Talk: The Brightness of Awareness

An excerpt from Dharma Dialogues with Catherine Ingram, recorded in L.A. in 2016. Experiencing the luminosity of awareness.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Catherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from a session of Dharma dialogues called The Brightness of Awareness.

It was recorded in Los Angeles in 2016.

I'd like to invite you this evening to simply experience the brightness of your awareness.

Now even as I say these words,

It might have triggered some cluster of thoughts about why that isn't really possible.

Or there's a whole backlog of issues that can float up.

But notice also,

I invite you,

Notice the non-sticking nature of each of those thoughts and go back to experiencing the brightness of your own awareness.

It's not a trick.

It's nothing extra.

You don't have to have any other kind of program or instruction.

Just relax into it,

The brightness of your own awareness.

It's very easy.

And as I've been saying these weeks,

It becomes more of the habit.

It's just more and more a habit,

Resting in the brightness of your own awareness.

And thoughts do rumble through or float through.

But rather than bouncing along on the thoughts,

You're experiencing just this brightness.

You could say it's the brightness of being.

It's the experience of presence.

I call it a passionate presence.

And I've spoken a lot in these last few weeks about the many qualities that arise when you live in that kind of presence,

When you live in that brightness of being.

A lot of advantages accrue for you without you having to strain for them.

You just feel more at ease.

You feel more generous.

You feel more tenderness.

You are more genuine.

You have more joy.

You feel wonder.

And so on.

But here's one more.

I haven't spoken about this series.

And that is that for the people who care about you on their big list of worries,

Your name doesn't appear.

Right?

You give the gift of non-anxiety to the people who care about you.

Because they can sense that you're okay.

They can sense,

They may experience you as strong.

That might be a word.

They might experience you as having a strong spirit,

Psychologically strong.

And for people who perhaps are going through something difficult,

Maybe even just the thought of you is somehow a bit helpful.

When you are living,

When you are living in this ease of being.

That's one of the many things that comes with it.

You're not trying to do that.

It just happens that way.

Just as I sometimes,

When I'm in a difficult circumstance,

Sometimes I'll call to mind people that I consider spiritually,

Psychologically strong.

I might sort of for a moment see through their awareness.

And it's calming.

So it's like your own presence becomes a gift to those in your life.

And that kind of clarity,

That kind of awareness is contagious.

Now it's not always contagious,

But sometimes it's quite contagious.

I've often told this story.

Some of you have heard it,

But some of you haven't.

Back in the early 90s,

I had a job,

A little bit uncharacteristically.

I had a job.

It was a job I had created.

I had raised money for,

To,

It was the founding of this organization for unrepresented nations and peoples,

People who are not represented in the UN.

And it seemed like a really cool job,

Really great idea.

The execution of it was driving me crazy.

I was very unhappy in this job.

It looked good on paper,

But the reality of it was super hard and frustrating.

So I was in San Francisco,

Working in an office that I had rented.

And I was pretty unhappy.

When one of my friends,

Who had just come back from India and had just met someone who I then later went to study with,

Poonjiji,

One of my friends,

His name is Howie,

He came to have lunch with me.

And he just,

He was just fresh back from being with this particular teacher,

Whose teachings are exactly what I'm saying.

There's no goal or no big program.

And Howie was so light,

It was almost like he was floating and I was dragging a bunch of bricks down the street.

But as the lunch were on,

I felt lighter and lighter and lighter.

And he wasn't talking about,

He wasn't talking Dharma.

We were old Dharma friends.

He didn't,

He knew better than to sort of give me some big lecture.

We weren't specifically talking about anything so-called spiritual.

We were just chatting.

But his vibe,

His energy,

His sweetness of being,

His lightness,

His brightness of awareness was transmitting.

And I floated back to this office.

It was like a major transformation and all we'd done was have lunch.

Like that,

Sometimes your own deep ease,

Your easy presence is transmitting really loud and clear and maybe transmitting to someone whose light has gone a little dim,

Right?

Whose candle's burning quite low.

So I like to say that we who are so privileged as we are,

We're so privileged and we in this room are even further privileged because we have an interest in these matters.

I like to say that it really is incumbent upon us to use this fantastic tool of your awareness,

To use it for the good,

For your own benefit and it benefits everybody around you.

So this just is a kind of encouragement or invitation to just let this well up in you.

Keep dialed into the channel,

The quiet channel,

The ease.

Don't be seduced and distracted by the madness of mind.

We all know it just goes on and on endlessly.

The mad stories of when you were 20 are different than the mad stories you're telling now,

But right,

It's all like I've been saying,

It's mostly inconsequential.

You can't even remember what the dramas were from years ago.

You've got new dramas that have replaced them,

But those are inconsequential too,

Ultimately.

And yet this brightness of being,

This was the gift that you have in being born and in being born in a lucky birth,

The brightness of being might as well taste it,

It's incumbent upon us.

Taste it,

Relax there.

So how do you get this brightness of being?

I mean,

It's great,

Sounds great.

Well,

It isn't really anywhere to go to get it.

It's really a recognition of something that is in fact quite familiar to you.

And I would also propose it's actually the most familiar thing to you.

It's that which is most familiar to you.

So Poonjiji used to say it's more familiar than the sound of your name and nearer than your breath.

So what is it that could be nearer than your breath,

But being itself?

And I'm going to also direct you as a little exercise to,

If you would with memory,

Tell me how far back can you remember?

I don't know really,

Maybe four,

I don't know.

About the age of four.

Maybe.

And what is it you remember?

Playing in the backyard.

But do you remember being?

Being.

Yeah.

Do you remember being?

We can go a little older then.

Let's go to six.

Do you remember being?

Maybe ten,

I can remember being.

I have my definition of being,

I'm sure you do also.

It's not a trick question.

Do you remember that you were?

Even aside from whatever was happening,

Do you remember that you had cognition?

There was an awareness,

A presence that you were experiencing as a living creature.

Yes.

Very simple.

Yes.

Yes.

That's what I'm speaking about.

Just that.

We go along in this development,

This evolutionary development of developing actually very strong egos.

And egos come with lots of stories.

I call it the me project.

It's a long,

Endless project about me.

And it comes with tremendous rumination.

But really what's happening?

What's happening all the while?

Little moments of beingness glimmer through,

Even with all the rumination.

Sometimes they slip in.

Little moments of beingness.

Yeah.

Meaning?

Well meaning that moments that you actually are recognizing that it's just,

Maybe you're standing in the shower and it's just the purity of being.

Or you're looking at the ocean and you're forgetting the story for a minute,

You get a break.

So I'm suggesting that you bump up the attention into that purity of just simply being just like every other creature.

Right?

If you need to,

Look at the other creatures.

Watch a bird being.

Watch a bird being on a tree.

You know,

Sometimes I reflect on the fact that when birds are flying in formation,

The bird at the top of the V,

Or at the bottom of the V rather,

Isn't sort of flying along thinking I am so cool.

I am number one.

Right?

No.

And the bird at the back isn't thinking I'm always the last.

Right?

There's no story.

They're just being.

Right?

In nature.

I watch deer in my yard a lot where I live.

I love watching them.

It's such a transmission of being and of quiet,

Simple being,

You know?

So this is my recommendation to start to let the awareness entrain in that simple taste without ideas,

Without religion,

Without concepts,

Without anything extra.

Because the beingness is already going on.

You don't have to create it,

Thankfully.

And people make such productions out of this.

You know?

It's amazing.

People take a simple recognition like that and suddenly,

You know,

Create a big philosophy and a big cosmology and then make it a kind of,

You know,

Gradual path,

Step to it,

You know?

But in fact,

It's so near at hand,

Nearer than your breath.

And when you really,

Really start to fall into that more and more and more,

What comes over you is a kind of an irony,

You know?

You think,

Wow,

It's just that.

You know?

It's like so simple.

You know?

You laugh at how simple it is and how complicated the mind wanted to make it.

When I first would read these kinds of teachings when I was young,

A young Dharma student,

I was attracted to the picture of Ramana Maharshi.

I was very attracted to the photograph,

The classic photograph.

And I thought,

Oh,

Let me see what this guy says.

So I got hold of some books from long ago and I would read them and I was like,

I don't get this.

I don't get this at all.

And the reason I didn't get it,

It was too simple at that time for my complicated mind.

I couldn't see it.

You know?

I couldn't,

It was right there,

But I couldn't see it yet.

And I had to,

My mind had to get worn down through conceptualization and practice and striving and goal-oriented ideas and beliefs and all of that stuff.

All of that.

My mind was churning and was a seeker,

You know?

And a seeker that wanted to get something.

And this was so simple that I couldn't,

I just overlooked it like a diamond hidden in a warehouse of other shiny rocks.

But with time,

That diamond of bright and simple awareness begins to outshine all the detritus around it.

This has been In the Deep.

If you'd like to know more about my work,

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Com.

Till next time.

Reviews

💎

Briliant in its simplicity 🌟 Thank you so much, Catherine, you touched my soul as you always do 🌹🙏🙏🙏

That was an amazing revelation! Thank you 🙏🏼

Inspiring, thank you 🙏🏼

Wonderful thanks 🙏

I loved this. Sweet 🌸

Thank you. I am thankful to recall my own "begin" experience I had. I now recalled how simple to stay begin with myself. 😊 May i have more " begin" moments and may all begins experience their moments of begins as well.

Oh my god! That was an exhilarating experience for me personally when you came to mentioning Ramana Maharishi.. Jus a few seconds before that I was relating to the being ness you were explaining to the great sage as I had jus visited his ashram in tiruvannamalai... Tears of joy dear one!!! 🙏😇💜

Helpful insights.

Enjoyable, lots of wisdom. Will listen to more of her work.

Love! Can't wait to listen to more.

This was so good for me to listen to. It helps me recognize my own brightness. Thank you.

Very nicely done.

"Just being, like a bird." How wonderfully illustrative, yet profoundly simple-- thank you very much.

For me perfect timing , simple truth , with thanks