Brave Awareness Ngöndro | A Sacred Spoken Transmission

This is not a technique to master.
It is a mirror, offered in words, to help you remember what has never not been.

This spoken Ngöndro is part poetry, part prayer, and part sacred disruption—inviting you to rest in the awareness beneath striving, fixing, and self-improvement.

Read by Ngakpa Ronn Pawo McLane, this transmission comes from the Dzogchen tradition of radical clarity and brave presence.

It is best received with soft eyes, an open heart, and no expectation—only stillness.

Voice: Ngakpa Ronn Pawo McLane
Background: Forest wind ambience
Suitable for: Deep reflection, letting go, spiritual reconnection

Transcript

Before the first word is spoken,

You already know this.

This is not a teaching,

It's a remembering.

Not a map to follow,

But a mirror held up so gently you can't help but recognize your own face in it.

In the old traditions,

This was called nungdro,

Preliminary practice,

Foundation,

Preparation.

But what if you don't need to prepare?

What if the foundation is already here beneath every distraction?

You don't need to believe anything I say.

You don't even need to agree.

You only need to be still long enough to feel what you've never not known.

This is brave awareness,

Not because it's mystical,

Not because it's perfect,

But because it simply refuses to flee.

I am here.

I am aware.

I am not separate.

I do not need to seek something more.

I do not need to understand everything.

I do not need to fix what is not broken.

This moment is already whole.

This awareness is already enough.

This breath is the thread that connects it all.

I arrive,

Not as someone else,

But as the one I've always been.

Let this be the beginning,

Or the continuation,

Or the remembering.

Let this be the breath that reminds me I am not apart.

I am not lacking.

I am home.

Before the path,

There is presence.

Before the teaching,

There is knowing.

Before the effort,

There is being.

I sit.

I breathe.

I allow myself to be seen by my own awareness.

There is no need to pretend here.

No role to play.

No spiritual shape to twist myself into.

Let the breath come.

Let the breath go.

Let the body soften.

Let the story loosen.

The one who watches is not other than what is seen.

The one who knows is not separate from what is known.

What if I am not here to become something better?

What if the ground I've been standing on was always sacred?

Let me rest in the rhythm of this life.

The sound of breath.

The weight of my own truth.

Let me become what arises and trust what falls away.

I will not fix this moment.

I will not judge this breath.

I will not abandon myself here.

Instead,

I say,

Yes,

I see you.

Yes,

I am here.

Yes,

This is enough.

I am not here to become.

I am not here to heal.

I am not here to fix.

I am here to see clearly.

This is not a journey.

There is nowhere to arrive.

What I am does not change.

Only appearances move.

Even that is illusion.

I am not here to chase awakening.

I am here to stop pretending that I'm not already awake.

Suffering is the friction of believing illusion.

Fear is the echo of forgetting what I truly am.

Shame,

Grief,

Unworthiness.

These are costumes.

I wore them until they wore me down.

But none of them are mine.

They arise in this body.

They pass through this mind.

But they do not touch what I am.

I am not what feels.

I am not what thinks.

I am not what resists.

I am what remains when the wave recedes.

I am the ocean itself.

I do not live in time.

Time lives in the illusion of identity.

There is no past.

Only flickers of interpretation.

There is no future.

Only shadows of desire and fear.

Even now is a placeholder.

There is no moment.

Only the idea of one.

I do not exist in a line.

I do not follow a path.

I do not progress.

I am already what I am.

I cannot be more.

I cannot be less.

I do not live in time.

I appear to move,

But I remain unmoved.

I do not manifest.

To manifest is to grasp.

To grasp is to believe I lack.

Desire is a trap.

Expectation is a cage.

To reach for what is not is to forget what is.

I am not here to attract.

I am not here to create a better story.

I am here to stop believing the story entirely.

What I need is already here.

Not because I called it in,

But because nothing has ever been missing.

Trust is not an agreement.

It's not a guarantee.

It's not a contract with the universe.

I trust.

Not because things will go my way,

But because I see that there is no my way.

I trust what is.

Not because I understand it,

But because I no longer argue with it.

Even my resistance is just another appearance.

Even confusion arises within clarity.

I trust what sees,

Not what appears.

I trust awareness,

Not outcome.

I trust not because it's safe,

But because there is no threat.

I am not a work in progress.

That is the cruelest fiction of all.

There is no progress.

There is no better.

There is no finished version of me that matters more than this.

Improvement is a mask for shame.

Perfection is a banner for fear.

There is no one I must become.

There is only what I am,

Right here,

Without timeline,

Without comparison,

Without need.

I do not need to evolve.

I do not need to be ready.

I do not need to arrive.

What I am cannot be upgraded.

In the ultimate,

Nothing matters.

There is no right,

No wrong,

No gain,

No loss,

No purpose,

No point.

It is all empty,

Luminous,

Free.

In the relative,

Where I appear to live,

I live,

I care,

I cry,

I respond.

Both are true,

Neither are separate.

This body hurts,

But I am not the pain.

This life unfolds,

But I am not the story.

To deny the relative is blindness.

To forget the ultimate is bondage.

I live both,

Without clinging to either.

I am awake in the dream,

And I do not mistake the dream for real.

There is no path,

Only what appears to be a path.

There is no lesson,

Only what appears to be a lesson.

There is no awakening,

Only what cannot sleep.

I am not seeking,

I am not becoming.

I am not practicing to get anywhere.

I am unchanging,

Unstained,

Unmoved.

And in this seeing,

I walk without walking.

I rest without stillness.

I am without being.

I am not whole because I earned it.

I am whole because nothing can divide the indivisible.

I do not become awake.

I cease pretending to be asleep.

I do not arrive.

The map dissolves.

The destination disappears.

Only this,

Without name,

Without form,

Without opposite.

I do not need to hold on to this.

I cannot lose it.

I cannot improve it.

I am it.

Everything else fell away.

The striving,

The naming,

The narrative,

The need.

I looked for myself and found only the space where seeking collapsed.

I am not the breath.

I am not the thought.

I am not the experience.

I am what allows them to appear without ever becoming them.

This is not peace.

It's the absence of anything that could be disturbed.

This is not stillness.

It is the end of believing in movement.

There is no one else.

There never was.

But in this appearance of two,

Love expresses itself.

I don't help others out of obligation.

I don't act from pity or virtue.

Compassion arises not from lack but from clarity.

I don't need a reason to respond.

It is the nature of awareness to flow into form and return untouched.

I am not separate,

So I care.

I am not attached,

So I am free.

I do not rescue.

I reflect.

I do not fix.

I remain.

Practice dissolves when there's no longer anyone doing it.

Discipline dissolves when there's no goal to attain.

What I used to do with effort now arises as simplicity.

Not because I mastered it,

But because I stopped interfering.

I do not meditate.

Meditation appears.

I do not regulate.

Balance expresses itself.

I do not perform awareness.

I am what awareness looks like in form.

I no longer need a role.

Not the seeker.

Not the teacher.

Not the one who knows.

I am not enlightened.

I am not awakened.

I am not improved.

I am not I.

I just appear as one until the need to appear fades.

This isn't transcendence.

It's not bliss.

It's not anything.

And that's the beauty of it.

The silence doesn't speak.

The light doesn't shine.

The truth doesn't declare itself.

But nothing can hide them.

This is it.

There is no hidden meaning.

There is no next layer.

This is not the fruit of effort.

This is the taste that was always on the tongue.

I am the seeing.

I am the knowing.

I am the nothing that contains it all.

There is no enlightenment.

There is only the end of believing in darkness.

There is no final teaching.

Only the falling silent when nothing else needs to be said.

I offer nothing.

There is nothing to give.

There is no one to receive.

Still,

This clarity moves.

It appears as this voice,

This breath,

This moment that isn't a moment.

It asks for nothing.

It blesses everything.

May all who seem to suffer see that what they are was never touched by sorrow or time.

May those who seek turn inward,

Not to find,

But to stop looking.

May those who teach,

Teach only what is free of belief.

May those who long to awake and remember,

They never could sleep.

May this appearance of teaching vanish into the formlessness from which it came.

May these words dissolve.

May what cannot dissolve remain.

I dedicate no merit There is no result.

There is only this.

Unborn.

Unharmed.

Unneeded.

Unending.

Clear.

This is not transcendence.

This is not perfection.

This is just me.

Awake enough to stop pretending.

No halo.

No bliss.

Just space.

Just presence.

Just the luminous ordinary.

The world did not change.

I did.

The mind still makes noise.

The world still shouts.

But I no longer take the bait.

I see it.

The politics of panic.

The entertainment of suffering.

The dopamine-glazed hunger for another plot twist.

Another enemy.

Another escape.

But I'm not running anymore.

I don't need to turn away.

I don't need to join in.

I can sit in a room full of fear and not catch fire.

I can see what others can't because I'm not watching the same screen anymore.

This presence is not performance.

There is no technique to maintain.

No discipline to protect.

I just live as what I am.

And others feel it.

Not because I tell them.

But because the silence in me makes the noise in them want to rest.

Compassion flows naturally.

Not because I should.

But because I see clearly.

I see the exhausted one inside them chasing something that doesn't exist.

And so I don't add to their storm.

Sometimes I speak.

Sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I help.

Sometimes I walk away.

But I don't act from need.

I move from stillness.

Nothing dramatic.

Just real.

This is not a spiritual high.

This is not an identity upgrade.

This is what remains when there's nothing left to prove.

It looks like sitting quietly.

It looks like laughing softly.

It looks like me.

Being what I am.

Whole.

Unshaken.

Undeniably free.

This is brave awareness.

Not because it fights anything.

But because it refuses to flee.

Thank you.