Rupert,
Is there anything to be learned from my focused peak moments experienced while making art? I am speaking about the state that seems absent of a doer, relaxed but alert and resembling descriptions I have seen from people ranging from athletes to accountants. How do such moments relate to what some might describe as an abiding awareness? If we are awareness and I am already familiar with the state from past moments while making art, then why would I have such a hard time feeling that presence in my everyday life?
Thank you,
Rob
Dear Rob,
There are two basic possibilities: one is to believe and feel oneself to be a personal, limited awareness located in and limited to the body, and the second is to know oneself as unlimited, ever-present awareness.
To know oneself as impersonal awareness is, in fact, a common experience and, as you say, experienced in all walks of life, but it is usually misinterpreted by the mind and appropriated it for its own purposes. Above all, these timeless moments of peace and happiness, which are simply the knowing of our own being as it is, are attributed to an objective cause, and hence the search for peace and happiness in objects and relationships is endlessly perpetuated.
However, in these ‘moments’ there is no separate experiencer and no separate experienced object; there is just pure experiencing. The dualising mind is not present there, and therefore experiencing is not conceptually divided into a subject and an object. There is, in fact, no thought there and therefore no time.
In other words, there is no apparent entity posing as the controller, decider, doer, and so on, and as a result, life is experienced as creative, free from the past, and free from resistance and seeking, all of which require thought. Life is experienced as creative.
Art, excellence in sport, scientific inspiration and friendship are some of the natural outcomes of this, as well as the simple ease of being that may not manifest in any particular form or quality. In these moments we are standing as awareness, even though we may not formulate it as such, and are intimately, seamlessly one with all experience.
* * *
Why do we have such a hard time feeling that presence in every day life? Because we are looking for it as some kind of objective feeling. Awareness cannot be known, felt or experienced as any kind of an object. It is not a state, a peak experience, a peaceful feeling or anything like that. It could be said to be the knowing presence that runs throughout all experience.
The moments you describe are timeless ‘moments’ that are free of resistance and seeking, ‘during’ which our true nature of awareness is no longer seemingly obscured by the dualising mind. When the mind returns it says, ‘Oh, that was awareness’, and off it goes in search of it.
But awareness is ‘always’ here. In such moments, the body and mind are no longer toiling under the tyrannical mind and they are often felt as light, expansive, free. They are literally inspired, full of spirit, rather than full of an apparent entity. But these are just the side-effects at the level of the body and mind and should not be confused with the transparent, colourless presence of awareness.
With love,
Rupert
