Is the knowing that I am awareness really that simple?

Is the knowing that I am awareness really that simple?

Dear Rupert,

A couple of nights ago I had a dream that I was a Chinese man frying fish for my grandson. When I woke up, I asked myself who was that looking at me (the Chinese grandfather). Well, it was nothing, no-thing, neither an object nor any subject – but looking forever and untouched by the ‘I’ (the Chinese man)! And looking at happy or unhappy Afshin, looking at the successful or poor or joyful Afshin, looking at Afshin’s world!

Am I who was looking at Afshin, who is looking now and will be looking at Afshin and Afshins? This Afshin (I) changes, but what is looking at ‘I’ and the world cannot be changed. Is that It?! What a feeling, so flat, so ordinary and so simple. It made laugh at all the bothers and worries about the path towards the truth.

With all respect and love,
Afshin

 

Dear Afshin,

That is true: What you are is looking at what you seem to be. That is, ‘I, awareness’ is seeing or knowing the body and mind called Afshin. Yes, we laugh when we see that we have mixed up our identity with a cluster of passing thoughts, images and sensations. It is such a simple mistake, with such enormous ramifications!

However, there is more to it than that. The discovery that we are awareness still leaves the question as to what the Chinese grandfather, the happy and unhappy Afshins, the successful and the poor, in fact the whole world of objects and others really is. If we make a deep exploration of all these apparent objects of awareness, we discover that they don’t just appear to awareness; they appear in awareness.

If we go deeper, we find that awareness is not just their witness but also their substance. They don’t just appear inawareness; they appear asawareness. Then we can go deeper still into our experience and see that there is in fact nothing other than awareness, taking the apparent shapes of the mind, body and world but always simply being itself.

The discovery you have made is called wisdom. The further discovery that I attempt to describe, in which the witnessing ‘I’ is also discovered to be intimately and utterly one with all appearances, is called love. The simple, flat and ordinary discovery of what we are, this colourless, open, empty presence, is later discovered to be a fullness which is the substance of all things and is known as love, peace, happiness, understanding, freedom and beauty.

In the first discovery we laugh. In the second we cry.

With love,
Rupert

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