AWARENESS IS THE MEDICINE
What is awareness?
What is awareness? We can use many words to describe awareness, but awareness is what is before all words. Some terms people use interchangeably with awareness are consciousness, recognition, perception, wakefulness, cognizance or acknowledgment. Awareness is the capacity to see or know. It is the subject and the field in which all objects exist inside of. One might consider if objects can exist without a subject to observe them. Can anything exist without awareness? What would be there to be aware of said objects? The answers to these questions are relatively obvious once one asks them. It is just that most don’t ask. Without inquiry everything seems mysterious and while everything is mysterious, awareness can be recognized. It is what gives rise for the capacity to know.
Now that it’s clear that everything exists inside of and because of awareness, you can see that nothing is separate from it. This includes your body, mind and heart. Your entire human experience is an experience inside of awareness. Many people aren’t consciously aware. They aren’t present. They are operating from unconscious conditioned energetic thought patterns without the subject (ie. awareness) being awake. This is why we have the feeling and experience of disconnection and powerlessness so often. We are living without the operator of life fully awake and therefore are functioning as an object rather than the subject of our life. An object has no power on its own. When we are identified as the object we feel powerless and like we can’t or don’t know.
How do we wake up to the subject? This seems to be multilayered and there doesn’t appear to be a direct road map that is the same for everyone. There are however some themes that appear to be present. One is softening, both the body and mind. Softening loosens definition. Less definition means more openness, fluidity and a sense of unification. Unification is a field where subject and object are not separate. Awareness becomes primary rather than experience being primary. Another theme is the less you think the more you are aware. Thinking clutters awareness. When our mind is open then it can receive and tune into awareness. This means we can be present. When the mind is busy thinking it has no bandwidth for awareness. Thoughts are an experience inside of awareness, not awareness itself. Awareness is clear, intelligent and self-organizing. When we are awake to awareness our thoughts take a back seat and awareness runs the show. We are no longer interfering and in our non-interference we experience an aliveness that is full, connected and knows.
WORKING WITH AWARENESS
Opening the gifts of the moment
When we are awake to awareness all effort seizes. All attempts to try end. There is deep relief and we are filled with the most nourishing breath. WE don’t have to know, but we know what does know and we’ve awoken ourselves to it. There is recognition that everything is in perfect place and that as we are present and open in awareness whatever needs to be revealed, reorganized and reoriented will be. There is nothing we can or that we even want to do about it. The desire is to allow, be in awe, reverence and even pleasure with the perfect unfolding of every single second with its perfectly placed configurations. It is like an inner soulgasmic dance with the divine, even if everything on the surface appears ordinary and mundane. You don’t want to interfere even if you could. Rather you listen with, wait with, be in presence with awareness as it awakens in and through every aspect of form and creation. This is what healing is and awareness is the medicine.
The past and the future fold into now. We don’t project that we need to get somewhere because we are in the place we want to be. Even if there are uncomfortable sensations that arise they are just part of the arising of this moment. They aren’t something that we need to run or distract ourselves from. There is no threat, and because there is no threat awareness works unimpeded. You recognize your body as part of the field of what is aware. We can at any time collapse ourselves back into identification with the body and experience disconnection and separation. What creates this collapse? At the core of it is merging awareness into the personality you’ve developed and taking your experiences seriously, factually and as the truth.
Being awake requires that we discipline our mind to unwind from what it thinks should or needs to happen. If we are focused solely on the outcome then we will limit all possibilities that we can see into the one that we are searching for or hoping to see. When we do this we miss everything that IS happening. We fuse with our thoughts rather than rest into awareness. It is good practice to regularly remind yourself that you don’t know anything. You have no idea what should or shouldn’t happen or what will best serve you or others. All you know is now. The more you remind yourself that you don’t know, the more you open yourself into awareness which does know. The mystery revealing itself to you becomes exciting because everyday its like opening a birthday present. You get to see what is inside rather than trying to control your gift.
The gifts you open moment by moment show you more and more what is true. Nothing is fixed. Everything is in constant flux, reorganizing and rearranging into some other perfect expression. You seeing or being consciously aware of awareness is where your power lives. You are able to recognize that because of awareness everything is as it is. As you rest here everything you see comes into its natural state of love and coherence. The more clear your mind and body, the more conscious you can become. When the light shines it illuminates everything inside of its line of sight. Light is awareness and when you know yourself as awareness you brighten whatever it is you see.
Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, Network Spinal Chiropractor, Somato-Respiratory Integration & Somatic Healer, Boulder, Colorado
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