The First Recognition

There is something that illuminates our experience, that renders experience knowable. What is that? What is it that enables experience to be known? Whatever it is that contemplates, knows or is aware of our experience is what we commonly refer to as ‘I’. What is this knowing or aware ‘I’? Imagine removing your thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions. What remains? Whatever remains when the content of experience have been removed, that is our essential, irreducible self, our being, the simple fact of being aware or awareness itself. This understanding, ‘I am awareness’, is the first great recognition.

There is something that illuminates our experience, that renders experience knowable. What is that? What is it that enables experience to be known? Whatever it is that contemplates, knows or is aware of our experience is what we commonly refer to as ‘I’. What is this knowing or aware ‘I’? Imagine removing your thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions. What remains? Whatever remains when the content of experience have been removed, that is our essential, irreducible self, our being, the simple fact of being aware or awareness itself. This understanding, ‘I am awareness’, is the first great recognition.