Who is it?
By David Kelso
You can build up a mental image of what awareness is. You can formulate an idea of correct function. You can create enlightenment into a 'thing', something to attain, some place to move towards or something to ascend to.
Who is it that moves towards it or attains it?
You imagine awareness or whatever you choose to call it is a place free of thought and so you try to stop thinking.
Who is it that tries?
We can’t stop thought. We can’t slow down the stream of thought. That's not to say the stream of thoughts can’t slow down or don’t become still in any given moment but that the stream of thought slows down and stills of its own accord. And even when that does happen it’s not something to try and hold onto or to try and recreate or think 'that's it'. In one moment there is thought and in the next stillness. The thing is to not hold on to either of them.
Who is it that holds?
Ripples on the surface of the lake do not effect the stillness of its depths.
Thoughts arise as simple as that. Trying to stop them is just further creating a sense of self and is further giving life to the ego. We have millions of random thoughts a day none of which are our own. Most people are so very lost in their thoughts, so immersed in them, being dragged everywhere by them, into the memories of the past, or into ideas of the future, never being truly here in this moment, completely unaware of what is going on in this moment, right now, this very instant inside and out. We can believe we are our thoughts, completely identify with them, with our beliefs and opinions creating and believing in a self image that we end up trying to defend and then project on to others.
The thing is, can we become aware of this going on? I don't mean imagining yourself as some external observer, a separate entity watching the thoughts.
Who is it who watches?
This is again just creating a self image, a sense of self as the observer. Total awareness is just that, being completely aware of everything that is happening in this moment, on your thought processes going on, on what’s happening all around you, on your entire experience. And when there is complete awareness there is no longer any experiencer separate from the experience, there just is, what is, what is arising moment to moment, nothing is your own, there is nothing to claim, because the big illusion is that there is a you separate from everything that is arising. There is no doer and nothing to be done.
There is never any separation, only complete expression, right now, right here.
Who is left to express?
The adventure awaits…
David Kelso