How To Recognize Awareness

When introducing people to awareness for the first time, I often say: Just stop thinking for a moment and see what remains…

In fact, why don’t you all do that right now: for 5 seconds stop thinking and just see…

It’s then that you notice that there is something that remains when you are not thinking. Like a background that’s just present.

The goal with this is not to motivate you to stop all thinking or to try and retain a non-thought state of mind. Instead, that initial moment is just to help you recognize awareness. It’s just an introduction.

Sure, feel free to stop thinking for short moments repeatedly to become more familiar with awareness; that alertness that remains. But don’t ever believe that awareness, or your recognition of awareness, is depending on you being thoughtless.

If you notice that you are in fact believing you need to get rid of thoughts and emotions in order to be free, then let this moment and this very article, be the perfect moment to bring that belief to a complete stop .

In fact, it is crucial in this world of pace and chaos, to be able to recognize awareness even while thinking and feeling many things at once. It is crucial that we all come to know ourselves as that which is present in each perception: Awareness.

A Simple Analogy
Why do I tell you initially to stop thinking then? It’s because we have grown so accustomed to being interested only in our thought-forms, that we miss the very basis of every perception.

So when we stop thinking for a moment, we have nothing in our sight to distract us, and so we naturally notice that subtle presence that underlies all thoughts. We naturally notice that we are in fact that awareness that remains! Surprise: we are not our thoughts!

It’s like this:

Have you ever watched television, and suddenly the image turns black? There is no content on the screen and suddenly you are reminded that you were actually staring at a television set.

When the screen was filled with images that interested you, kept you distracted, you never even realized you were watching at a television screen. All you recognized were the changing forms that were displayed and the stories they were telling you.

And just like when your face is seen in the mirror, all you see is your face and your imperfections. Because that is what you are interested in. But when a mirror reflects nothing that pulls your interest, like for example an empty space of your room, you can for the first time see the mirror itself!

Similarly, Awareness is the basis of all your changing perceptions and is most easily noticed to be present, when you have no thoughts.

But as I said, it’s important not to dwell on this initial instruction.

Now that you have realized that all images were actually just pure television screen, when the images and the stories they tell you start to fill up your screen again, you can start to remind yourself of the fact that every image is nothing more than pure screen. You can now actually see the television screen as a screen!

No matter how elaborate, individual or authoritative the story of these images might seem, they have no individual basis or power and have never been anything more than pure screen. All images are now realized to be equal, even if their labels and descriptions tell you otherwise!

So where you might have needed that initial moment of blankness to recognize what was really present, now that you know this in your direct experience you can start recognizing awareness in every perception, in every thought.

For that alertness that is naturally witnessing the moment of no-thought, is still that exact same alertness that is witnessing the maelstrom of thoughts and emotions.

So instead of recognizing only the images of life, commit yourself from this moment on, to recognize the fact that you are aware of all these images.

YOU are always that same peaceful, spacious, open awareness and YOU can never not be present. Thoughts come and go like the wind, but YOU are the space for them to either be in, or not be in. Completely unaffected, completely free already!

Much Love,
Bentinho Massaro
www.yoga-mind-control.com
www.free-awareness.com