I have surrendered the known—the self—to selfless knowing—the truth—that awareness is the eternal present moment, constantly observing the illusion of the universe it creates to experience itself temporarily. The self is the warehouse for the entire catalog of human memories that create the illusion of psychological time, which separates the mind from eternity as experience. The mind is something that awareness does when, like the sun shines light, it focuses attention to create a subject-object relationship to navigate its temporary experience of the universe. Therein lies the divinity of awareness, the omnipresent source of silent knowing as eternal existence, which the mind cannot grasp because it requires a separate object to know—to differentiate as self-experience. As the sun cannot shine light on itself, eternal awareness can only focus its attention on objects—as thinking—that is, the mind—utilizing the recorded past of imaginary relationships to project a different but continuous illusion as the future—to imagine its separate existence from eternity as experience in time. The mind, what eternal awareness does, as experience in time, is the constant craving for an object to recognize itself as being separate—the duality of comparison that proves its existence, which is the root cause of all mental addictions!
It’s crucial to understand that suffering in addiction is the mind seeking its source of awareness. The mind constantly craves the object it can never possess—to know its source—which creates the never-ending cycle of addiction to thinking as endless crazy—self—talk. This is why we can’t think our way out of addiction; we can only feel our way out by letting go of the mind. We must stop seeking an end to suffering through objective remedies that perpetuate the separate mind and start looking within, where the mind can be dissolved in unconditional Love at the “heart of awareness.”2 Understanding the workings of the mind doesn’t make addiction disappear. Instead, the healing power of unconditional Love in the present moment dissolves the mind, not by changing the past but by transforming the mind into its source of awareness.
Awareness appears when I hit bottom when the mind is exhausted from suffering in addiction to thinking. In that present moment, when the mind lets go of its constant craving for objects to prove its existence (thinking), awareness arises to expose my relationship with my drug of choice as the illusion the mind creates from constantly seeking the source of its existence that it can never find.
Awareness is meditation, and meditation happens when we recognize the mind when it is quiet or by observing when it is mentally suffering, clinging to addictions, trauma, separation, or loss. Meditation occurs when awareness recognizes itself not as what the mind is doing but as the mind itself. Civilization has been passing on this truth for millennia in subtle quotes: “Know Thyself,” “Thou art That,” therefore “I am”—silent, eternal awareness! Awareness is the omnipresent source, the constant background to what the mind is doing, that appears when the mind is suffering from seeking the source or when it is quiet: when there is no self, thought, or comparison, and it is empty of objects to hold onto. Only the constant flowing energy of selfless eternal existence—the infinite background of Love—remains.
So, what do I have to do for meditation to happen? The short answer is nothing! “Awareness [Meditation] is what we are, not what we do.”[1] Once we hit bottom in addiction and make an effort to stay sober, whether we recognize it or not, awareness as the ever-present background of the meditative, mind-at-rest has appeared as the Love that we are. Once the mind gets a glimpse of awareness, it can’t unsee it. The mind will never know the source, but it cannot hide from awareness—Love alone can end the suffering of the mind’s addictions!
Slayer: (quotes to slay the imaginary dragons of addiction)
“Meditation is the relaxation in attention and the subsequent return of awareness to itself. It is dissolving the mind in the heart of awareness, not a directing of the mind towards any kind of objective experience.”[2]
“…meditation is what we are, not what we do. And the separate self or finite mind is what we do, not what we are.”[1]
[1] Being Aware of Being Aware, Rupert Spira, New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, CA, 2017. Pg. 68.
[2] Being Aware of Being Aware, Rupert Spira, New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, CA, 2017, pg. 63.
VAB 09-07-24
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