Sunday Sermon (Awareness)

¡Hola! Everybody... How is everyone. don’t forget (as I did) that there’s a natural let down right after the hectic craziness of the holidays. Also, for those endeavoring to stick to resolutions, please know that the vast majority of people who create successful and lasting change, don’t do it the first time. What separates those who effect change from those that don’t is that they don’t see relapses as failures. You get back up, and do it again.

Why not?

You’ve been doing it that way when it comes to sex (for those who still do it).

* * *

-=[ Awareness ]=-

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.”

-- Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Imma go out on a limb and make a generalization right about now. I will submit that typically the human experience is that awareness is in here

::points to head::

and space is out there

::points outward::

But this won’t be your actual experience this moment. Feel it: Where is awareness located?

Show me...

You may have a sensation in your head or your heart, but where is the awareness that is aware of that sensation?

Ha! You overly analytical muthafuckas! LOL! Still with me?

Feeling it this moment, feel awareness as it were spread evenly throughout the open field of experience. Check it out: space is awareness.

What happens when you relax awareness, so it isn’t fixated (stuck) on one particular thought or thing? What happens when you allow yourself to feel space without trying to grasp it in any way?

What happens when you place pure awareness -- awareness not fixated on some thing and you allow your awareness to spread evenly through space?

Try doing this for as long as it lasts. Think of striking a bell once, so that it rings, sustaining a sound in space for a while.

Eventually, awareness retracts or fixates (clings to) something (usually on some story involving what you perceive as you). When that happens, strike the bell again, gently placing free-floating awareness in supportless space, and let it sustain wide open effortlessly, until awareness fixates on something: a thought, a memory, an emotion. Again, allow relaxed awareness to be placed in supportless space, like the peal of a bell openly pervading the air.

Awareness isn’t to be felt inside, while space is assumed to be out there. Rather, awareness permeates space -- space is alive and full as awareness.

Living fully is like that: awareness ringing open as space.

Love,

Eddie