Being aware of being aware

Consider if the five senses turned off. The seeing was gone. The hearing. The tasting and the smelling you forget most of the time anyway. All the sensing, all the feeling. Finally all the thoughts went.

Would you then have ceased to exist?

Then what if a sound appeared? Or a sensation, or a thought, a feeling.

As soon as that experience appears, it proves that you did not cease to exist. Because if you were not present, you would not be there to receive that experience; to perceive it.

This little thought experiment has very quickly reduced you to your true nature. To what you really are behind the facade, beyond all the ideas and concepts of what you are.

This is the point of meditation and Self-inquiry.

When you asked to be mindful, it is not only to become more aware of your surroundings, or the sounds, or feelings, or thoughts, or whatever.

The true inquiry is, "What am I?"

And for that, there is a turn inwards.

In the answer that you arrive at, you are not aware of any thing; you're not aware of any particular phenomena. You're simply aware of being aware.

And how truly that is the answer to what am I.

You are only the aware-ness. Just that and nothing else.

When you're asked, "Are you aware?" Or, "Are you aware of being aware?"

There's a moment, where intuitively, you turn away from whatever experience is present in the moment, and you know for a fact that you are aware.

But then without stopping at this affirmation, the thinking resumes. All the commentary on the state of the mind, the feelings at the moment, or whatever else is being perceived. And then it may seem that this awareness of being aware is a truism.

There's nothing important there. It's too obvious.

But the truth is that the Sages are also pointing to this very same fact. It is just this simple recognition that is at the heart of what is called Enlightenment, or Self-Realization.

So, while the fact of being aware is most obvious, it is by no means ordinary.

Are you aware?

Instead of turning to the senses or the thinking as evidence, focus on how you answer this question.

Are you aware of being aware?

You don't need to turn to any particular experience. You don't need to turn to thought or memory.

How do you know that you are aware?

You know this simply by being aware.

And this is not referring to the experience in the moment.

This is Self-Knowledge. The awareness of being aware.

This is very fundamental. It does not require practice or becoming adept at meditation. To know this fact of being aware, you do not rely on any particular sensory perception or any thinking.

There's no concept involved, no imagination. It does not rely on the past or future.

Consider the importance of that fact.

This is the unadulterated, pure, factual knowledge of the Self. Of what you are in Reality.

What does this Self-knowledge tell you? Does it describe you as being this body or mind, or this individual person? Does it say that you are this stream of experience that has a beginning and an end?

The direct knowledge is only that you are aware.

To know yourself in this way, without mixing in any thought or belief, is to know yourself as Awareness alone.

The path of wisdom, the path of knowledge, Jnana, is only to be clear on this one basic fact.

Are you aware of being aware?

Don't evaluate how this question affects the state of the mind. Focus on how it is that you answer this question.

Notice if you need to turn to any of the five senses in particular. Does some particular thought need to arise, or a memory. Is there a feeling that is always there in response?

Maybe there is.

There is a peace in knowing yourself in this way. In being freed of all your worries and troubles. Because they are attached to an identity that is not really true. That is not you.

Liberation is to know yourself as Awareness alone.

You suddenly find that you are free. Unattached.

Only the witnessing of it all.

When you're aware of being aware, it is not the usual kind of perception, which the mind can frame in terms of subject and object. You're in fact turning away from the mind, which is really just the experience flowing past.

That is the mind.

But you turn away from that, to what is most truly You. Most timeless and changeless.

That is your own true nature.

And there's no duality in this recognition. Because it is not a subject on one end perceiving an object on the other.

This is the Self being aware of the nature of the Self.

So, the awareness of being aware is not something to be lightly discarded.

There is a peace. The Bliss of samadhi and sleep. It seeps into this dream. Because Bliss too is the nature of Self.

The senses do not give you peace, or contentment, or bliss. They can only give you passing pleasures.

True Bliss is in the nature of being aware.

So, are you aware?

That is you recognizing yourself, without a mirror.

That is Self-Knowledge.

You are always aware. Even if all the five senses turn off, the thinking stops, everything goes, you remain aware.

Aware-ness is always aware.

But not always aware of being aware. For that experience is required.

But what the experience informs you of, is your own true nature. The contents of the experience are not important.

It is what experience reveals about You, the nature of Reality.

This step, this turning inwards and recognizing Awareness as the Self, as the true meaning of I, this is the fruition of the path of Knowledge.

Jnana.

This is the conclusive and absolutely final answer to what am I.

Besides the seeing, hearing, sensing, feeling, thinking, there's also You who are aware of all this.

Besides the phenomena there is the Noumenon; this Awareness, which is what You are.

Rather than taking the phenomena to be primary, using it as evidence for the Noumenon based on reasoning, you must see that the Noumenon is primary. And the phenomena are only the passing expressions of the very same Noumenon.

Because, in fact, the seeing, hearing, sensing, feeling, and thinking are nothing apart from the Awareness.

You are not a separate subject observing these objects.

Whatever is perceived, you are the perceiving of it.

Whatever happens, you are The Happening of it.

You are this Aware-ness.

Now and forever.

Timeless.

And changeless.