What is awareness?
It means to watch,
To observe.
What is going on within you and around you?
Going on,
Pretty accurate.
Because things are going on.
The trees,
The grass,
The plants,
The animals,
The rocks,
All of reality is moving.
One observes it,
One watches it.
How essential it is for the human being to observe,
Not just himself or herself,
But all of reality.
You are imprisoned by your concept.
Do you want to break out of the prison?
Look,
Observe.
Spend hours observing,
Watching.
What?
Anything.
The faces of people,
The shape and form of trees,
A bird in flight,
A pile of stones.
Watch the grass grow.
Get in touch with things.
Look at them.
Hopefully,
You will break out of this habit,
These rigid patterns that we have all developed,
That our thoughts and our words have imposed on us.
Hopefully,
We will see.
What will we see?
This thing that we choose to call reality.
Whatever is beyond these words and concepts.
That is a spiritual exercise.
Connected with spirituality.
Connected with breaking out of your cage.
Out of the imprisonment of your concepts and words.
How sad if you would have passed through life and never seen it again with the eyes of a child.
Don't lose your concepts.
They're very precious.
As a matter of fact,
We begin without them.
Then we develop concepts because concepts have a very positive function.
Thanks to them,
It would seem we develop this thing called intelligence.
We're even able to then understand the limitations of concepts.
Anyone who never learned a language,
Who was never programmed,
Was never given words and concepts,
Would,
It would seem,
Have no intelligence at all.
And so we're invited not to become children,
But to become like little children.
We have to fall from the stage of innocence.
We have to be thrown out of paradise and develop this I,
This me,
Thanks to these concepts.
And then we need to return to paradise again.
We need to be redeemed again.
We need to put off the old man,
The old nature,
The conditioned self,
And return to the state of the child.
But without being children anymore.
So we start off looking at reality in wonder.
But it isn't the intelligent wonder of the mystic.
It's the formless wonder of the child.
Then the wonder dies and is replaced by boredom.
As we develop language and words and concepts.
Then hopefully if we're lucky,
We return to the wonder again.
