Did you know that the biggest organ in our body is our skin?
And if you pay enough attention,
A mild curious awareness towards your skin,
You will be able to feel it as one entity,
One whole,
Sensing the sensations.
And the skin is not necessarily the boundary between your inside and outside.
The skin is constantly interacting with the environment you are in.
So,
For the exploration,
Let go of any sense of boundary between your inside and outside,
Separated by your skin.
Rather,
See your skin as medium that is interacting with the inside and outside.
So,
In your mind,
Eyes become bigger,
Bigger than your body,
Bigger than the periphery of your skin.
And see that in your own experience,
You are aware of your body inside and you are aware of things outside.
You are aware of the sounds coming from your room.
You are aware of the air in the room.
You are of the space that you are in.
So,
Allow the experience to let you know that you are actually bigger than your body.
You are occupying more space than just your body.
From the perspective of your awareness,
You are beyond your body.
So,
Now in this perspective,
In this wider open awareness perspective,
Become interested in the medium in which your experience is unfolding.
For email to appear on your screen,
It needs a medium and a medium is the screen.
For painting to appear,
It needs canvas,
Which is the medium.
In the same way,
For your mental activities,
For your sensation,
Perception to appear,
It needs a medium.
It is a medium in which our mental activity is projected,
Known,
Felt,
Lived.
So,
Become interested in the medium.
Gently interested in the medium as opposed to what is appearing in the medium.
Become interested in awareness as the medium as opposed to the content of your awareness.
Breathe in now naturally,
Normally.
Remember,
You are still just resting.
You are still just exploring.
Exploring for the perspective of awareness.
So,
Continue to smile,
Continue to rest and see how your experience is unfolding moment by moment,
Breath by breath,
In this medium of awareness.
See how your awareness is not just giving medium for things to feature,
For sensations to come and go,
But your awareness also knows it instantaneously as soon as a perturbation arises in this medium.
For example,
If there is a sensation on your feet,
It is known.
My words are known and not just known,
You are finding meaning of it too.
Everything happening all at once,
Without any control.
Millions of processes taking place at cellular level,
Breathing,
Digestion,
Immunity,
Without your control.
So,
If there is any sense of managing,
Controlling,
Cultivating,
Let it go.
It is just a thought.
Let it go and rest.
Trust and rest.
You do not need to control anything,
Manage anything and allow the life to unfold on its own,
Moment by moment.
In this space we call awareness.
In this empty space we call awareness.
Because it is empty,
It allows space for all experiences to feature.
If it was full,
There would be no space.
If screen is already full,
Email can't appear.
If sky is already full,
Clouds can't appear.
In the same way,
Your awareness is open and empty.
That's why millions of things are appearing.
Some subtly,
Some not so subtly.
But remember,
Your focus is on the medium in which things are appearing.
Your focus is not on things that are appearing,
Not the content,
The medium.
And yet effortlessly,
Effortlessly prioritizing the medium that is vast,
Open,
Transparent.
And I say benign.
Why benign?
Benign because it is like the space in your room that is not resisting what is taking place in your room.
The room,
The space will always make the space for whatever that may appear in your room.
Space will never have an issue with it.
In the same way,
Your awareness is benign.
It allows space without any resistance.
So be that without effort.
Abide as that.
Awareness knowing itself.
Awareness being itself.
Smile and notice that awareness knowing and being itself is effortless,
Is not an activity that you do.
Very subtle.
It is not an action that you control.
Rather,
It is you that you are.
It is.
You do not cultivate it.
And that is why the ease and effortlessness is so important because your effort weighs it,
Covers it unnecessarily.
So smile and know that you know that you are and that you know that you are.
This essential knowledge of yourself that is self-evident,
That is known so intimately in every situation is what we are referring to.
So smile and become or rather abide as open,
Empty,
Benign,
Transparent awareness self.
See how your breath is known in this awareness.
See how your body is felt and known in this awareness.
See how all your mental activities featuring known in this awareness.
See how primary awareness is.
Awareness is likened to open space because that is the only object-like quality we can assign to it for time being so that your mind has something to do as it explores its own nature.
That's why open awareness is seen as one of the final teachings in mindfulness practices across the world.
In Zen it is known as Sikantaza,
Means sitting,
Just sitting with no agenda,
Method of no methods,
Another name of it.
So all methods are gone.
It is just simple abiding,
Also known as silent illumination.
See how all words are conspiring to sort of sign post to the intimate nature of your own awareness,
Effortless,
Intimate and always primary.
So whenever your mind drifts,
Know that it is drifting in a medium of awareness itself.
So really do not drift anywhere outside of awareness.
You just become focused on one sensation,
Perception appearing in awareness.
It looks like you are outside of awareness.
So try now and see if you can ever be outside of awareness.
Think of an activity and if that activity is known it is known in awareness.
See your mental activities as birds in your open sky,
Open sky of your awareness as birds.
Thoughts,
Images,
Storylines are likened to birds appearing,
Playing in your open sky awareness and see that none of these birds,
These thoughts are leaving any trace in this medium called awareness.
They appear,
They disappear leaving no trace on the medium.
It's like the space in your room that has no resistance to whatever events that may take place in the room.
In the same way your awareness is not perturbed by your thoughts.
Two birds in the sky could have issue with each other.
In the same way one thought may have an issue with another thought but awareness has no issues with your thoughts.
See if you can recognize that.
See if you can recognize with this metaphor of open transparent benign awareness self and know that we are not talking about any metaphysical,
Philosophical,
Spatial awareness.
We are only referring to this very experience that you are having and know that you haven't cultivated or created the awareness.
You have just clearly known it,
Felt it,
Said it as it.
So smile and see how effortless it is to come back to the nature of being open,
Wide,
Resting awareness and time just flows when you are awareness.
When you abide this awareness resting in itself did you know that the time is always now.
It would never be past or future.
As soon as you abide as awareness the time is now and the now is not time.
It doesn't have start or end.
It is not a moment.
It is not present moment either because moment also starts and end but nowness doesn't start and doesn't end.
That's why time flows when you're awareness.
So for a minute that is left I'd like you to just see it as open awareness.
When you open your eyes know that your awareness is still there.
It's just now busy with the content of it.
Thank you so much.
