spira-aware

It’s very easy to check this out for yourself. Ask yourself the question now: ‘Am I aware?’

I trust the answer is ‘Yes’. Now, when you heard the question ‘Am I aware?’ you pause, you refer to your experience and as a result, you answer ‘Yes. It is my experience that I am aware’. We don’t guess it. We don’t believe it. We Know it. We know the experience of being aware, or rather we are aware of the experience of being aware.

Who is the ‘we’? When we say ‘I am aware that I am aware. I know that I am aware’. What is the ‘I’ that Knows that I am aware?

Is the I that knows that I am aware different than the I that is simply aware? In other words, is the experience of being aware known by something other than Itself? Is there another kind of awareness in you that knows the experience of being aware? Try to find these two awareness-es. One, the experience of being aware. And two, another kind of awareness that knows the experience of being aware. Can you find these two I’s…, the I that is aware, and the I that knows that I am aware?

No. It’s the same I. I am aware is our primary experience. How do we know that I am aware? Because I am aware that I am aware. And the I that is aware is the same I that Knows I am aware. In other words, Awareness Knows Itself. Awareness is not known by some other kind of mind. Awareness’ prime experience, before it knows anything else like a thought, sensation or perception…, its primary experience is to Know Itself.

But it doesn’t Know Itself as an object, in the way that it seems to know a thought, sensation or perception. In other words, it doesn’t know itself in relationship; in subject / object relationship.

The I that knows is the I that is known.

This is what the Old Testament statement “I Am that I Am” means. The statement which Ramana Maharshi once said was the clearest, highest and most refined statement of non-duality there is: “I Am that I Am”. That’s a short-hand version of ‘I am That which is aware that I am aware. I know my own Being by myself without the aid of any other agent’.

Now, what does awareness need to do in order to Know Itself? Where does it have to go?

If I were to ask you now to stand up and take a step toward yourself, what would you do? It’s like that for awareness. In order to know itself, it doesn’t have to do anything. It doesn’t have to direct its knowing towards itself.

It’s like asking ‘What does the sun have to do to illuminate itself?’ Its nature is illumination. Just by being itself, it illuminates itself. For the sun, to be itself and to illuminate itself is the same. Illuminating itself is not something that it ‘does’…, it is what it IS. It’s the same for awareness. Knowing itself is not something it has to do. Just by being itself, it knows itself.

It is too close to itself to know itself in relationship. In order to know itself in relationship, it would have to separate itself from itself; turn around and look at itself. It can’t do that; just as the sun can’t separate itself from itself, travel a million miles into the universe and then turn around and shine on itself. In order to illuminate something other than itself, the sun must direct its rays away from itself toward that other planet. But in order to know itself, it doesn’t need to shine its rays on itself. It IS the illumination of itself. It is self-shining, self-illuminating.

Likewise, Awareness, in order to know something other than itself (such as the mind, body or world, thought, sensation, perception) it must shine its knowing, shine its ‘aware-ing’ apparently away from itself towards that object…, and it does this by rising in the form of attention or the finite mind. But in order to know itself, it doesn’t need to rise as attention or the finite mind. It knows itself simply by being itself. It is self-illuminating, self-knowing, self-aware.

Please remember, I’m not talking about some extraordinary cosmic awareness that we don’t have any contact with. I’m talking about the very knowing with which each of us is now knowing our experience. In other words, Consciousness or Awareness knows itself by itself, in itself, through itself, as itself.

So, we can say from our experience that what we call I is present and aware. The experience of being aware is its irreducible nature. Everything apart from the experience of being aware can be removed from us, but the experience of being aware of itself is irreducible, indestructible.

In other words, Being and Knowing go into the essential make of ourselves.

When I say ‘Being and Knowing’ I don’t mean that these are two elements. It’s one quality, if we can call it a quality. Being-Aware or Aware-Being, written as all one word. We can say that this Aware-Being is empty; that is, empty of objects. Full of itself, but empty of objects. It has no objective quality. It is self-aware. It is not known by other kind of mind or awareness. Its nature is to be aware. And just by being itself, it knows itself.

That means for each of us to KNOW our essential nature…, is simply to be, knowingly, the presence of awareness.

That is why it is said that ‘Simply being is the highest meditation’.

We cannot know ourselves as something, as an object. We cannot direct our attention towards ourself. Attention comes from ourself, just as light comes from the sun. That attention can only be directed towards something that is not ourself, just as the sun can only shine on something that is not itself.

So, the way to know our true nature of empty awareness is to BE knowingly empty awareness.

This is a little frustrating for the object-knowing mind. But if the object-knowing mind would like to know its source in the same way that it knows other things (that is, as an object in subject / object relationship) it’s not possible.

To Know ourSelf is to BE ourSelf.
And to BE ourSelf is to Know ourSelf.

That’s why I said… ‘True meditation is a non-practice’.
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Rupert Spira