We have to be alert that we don’t have a subtle definition of Awareness that colors its nakedness. That means we make Awareness into a state of experience. That would be like: “Awareness is a clear openness that is spacious and serene”. We then have defined Awareness and by doing so we have made it possible to lose the “state of Awareness”. When we aren’t feeling that “clear openness that is spacious and serene” we feel we have lost Awareness.
But Awareness has no definition, all experience is the experience of Awareness. Awareness has no form or state of its own. That then allows Awareness to be every state, every feeling,every emotion,every thought, every perception.
That being so, what is there left to achieve? Every experience, happy, sad or neutral is the appearance of Awareness. We give up completely the notion that Awareness has to have some particular flavor or color. Oh my god, we can finally really relax! Its over!
Every experience is equal in Awareness! What could you possibly practice? You are already aware, so you don’t need to become aware. Everything is already happening however its happening, so there is nothing special to do. No special “state” to attain! If you experience a special state, that’s fine, but it will never become stable. The only stability is your unchanging perceiving of whatever is experienced. That unchanging perceivingness is Awareness, the heart of the Dharmakaya (Pure Being).
~ Jackson Peterson
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the biggest mistake
Sometimes the sweet synchronicity of life is enough to render one speechless. I’ve commented several times about how Awareness – aka Freedom, Beloved, Reality, Truth, or whatever your pet word for IT might be – excludes nothing, and I mean nothing. Surprisingly, perhaps, an opening, a softening towards this unknowable essence seems to relax one’s default defenses and allow some pretty challenging stuff to surface. Not that it must be ‘dealt with’ or analyzed or healed or anything – that doesn’t occur to one. The stuff comes up, it’s allowed – without a story unfolding – tears flow or not, and it all vaporizes. It can be heavy, but Awareness remains unmoved.
What changes, in terms of one’s experience, is this: the relationship with what arises from within, or what is dealt from without, is radically different. Suffering simply doesn’t occur, because there are no preferences being trotted out. And it seems that the more one’s default position is that of quietly resting as pure undivided Awareing, the sweeter, easier and calmer life becomes. (Well, it always was thus, but one’s been too busy organizing it to notice.)
So I’ve always been slightly mystified by those who claim that this utterly natural state somehow obliterates the undesirable bits of human experience. They write or speak of attributes like love and compassion and bliss – which they often prescribe practices to develop. Is it even logical to consider developing that which is already utterly natural? I’m not sure which part of the goose isn’t cooked for such folk, but they haven’t got to the stuffing yet. So when this little gem arrived from Jax I took out my cheering pompoms and did a little dance. No, I wasn’t photographed – unseemly for a woman of a certain age … chuckles …
But the biggest mistake that almost all practitioners and teachers make is to think that when one is in Awareness, that one will have a pleasurable, peaceful, spacious state free of uncomfortable emotions, ego and confused thoughts.
Actually Awareness has no content of its “own”. It is not bliss. It is not clarity. It is not love. It is not peace. It is not compassion. But it is present in all of those as well as every other possible experience equally.
~ Jackson Peterson
Speaking of women of a certain age, I can’t resist sharing a tit-bit from my favorite stand-up comic of the nonduality circus – wideawake Viki Woodyard. Vicki is someone who knows a great deal about the kind of tough cards life can deal. But she grabs the chocolates and scribbles on:
Today I have eaten sugar again and again. Why? Because it is there; heaped on the kitchen counter are a marzipan Yule Pig, a Mozart Piano Bar, a chocolate Santa, a coconut wreath, Godiva Peppermint Truffles and Gems, Lindt Truffles, Dove Chocolates, A Smore wrapped in cellophane and a little box of Jelly Belly Bean Boozles. These feature jelly beans with the auspicious titles of Skunk Spray, Pencil Shavings, Canned Dog Food, Barf and yes, my favorite, Baby Wipes.
I look in the mirror and see a pasty face with a terrible haircut. See a woman who has recently been crying and not becomingly. Is this the girl that started out on her spiritual quest determined to find the meaning of life. That slender sylph that had dark hair and naturally arched eyebrows. Look again. She is now squarely in her sixties, a writer coming into her own at an alarmingly advanced age. She is usually frank, truthful and edgy. Couple that with graceful, simple and tender and you have a fraction of what it was to be married to said writer. Nothing I would wish on anybody. Nevertheless, someone is looking down on me with love and hoping I will find my way to being a real writer one day soon. What does he know, sitting up there on his fluffy white cloud? The guy needs a Bean Boozle if you ask me. I still have a Rotten Egg and a Booger left. If that won’t entice him to come back down here on earth, I don’t know what will.
~Vicki Woodyard
It’s gotta be the ultimate Reality check, you know: can you recognize the Truth in a barf or a booger?
whatever the experience, you are always free
A Solstice/Christ-mass/Seasonal gift for sentient sacred souls: an excerpt from a piece called Essentializing written by one of the clearest and dearest of contemporary teachers:
… you are always this unchanging Beingness that is the Knowingness present in all and as all experience.
It doesn’t favor love over hate.
It has no bias towards peace or war.
It does not value life over death.
It has no preference for health and well-being over sickness.
It has no bias towards happiness or suffering.
It has no bias towards enlightenment or ignorance.
It does not try to lead beings toward enlightenment.
It does not recognize “beings” as existing or as not existing.
It has no preference whether the universe appears or disappears.
It has no preference for the mind to be either joyful or sad.
It knows neither hope nor fear.No teachers can bring you closer to it.
No practices lead to it.It has never become identified with mind or a self.
It has never become attached to ideas or forms.
It has never “let go” because it has never grasped.
It can’t be found because it has never been lost.
It is what you are, not what thoughts say you are.The pure and perfect unchanging awareness quality within each thought, image, feeling, sense of ego-self, emotion and all sensory perceptions is all you ever will be.
Whatever the experience, you are always free …~ Jackson Peterson
You can read the complete article at The Way of Light
turning the light around
The path is awareness of Awareness. The result is Awareness. By the intention to place our attention upon Awareness instead of upon our self, mind and its mental events or perceptions, both the intention and the placement of attention dissolve into Awareness from whence they arose. It is in that moment of dissolution or self-liberation that we find comfort and ease in just being effortlessly what we have always been.
In the Taoist and Chan tradition this practice is known as “turning the Light around to shine upon Itself”. In the Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra traditions this method is know as “reversal” or rulog, in which the energies that make up our mental, emotional and physical existence resolve back into their origin as the Clear Light of Awareness. Our true nature is this unchanging Clear Light Awareness and everything we experience is its self-display. And the intention to return to our origin and basis as Clear Light Awareness is a naturally arising quality of the Clear Light itself. In this way, our Enlightenment as well as all others’ is assured, since that urge towards Enlightenment is an intrinsic dynamic of Awareness Itself. This is the true meaning of Bodhicitta, the manifestation of compassion and unconditional love that leaves no one behind …
~ Jackson Peterson
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Source – Way of Light
(my emphasis)
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amazing anarchic awareness
No matter what you do, your Awareness is always the same in each experience. Good actions are of no benefit to your Awareness. Doing negative actions has no negative effect on your Awareness. Your Awareness is not subject to the laws of “cause and effect”. Your Awareness has no karma as it is the pure and perfect Buddha Mind as it is.
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And your pure and perfect Buddha Mind, your perceiving awareness, has no preference as to what those experiences should or should not be, it makes absolutely no difference! Awareness as pure Being, just is. The experience of hell or samsara is just fine! The mirror is never affected by the reflections that appear within it. If you’re in a hellish state, your awareness of that experience is not the least bit affected. Your ego may freak out, but then you’re noticing of your “freaked out ego” experience, is just another harmless experience.
This is the supreme View, the most excellent View, the View that can assuage all suffering without ever acting to change anything in body, voice or mind. Even though no View can be said to exist, our own Awareness is the View! How amazing!
~ Jackson Peterson
this unlit light 