Candice O’Denver
Transcript:
When we’re introduced to the ground of our perceptions, timeless awareness, so that the ground of all thoughts, emotions and experiences is is timeless awareness. And when we’re introduced to that ground, it means that our primary way of perceiving becomes one of perceptual openness. So rather than being focused in on the thought, emotion, or experience, our way of perceiving is one that is perceptually open. And the perceptual openness is primary rather than the thought, emotion or experience being primary. This is a simple human matter.
I cannot overemphasize that. It is so simple and it is so human, it is so unadorned, it is so bare in its reality, and it is what human beings are intended and purposed for. We’re not intended and purposed to be obsessively involved in thoughts, emotions and experiences. And when we become so, we become anxiety ridden, fearful and physically sick. When we’re first introduced to awareness as the ground of perceptions rather than being so focused on the perceptions themselves, we have a decisive experience of that.
We could say, we feel it in our gut, we feel it in our bones, it’s so real. Yet it changes the way we’ve been perceiving things. Awareness has always been present all along, but it changes the way we’ve been perceiving. All perceptions, all points of view, and those two words, perceptions and points of view, are synonymous with thoughts, emotions, and experiences. All points of view are included and contained within awareness.
When we first experience perceptual openness in all experience, in other words, our first experience of timeless awareness, we experience what is fundamentally true about ourselves. We feel that we’ve gotten in touch with the basis of who we are. The true basis of who we are, not thing that is contrived or something we have to learn or study about. And then we notice that all these points of view really are within our awareness and that they’ve always been within awareness. They haven’t been anywhere other than within awareness.
And awareness has always been the ground or source of all these perceptions. None of these perceptions, none of these points of view have ever had an independent nature or origin. They have always had as their nature or ground awareness. When we experience awareness, we shift to a new way of perceiving. So it’s very very simple.
Rather than being so obsessively focused on the point of view of a subject, I, me and mine in other words, we become very aware, just aware, basically aware, and that’s it. We’re not so attached to being a subject any longer. So the first point of view that we are no longer craving is the point of view of being a subject, relating to objects and other subjects. And this happens quite naturally. We rest as awareness and we notice that the subject that we have been craving to be is just a point of view and awareness.
That’s all it is. And rather than having all of our energy of awareness pouring into being a subject, we’re just resting as awareness and we see that the subject is a point of view within awareness, just like all other points of view. And so you know that’s a shift in the way we’ve been proceeding. We’ve been taking ourselves to be a subject, to be an individual somebody. We didn’t know there was any way to live other than that.
And suddenly, we’re just resting as awareness and all the points of view, whether they’re subjects or objects are within that awareness. And so we begin experiencing awareness as whatever is appearing, rather than just experience hopping around from first for thought to thought, emotion to emotion, and experience to experience. When a sound appears, there’s awareness as that sound. So initially, it might feel like there’s awareness and then the sound, and we’re somehow bringing the two together. But actually what’s occurring and we this just naturally happens over time is that we realize that there’s only awareness as that sound.
There’s only awareness as that sound. There is an awareness of a subject who’s then aware of sound. There’s awareness as that sound. Awareness as that sound includes everything. It includes absolutely everything.
It includes you hearing the sound, so there’s awareness as you, there’s awareness as hearing, there’s awareness as sound, but no need to even think about that at all. To just rest naturally as awareness and in that everything is pacified. In other words, everything comes to total peace. In all situations without any impediment. So the more we rest naturally, the more we can be in any situation no matter what it is without impediment.
And at first the shift may seem a little scary. I know that when I realized the ground of all my perceptions was awareness, and then suddenly, after ten days of just resting naturally, all of the perceptions that I’ve been having, they just resolved in that ground of awareness. They completely resolved that ground of awareness, and it was clear that that was all there is. But in a very natural way, you know, I was still moving about at the time I was still drinking coffee. I was still seeing friends, I was still doing my daily things no matter what they are, participating in life, but there was a shift that had occurred, a shift in the way I was perceiving.
Well, within a few hours as I was walking around looking at things, one of the thoughts that came to my mind was, have I gone crazy? Well, you know, I’ve talked to other western people who’ve had this shift occur too and every one of them all had that thought occur. Have I gone crazy? But that was immediately followed by a thought, absolutely not. This is so clear, so true, so real, so simply human, and so beyond anything I ever learned about myself, but I know for certain it’s true.
And I had had a problem in my life that had been a big problem for me increasingly, and that was that I very much over enjoyed alcohol. And I couldn’t find any way through all my points of view, in other words, my point of view of being a subject who had willpower and all of these other things, I could find no way to bring that to rest. I could find no way to bring it to peace. No matter what I did, I continued to over enjoy alcohol. But with the shift to the great relief of awareness, I knew that that would no longer be an issue ever again.
I just knew it. I knew it clearly, completely without no one could convince me otherwise.
From the limited viewpoint of a body, our essential nature of pure Awareness seems limited; from the temporal viewpoint of a mind, it seems temporary; in the absence of a viewpoint, it is as it is, neither limited, nor temporary.
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