Hello and welcome to this meditation,
Return to Awareness.
Awareness isn't something you can find like other objects in your reality.
It isn't something you can find because it's what you are.
You are searching for yourself.
And finding yourself outside yourself feels like a current trying to find the ocean that it's flowing within.
Or a character in a movie trying to see the screen that it's playing upon.
We can't make awareness happen.
Awareness is already here because it's what you are.
So let's close our eyes together in this meditation.
And together,
See for yourself in this new kind of knowing.
So I invite you now to just come into your breath.
To ground into this moment here and now.
Breathe into your belly.
Feel the expansion.
Feel yourself land in this body.
Feel the hereness and nowness of your own breathing.
And we'll begin by noticing that awareness is here before I do anything.
Notice the sounds in your environment.
Sound is coming to your ears and you are aware.
What or who is listening?
If your eyes were open,
Light would be coming to your eyes.
Notice sensations on your skin.
Seeing sensations,
The temperature in the room.
All these sensations are happening.
Information coming to awareness.
Notice the taste on your tongue.
More information in awareness.
Now bring to mind a thought,
A very simple thought.
Like what you had for breakfast or what you might do next.
And notice that these thoughts too arise in awareness.
Who or what is aware of thinking?
And lastly,
Notice how you're feeling.
You might feel peaceful,
Joyful,
Agitated.
It doesn't matter,
But just notice that something is aware of feeling.
And we can take all of this as one thing.
All of these are objects that you are knowing in awareness.
What's happening now is simply the knowing of reality.
Just knowing and the next moment,
Knowing and knowing.
And we turn around from the objects that we know to the knower,
The knowing itself and the quality of knowing.
And ask yourself,
Has this knowing ever left you?
Could knowing go away?
Does it not feel that this knowing has been with you your whole life from when you were a little child until now?
And the quality of knowing has never changed.
In fact,
All your life has simply been that,
Just knowing.
And notice the quality of knowing.
Can you find a boundary or an edge to it?
And notice the quality of limitlessness or boundlessness to this knowing.
It isn't a thing and has no edges.
And then ask yourself,
Does knowing itself have any opinion about that which it knows?
Simply look that opinions are a thought that arises in awareness.
And that awareness itself has no opinion.
Simply look and see for yourself.
In having no opinion and being open and boundless and timeless,
Awareness itself is free.
And who is this awareness?
When we say,
I am sad or I am happy,
We refer to the I.
Refer to I before it is qualified by experience.
And here,
We come back to the I before it is qualified by any objects it knows.
And we see,
See for yourself that your essential nature is already calm,
Is already open and free and at peace.
And because you are limitless as awareness,
Everything arises within awareness.
There is no inside or outside awareness.
So there is no inside or outside to you.
You are simply awake,
Aware and free.
There is nothing you need to do.
In fact,
You can't make awareness happen.
As Krishna Murti said,
The seeing is the doing.
Feel into your own awareness and know.
Turn your attention now into your heart space.
And allow yourself to know your heart directly from within your heart.
See what you notice,
The quality of energetic aliveness in your heart.
This energetic vibration or chi or Shakti as it's called in different traditions.
The arising of your being in the body.
You as consciousness spilling and unfolding into form.
You as essential goodness of your own being.
Really allow yourself to feel yourself landed in this body.
Perhaps there is pain,
Perhaps there is sadness,
Perhaps there is joy.
But see if you can feel underneath all of those other vibrations,
This essential presence of you,
The goodness of you.
How much goodness of you can you feel?
How much can you let yourself simply bathe in the radiance of your own heart?
How much can you let yourself be in the radiance of your own heart?
If the mind wanders,
That's okay.
Just bring it back to the breath in your belly and the warm radiant presence of you in your heart.
If there's not content that we deeply welcome,
We just come into this relationship and you are alive only through this experience and sorrow.
We all follow this thing from the inside.
How much can you surrender your life to awareness,
To the innate intelligence of this presence of your own being?
How much can you allow life to happen through you?
How much can you just let things be?
Not because you don't care.
Because you surrender to something bigger than yourself.
You allow the wholeness of you as awareness to come forward.
And you allow life to simply unfold from the loving presence that is you.
And if you feel you get lost,
Just come back to knowing.
Knowing sensations,
Knowing,
Hearing in the sound of my voice.
Simply knowing all that arises.
Drop your need to take interest in what arises.
And turn your attention to that which knows.
And feel the peace of just knowing.
Feel the beauty in sound,
In sensation,
In breathing.
Just what's here.
How much can you feel the love and the beauty that is here?
How much can you surrender?
This new view,
This is such a different view.
Because we stop resisting what's happening.
We stop making argument with life.
We start to really see what's happening as it is.
We allow things just to be as they are.
And because things can be as they are,
We can be as we are.
Really feel the truth of these words.
To finally let yourself just be as you are.
Nothing to change,
Nothing to fix.
You don't need to be any different than you already are.
Welcome home.
Thank you so much for your practice.
