Pure Awareness
by JAREK CZECHOWICZ
This story has an inside and an outside, but language was not created to tell it ...
Now is the dawning of a new way of relating among people as significant as the emergence of language.
Spoken words are meaningless to someone who has never heard language. And words written on a piece of paper appear as shapes and patterns to someone who can't read. Similarly the use of language in a story like this can seem insignificant or even confusing to people who are not familiar with awakening, even though it is very simple. But those that are ready will resonate with a story about pure awareness.
Awakening is an evolutionary leap out of thinking to experience thought, emotion, and matter from a new perspective, that of being simultaneously 'separate from' and 'one with' everything.
Every situation contains a perfection that is untouched by whatever is happening. That perfection is your awareness, a pure stillness and ever-present peace beyond understanding. Awareness is without thought, yet contains it, and is one with it.
The cessation of thought can unveil your natural state; however you don't have to stop thinking permanently to be in your true nature. You can know yourself as awareness while continuing to think, feel and act. Yet most people think, feel and act without knowing their true nature. Actions, emotions and thoughts make up the inside of the story. It is a world made of polarities and differences, opinions and perspectives and dominated by thought forms that cause you to struggle. These are just dreams, and the sooner you let go of them, or learn to enjoy and play with them, the easier your life will be.
There are dreams within dreams. You dream when you are asleep, when you imagine the future, when you think of the past, but it really all happens now, in the dream of this moment.
Your concepts depend on a perception of continuity which is served by memory. In other words you compare something that exists now with something that you think existed. But that comparison happens now, as a thought. In order to remember something you have to be separate from it. To remember means to put back together. You don't remember what you were before you were born because you were not separate from anything. To remember past lives you have to be in the mental realm of thought and separation.
Is your past or past life real, or is it a dream? Compare the dream you had a few years ago with the things you did on the same day. Which of them seems real now? They are both like a dream. The same applies to a past life. It is really a thought in the present moment.
A personal story is based in a sense of continuity, which in itself is a thought. For example, the only evidence you have that the place you are in has not changed in the past minute is that it seems similar to a moment ago, but at a deeper level you know that in time it will change so much that it won't even exist.
An unexplored and misunderstood fear of change combined with an overwhelming desire for security is at the root of personal and social suffering everywhere. All social problems are made worse by ongoing failed attempts at finding security and happiness, often at the expense of others, in an environment of thoughts and forms whose very nature is to change. Those that awaken, and many who meditate, are likely to deal with change more peacefully because they have some sense of their true nature beyond the dream of their life.
Life is generally lived from one perspective, that of the personal story, the inside story. The view from within your story is about what happened, who did what, and who said what, and so on. Now more people have the opportunity to know that they have an existence outside their story, as pure awareness.
You are a part of every experience. Your conviction that there are experiences happening outside of you is an experience that you are having. No one can ever prove this to you because their proving this to you is also an experience that you are having. Test for yourself that you cannot step out of your awareness to know otherwise. See for yourself that it is possible to simply be, with or without thinking, with or without emotion. Look into this if you want to know unconditional love.
Unconditional love is pure awareness. It is not an emotional state because all emotional states are conditional. Only pure awareness can hold everything unconditionally. Neither thought nor emotion can do this because their existence is dependant on separation. The state of separation is an altered state of consciousness which is widely considered the 'normal' state of consciousness. This is equivalent to spiritual illiteracy because everyone has the potential to know their natural state but they are, in the most innocent sense, ignorant of it.
Pure awareness is your true nature. As pure awareness you don't need a purpose. This is very different from how things seem in everyday life. Yet an independence from purpose can actually make your life seem more purposeful if only because your experience of life becomes more harmonious. Water doesn't struggle to flow because it exists in harmony with its true nature, so no matter where it is it fulfils its purpose without having a purpose.
The difference between the inside story and the outside story is this: From the perspective of the inside story, I speak these words and you read these words. From the perspective of the outside story, awareness speaks these words and awareness hears these words, and there are no dividing lines between the 'I', the 'you', and awareness.
Peace