Most of our attention is absorbed by the content of experience, by thoughts, feelings, sensations, and the story we tell about our life. Rarely do we pause to notice what is constant in every experience, the simple fact that we are aware. This reflection is an invitation to turn attention back toward that overlooked presence, the fact of being, being aware, that you are before you are anything in particular.
Take a step back from what you are experiencing, from thoughts, feelings, sensations, and notice instead the simple fact that you are. Notice the fact of being, of being aware, of awareness itself.
See that this simple being, this knowing presence, is more intimate to you than any particular experience. It is more fundamental than your thoughts and feelings, more fundamental than the sensations of your body, your memories, the story you tell about your life, your activities and relationships.
This does not diminish the value or beauty of these experiences. It simply recognises that the fact of being, of being aware, is what you are before you are any of them. Before you have the experience ‘I am a man’, ‘I am a woman’, or even ‘I am a person’, you have the experience ‘I am’.
The fact of being, being aware or awareness itself is what you are before you are a mind or a body, before you are coloured or shaped by experience. Like a screen before a movie appears upon it. Like the open, empty space of a room before it is filled with furniture, or before it seems to be confined by its walls.
Your fundamental nature or essence is simply open, aware presence. There is no need to practise becoming this awareness. It is already what you effortlessly are, although it is often overlooked in favour of the more compelling content of experience. If anything is needed at all, it is simply a softening of attention, a release of interest in what appears, and a return to your self.
Not the self defined by thoughts, feelings, or roles, but your essential self, the simple fact of being, of being aware. Notice that, and knowingly rest as that.
See that this awareness is not only the light by which experience is known. It is also the field in which every experience appears. It has a space-like quality, not a physical space, but that which effortlessly holds everything that arises in time and space.
And notice, too, that awareness is the very substance of experience itself. Everything that appears in awareness is made of the awareness within which it arises, just as every current, ripple, or wave is made of the ocean. All that is ever encountered is the knowing of experience.
All that is ever known are modulations of awareness. Thoughts, sensations, perceptions, feelings, and images are not made of something other than awareness; they are movements or modulations of awareness itself. And these modulations are known by awareness, not from outside, but from within, because there is nothing other than awareness by which they could be known.
A helpful analogy is the dream. In a dream, an entire world appears, landscapes, events, other people, and also a central character from whose point of view the dream unfolds. Yet the dream world is not made of anything other than the dreaming mind. The mountains, the sky, the other characters, and the dreamer’s own body are all modulations of the same mind.
And the character in the dream who seems to be seeing the dream world, thinking about it, and reacting to it, is also a modulation of that very same mind. The mind dreams the world, and the mind dreams the one who seems to be experiencing the world.
In the same way, awareness is not merely observing experience from a distance. Awareness appears as the world, as the body, as the mind, and as the sense of being a self at the centre of experience. Everything that appears is a movement of awareness, known by awareness, made only of awareness.
There is no separate knower standing apart from what is known. There is just awareness, modulating as experience, knowing itself in every appearance.
You, awareness, are not something that stands behind experience, watching it unfold. You are the open presence in which experience takes shape and the living substance from which it is formed. Every appearance is a modulation of what you are, and nothing that appears alters your essential nature.
Thoughts may be turbulent, emotions may be tender or raw, yet awareness remains open, spacious, and undisturbed. It does not resist what arises or seek to hold on to what passes. In recognising this, there is a natural resting, a simple sense of being at home in your self, just as you are.
