On Awareness
Awareness will show you where you are not aware. It acts as a natural barometer.
If something happens that disturbs you and you are aware, you will be conscious of the disturbance. If you are unaware, you will simply feel disturbed. It can be that straightforward. The awareness that recognises the disturbance remains undisturbed. On the other hand, the lack of awareness that results in disturbance truly experiences disturbance.
Life will show you where you are hiding, where you are running from life, where you fear the end of life and risk ignoring the outcome then continue to pursue ignorance. Realisation awakens you from the dream of ignorance, which means simply not to know, or even to know but to ignore the fact. Awakening from the dream of ignorance means dreaming becomes dissatisfying. One is no longer fulfilled or entranced by the play of the world.
Every time we feed the hungry ghost of that ignorance, it grows at double the rate and threatens to devour us all the more. Our task is to stop feeding the monster inside of us. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “If a lion [instinctual nature, ignorance, manas] eats a person [awakened intellect, buddhi], the person becomes like the lion. However, if the person eats the lion, the lion will become like the person.” The task is to indoctrinate, uplift, and evolve aspects of the dream into awakened realisation, to bring suffering to compassion, to bring darkness to light.
To paraphrase a Tibetan saying: it doesn’t matter how long the shadow has been there, ancient and twisted in itself; as soon as the light shines upon it, it vanishes. That is how the conditioned world is in the light of reality. And everything that has been obscured from that light craves that light. Everything that has become confused or disturbed in separation from truth is drawn towards the light of truth. Sometimes it is drawn in sinister ways that seek to attack the truth. Deep down, however, it is reaching for the path of purification.
Truth is pure. Coming close to truth purifies. The ultimate is that there is only truth. Everything that says otherwise is not the ultimate view.
On one side, there is so much work to be done. The other side has no sides and says it is done. It is already done.
When we close the story, the awareness remains. The contents have dissolved, along with the burden of the story.
