the peace, joy and love are all here in awarenes. They are either here in expression, or they're here in potential. This limitless reservoir of love, limitless reservoir of presence, of joy, of satisfaction, is always right here whether you're tapping into it, whether you're noticing it or not:  It's just here.

I use the metaphor of having lots of money. There's a sense when you have lots and lots of money that it is just there. You don't have to think about it. You don't even have to experience it. You don't have to go to the bank and have them pull it out so you can count it. It's just there even if you're not experiencing it. That's also true of what's present in this very ordinary awareness: an incredible abundance. This simple awareness has everything in it, everything you could ever dream of wanting.

This simple awareness also has a capacity to be shaped. It turns out that even though it has limitless potential, part of that limitless potential is that it can be shaped, it can be directed. It can be given an orientation. So if I start talking about elephants, the awareness would start flowing to ideas about elephants. Or if I start pointing to the shape of this room and the amazing structure of the ceiling and the beams and the colors, the awareness goes there. All I had to do is mention it and awareness flow to the beams.

Awareness has the capacity to be shaped by anything I say. In fact, everything that happens shapes your awareness. If there's a sudden loud it will shape your awareness. If someone talks to you, it will shape your awareness. Everything that's happening right now in this room, every subtle movement, every chemical reaction happening in your body left over from what you had for dinner is all shaping your awareness. In fact on subtler levels, the feeling state of everybody else in the room is affecting you right now. It's shaping your awareness. It's having an impact on you. The meditation we just did is still having an impact on your awareness in this moment.

This is natural. Part of the potential of this awareness is that it has this incredible capacity to take on shape. That's how creation happens. Awareness or presence gets shaped into form. It's includes subtler forms of shaping like thought. Again, if I talk about elephants or the architecture of the room, that's where the awareness focuses.

This shaped awareness of course doesn't feel limitless. For example, when awareness is being shaped by a physical pain it can get very narrow, especially when you're lying in bed and the lights are all off, and nothing else is happening. It's amazing how a stubbed toe can suddenly fill your entire awareness. So when it's shaped it doesn't seem so limitless because it has a shape, it has a form, it has a container. The experience, thought, or sensations add a limited quality onto the experience of awareness.

Yet, here in satsang, we do something unusual. We start talking about the awareness itself. What's the nature of that?  What's that like?  Yet, awareness is not something you can really be aware of. You cannot really be aware of awareness, because it is not a thing. The best you can ever do is kind of just catch a sense of it, a little bit of its quality, or at least be curious about it. You can't quite fully catch awareness in awareness.

Yet, any time I mention awareness, that shapes awareness and everybody starts looking for it. Where is awareness?  Is it under the chair?  Is it behind my head?  This awareness goes off looking for awareness and so it's shaped by this concept of awareness. Once it takes on any shape, even the shape of the concept of awareness, it becomes smaller. Anytime it takes on a shape it's naturally smaller than its total potential.

Even then, everything that really matters, everything that really satisfies and really fulfills us is already right here and now in this awareness, no matter how it's being shaped, no matter how small it has become. That's the startling thing. It is all here even when awareness is being shaped.

Everything shapes our awareness, but words and concepts are the primary way humans shape their consciousness. And something that shapes the consciousness of spiritual seekers is ideas of enlightenment and realization, and the desire to go beyond the shaping of awareness to pure awareness itself. I'm not saying that there isn't value in that. What I'm pointing to is that ideas of what enlightenment is like also shape our awareness. Yet we somehow have this idea that enlightenment means the end of the shaping of awareness. Even big spiritual experiences like enlightenment shape our awareness. Because our awareness is constantly being shifted and shaped by everything that happens, ultimately it is the range of experience we can have that shows us how flexible, how unharmable awareness is. The awareness is shaped, but the shape is temporary and so the awareness itself is not harmed. The recognition that awareness cannot be harmed is even more valuable than a big, but temporary, spiritual experience.

Again, awareness is not something you capture like you can capture a photograph. Awareness is what you are. This allows a deeper realization that it really doesn't matter what shape your awareness is. In fact, if you truly could just be totally expanded in cosmic consciousness all the time, you would never find out that it doesn't matter what shape your awareness has, because your awareness would never have a shape.

It would be a very good shape, hah-hah!

Without any shape to awareness, it's just totally silent, totally still.

There's no contrast?

There's no contrast. There's no way to find out about awareness if you stayed in cosmic awareness. Would you know anything about awareness?  What good does it do you to have all that awareness if you never use it to dip your toe into some strange illusion?

The important question isn't where can we get to, or what can we get from satsang?  It is not that important to find out what new strange, different experience or more expanded spiritual experience of awareness you can have.  The question is, what's the awareness like right now?  That's where you'll discover this limitless abundance.

So that's the gift that's being pointed to in satsang; this opportunity to discover the truth of your awareness just as it is right now, because when you find out about that awareness and find out that it really is complete just the way it is, it doesn't matter anymore how it's being shaped. It doesn't matter what thought is arising right now, or if no thought is arising right now. It's just not that important to this question, What about the awareness itself? That's just the particulars of how the awareness is being temporarily shaped. It's natural that your awareness is being shaped right now, because it is always being shaped.

The opportunity is to find out that it doesn't matter. Find out, is there really anything wrong right now with awareness?  Does it really matter if it's chasing after something, or confused, or happy or sad, or sleepy, or awake? Does that stuff matter when you have this limitless supply of awareness itself? Especially when all of the love, peace and joy you have ever wanted is already present in the awareness that is here right now.