Whatever your day has held so far, you have been aware of it, through every mood and every change of circumstance. That awareness has been present since the first moment of the morning, at ease with everything that has appeared within it.
Notice that you are effortlessly aware. Being effortlessly aware is your natural condition.
Being aware is what you naturally, effortlessly are, irrespective of what you are aware of, the activities of thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving and so on. These are activities that you do from time to time. But being effortlessly aware is not something you do; it is what you essentially are.
You are not always thinking, but you are always effortlessly aware. You are not always feeling, sensing, perceiving, but you are always effortlessly aware. You are not always acting and relating, but you are always effortlessly aware.
When you wake up in the morning, the activities of thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving and so on begin. But being effortlessly aware does not begin; you are always that: sometimes in the presence of experience, sometimes in the absence of experience. Just as the screen, relatively speaking, is always the screen: sometimes in the presence of a movie, sometimes in the absence of a movie. The content of the movie does not affect the screen. What you are aware of does not affect the nature of being aware.
Being aware is the constant, steady, changeless background of all continually changing experience. And you do not have to practise being aware.
It is true that the fact of being effortlessly aware can be overlooked in favour of the content of experience. But even then, you do not cease being effortlessly aware. Being effortlessly aware is temporarily obscured by the content of experience.
Meditation is simply to notice the natural, effortless awareness that you essentially are, and to be that, knowingly. Everyone is always only that, but mostly without realising it. They are that, so to speak, unknowingly. Meditation is simply to be that, knowingly. To stand as that, in the face of all experience.
In other words, it is simply to be knowingly what you always and already are. See that there is no agitation, sorrow, pain or conflict in what you naturally, effortlessly are.
The agitation belongs to your thoughts; it is what you are aware of. The sorrow belongs to your feelings; it is what you are aware of. The pain belongs to the body; it is what you are aware of. The conflict takes place in relationships; it is what you are aware of. But that which is aware, or being effortlessly aware, is inherently free of the agitation, sorrow, pain and conflict that characterise your experience. In other words, being effortlessly aware is already at peace.
The recording Living in Peace, Living as Peace is an invitation to become intimate with the presence that lies beneath the changing circumstances of your lives, a presence that is already whole, already complete and already at peace, and that no circumstance, however demanding, has ever truly disturbed, the awareness that has been present through every one of them.
