Question
Very good info there Jay.
You was talking about that when you get lost in thoughts (daydream), there is a moment after that where you are aware of that daydreaming just occured, this moment is pure awareness, where there are no thoughts? Means you could only be aware of thoughts that just happened, and not stay presently aware of them? Or is there possible to have awareness and thoughts going on at the same time, so you would be presently aware of your thoughts, instead of realizing what you just had thoughts in a moment and then getting lost again in them again.
From alot of reading on awareness meditation, I have found out that we are not our thoughts, but pure awareness, beyond the mind. I have tryed before to be aware of "myself", now, what is this "myself"? When I am aware of "myself", I am aware of this "myself" I think I am/ I am each day. Is this "myself" just some thoughts? Or is this myself, contents of the mind, my ego?
Anyway, as far as I know, it can't be awareness, as you can't be aware of your own awareness (from what I've red) you can only experience it.
But if this isn't awareness, means that it is some thoughts that says "this is myself"?
And at last, would being aware of this "myself" be the same as being aware of your thoughts? Because every time I do try to become aware of "myself", I feel good, I feel like knowing everything.
Answer
Hi, John.
It's nice to keep looking into this.
When there is awareness, it is possible to think clearly. Awareness is not the opposite of thinking. It is more a depth of presence that is larger than thinking and that allows thinking to be seen clearly. Awareness is also not the holding back of thinking.
Let's look at your last comment, this process of becoming aware of yourself, which feels good and somehow wise. I'm not sure exactly what this is that you are doing. I remember now certain times in retreats when I was in a state in which the energy just made me feel great and I thought this was something fantastic and I wanted to keep it going. The wonderful thing about retreat is that you actually have a chance to try to do that because there is nothing else there to interrupt you. What I found is that those states never did last forever and that they were not really anything profound. Afterwards I was just tired, maybe in a good way. But it was nothing special and it took a lot of energy to keep it going. Maybe I thought something wonderful would happen to me if I kept it up. And I really gave it every chance to see if I continued whether it would become permanent. I would also go to the teacher afterwards to see if something wonderful had happened to me but the teacher never thought it was special.
Looking back now I can see that I was very concerned with trying to get the right state of mind, to develop the right kind of mental abilities or "no-mental" abilities. What is clear now is that kind of powerful state of mind, as good as it feels, doesn't do anything to show me how I really am living. It doesn't do anything to help me see other people simply and compassionately for what they are going through.
Let's come back to awareness and "myself". Maybe you can try taking a much simpler approach to awareness. Awareness is not some mystical state you have to try to attain. The word, as we are using it together, is not so much a thing or a state. It just refers to the quality that is here when the thinking mind is not dominating the whole scene. This happens for all of us all the time in small ways. In fact we couldn't walk down the street without awareness. We would bump into things.
So in sitting still in meditation, maybe you can take this simple approach. Just noticing what is here. This very much includes the feelings in the body, the sensations on the skin, the perceptions coming to the ears and nose and eyes. Can you say these things are not "myself"??
When the brain becomes very active, most of this perception disappears. Our world becomes the history that the brain lives in, the history of our past and the hopes of our future. It's like watching a movie. While we are watching it, the whole world becomes the story of that movie, with its characters who we love or hate and with its plot and mystery that we want to see what happens to it. Then the movie is over and there are the seats and the screen and the people who were there. All of it was there all the time but we didn't see it. What happened to the wonderful story? It is gone, disappeared in the blink of an eye and replaced with reality.
So it's the same in sitting and in daily life. The difference between the movie analogy and what actually happens for us is that when the energy learns to stay with what is actually here, something begins to change in the movie of ourselves. It begans to realign itself with reality. It begins to shift from "knowing" to "questioning and looking." It's not that we shouldn't care about our lives or how we relate to people or whether we are taking care of our health and well being. It is that we start to discover that the best responses to our needs come from the depths of Presence, of not going with what is already known but of listening deeply to life itself, as it unfolds around us and in us moment by moment, without knowing where it is leading.
You might read what I'm saying and then ask yourself how you try to do this but it's not necessary to try too hard. You don't need to change your thinking or to do something in particular. You can just sit still and see how it really is. You will see that daydreaming takes over, though you will only see this after it has happened. You will notice that there is a moment of waking up and that there may be thoughts then of how do I keep this awakeness going. Eventually it will become clear that those thoughts don't help. Life will find a way to communicate through your body/mind so that presence (awareness) becomes more important.
If you find that there is very little awareness and mostly daydreaming and reacting to daydreaming, and if you are interested in finding out if this simple awareness by itself has the ability to clarify your life, then you may need to devote more time and space to it. You can go to a retreat and give this awareness a good, long week. Seven day retreat is really the best way for this awareness to go deep. If you want some suggestions for good places to do retreat in Europe, I can give you some information. It is very helpful to go to a retreat that does not add on expectations and trainings and "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts". Unfortunately, most retreat places do this to some extent and this just gives people more ideas of what they should do, which gets in the way of simple listening.
Even among retreat groups, it is apparently rare to really trust simple presence.
You have observed, yourself, that trying to be aware of myself or aware of my thoughts just seems to lead to a lot of confusion. It may be helpful to consider that awareness actually does not depend on an object of awareness. Awareness, like the sky, reveals whatever happens to appear but is not caused by what appears. Nothing particular may appear at all and then there is just vast simplicity - a wide open sky. You can give up needing to be aware of anything - no need to be aware of myself or aware of thoughts. Just allow things to come and go, revealing themselves and disappearing as they need.
It strikes me now that in daily life this would take the form of really listening to what people are saying to me and of really hearing how I am responding, reacting, defending myself and my ideas, of how much I am trying to control things around me and of how confused I may really be about what's going on and how much I want certain things and am afraid they won't happen. These are the kinds of things that don't want to come out into the open sky, that want to hide themselves. If we can start to hear these things in our daily lives, maybe the walls that keep us from simple presence will start to dissolve.
Well, maybe this is enough for now. What do you think?
Best,
Jay
