Awareness, enlightenment, and awakening are elusive because human conditioning has us convinced that learning and searching are the way to them; thus, any of the above is a procedural effort. That is, the “process” of “learning to become” becomes the object (awareness, enlightenment, awakening, etc.) initially sought. Meanwhile, “the sought” requires no learning, searching, or process at all; it simply waits patiently for you to come home to silence. Come home; it is the only place of peace, joy, and love, and it is the long-needed rest from a journey to nowhere. Well, nowhere but here, now.
Bozebits
The side you take is inseparable from the side not taken, e.g., heads or tails are forever bonded by the coin upon which they are forged. Only your mind separates and makes one “side” the whole, and the loss in such an exercise is wealth only “wholeness” provides. “I am right, and you are wrong” is the disease of ego and separation from the very essence of oneness and awareness. Judgment cannot happen where no opposite (side) exists. Seeing this side or that separates you from the whole, and that is a separation the “whole” can ill afford. Heads or tails? Don’t make that call!
Bozebits
Awareness is not awakening to something new and profound that comes through intense learning, searching, and reconciliation with past experience. That’s just programming the latest and greatest spirit-speak your mind is caught up in. Awareness is, to use the programming metaphor, “the original program.” That is what you had before you knew anything or could speak anything. Your “original programming” has been replaced, and awareness is undoing whatever the original is replaced with, e.g., everything you think, believe, or know.
You cannot know what you already are by layering the so-called “new” on top of it. You can be IT by clearing all programming. Version 1.0, e.g., YOU is perfect and always has been. Don’t go back; just BE.
Bozebits
What you see is always skewed by what you know, e.g., what you’ve been taught. That is not seeing; it’s an agreement with a lifetime of gathered information stored in your mind that is not what is. To see without blinders, (knowledge) placed upon us would baffle, surprise, and hopefully humble us. We literally miss out on that much! You will never know what you see if you can describe it in any way. You were taught wrong, but not to worry. Clear your mind, and you will “see” again.
Bozebits
You cannot think or learn your way to stillness, quiet, peace, and awareness; they are not formulaic. Instead, they are states independent of mind-based activity. Do you see? Even thinking that you must quiet your mind creates the noise of process, discipline, and often, the judgment of self.
There are vast spaces between this thought and the next one, this word followed by another, etc., and those spaces contain a field, so still that awareness, simply, surrounds you. You’re there more than you think, and that’s the rub. You can’t quantify how often because that requires thinking. So what to do?
I can’t tell you; that would be formulaic. Anything I suggest will take you from it. YOU, however, already know.
Bozebits
You are not your body, and death is not an ending, preluding some imaginary “new beginning.” YOU are more expansive than the infinite universe you try to wrap your mind around, but can’t. Awareness is an expansion, but not as your mind would have you believe, which is knowing something more significant than you already do. It is the reverse of that, e.g., the release of what you know. “Nothing” should be the platform for all of your life experience, and the more “nothing” you carry around in your head, the more expansive you are. Awareness is looking past your senses and is unfettered by any “known” thing. Again, what you think, know, believe, etc., is of the body, and YOU are not your body!
Bozebits
Own what you think without the implication that what you think matters in any way to anyone else. You know it matters when you grow angry, frustrated, or excited by those who do not “think” as you do, and often even when they do. Have you ever observed when two or more are discussing an agreed-upon viewpoint, and the tenor of the discussion turns competitive between those who have the better reason for it? Humans jettison energy and do so for the most inane reasons, e.g., to prove a point that doesn’t matter. All other earthly life forms conserve energy, and nearly all humans credit them with greater awareness and sensitivity to what is going on in and around them. How do you think they do it? They live, not for others or because of others. They give nothing to the unimportant and, in so doing, have the energy to see what we (humans) rarely, if ever, see.
The fewer things you have to think about that you believe matter, the less you have to “think” at all. You’ll love what you see when you do!
Bozebits
Life is a mystery, but your mind, too, wants its place in that, so it invents its own. The mind’s mystery is intrigue and subtlety, spooky, dangerous, and full of villains, ghosts, and monsters lurking in every corner. While there is nothing wrong with your mind indulging in its brand of mystery, never let it get beyond fantasy, fun, and, especially, fiction. It is no different than consuming “junk food.” That is, it tastes good and feels good, but has no nutritional value and can cause significant damage to the body. “Junk food” for the mind is no different, and you are being fed it constantly. You don’t have to eat it, but if you do, take it for what it is, e.g., nonsense and of no nutritional value to your mind!
That part of you that is not your mind will love you for it and let you peer into the real mystery. The mystery that transforms body and soul that is! Now, where are those chips?
Bozebits
“Aha’s” or what some refer to as “defining moments” almost always integrate with what was before it appeared. That is, the experience is neatly stored in memory, but the safety of the known is too compelling to alter present-moment living entirely. Oddly, such moments happen free of any known constraints, e.g., religion, beliefs, faith, hopes, philosophy, whatever, and are free and clear of any previous thought or recollection. Even the mind’s constant banter is silent, but, in its incessant way, it fires back up and drags the pristine into the muddy waters of “how it has always been,” and the “moment” gives way to the safety of the known. If your “aha” comes in the context of what you think you know or believe, it’s not an aha. It’s a confirmation to your mind that, while out of control, it thinks it is in control. In other words, don’t let what you know or think integrate with the mystery presented in the still, clean waters of silence. “Defining moments” have no definition. Neither should you.
Bozebits
Awareness is indefensible. That is, you have no argument for it that stands up to your or anyone else’s sense of reason. It just cannot be reconciled with other forms of collective organization, institutions, or philosophy. It’s just you aware of YOU and utterly free of attachment to anything. If you think you know, you don’t. If you know, you know you don’t. Still, you are “in the world” and can fully participate in it, but you will do so without attachment, especially without argument. Awareness is liberation!