Stop Being Aware

Try this: close your eyes or look away from the screen, and stop being aware. Don't be aware of anything inside or outside of you.

Q: How did that go?

Of course, you can't actually stop awareness because, well, it's fundamentally who you are. It's a bit like saying "don't exist for one minute"! Everything you can point to as you: your body, your head, your resume, your name, your thoughts, your inner critic - all of those are things your are aware of.

All sentient beings are aware to some extent, of sound, light, temperature, jealousy, humour...

Q: What does this bring up?

Awareness of Awareness

Awareness...is the ability to directly know and to perceive, sense, feel, or be cognizant of experience...But human beings (and, who knows, maybe some animals) also have an additional capacity: to be aware of awareness, or aware that they are aware. - Diana Winston, tenpercent.com

So natural awareness is a practice of turning our awareness on itself. "Minding the mind" as Surya Das says. So when you see a flower, notice your awareness of the flower. This is different from being absorbed in a task, like painting or gardening or sweeping.

Because we merely recognize what is already there it is called the meditation of non-meditation. Because obscuring conceptual thoughts automatically disappear with their own arising – we do not need to make them disappear – it is called effortless. - Lama Surya Das, What is Dzogchen?

Feels Like

Natural awareness can feel like:

• You calmly and clearly see what would be helpful in this moment
• You act easily without deciding or trying
• Everything just seems to be happening on its own
• Everything seems to fit together perfectly as a whole
• You are noticing that you are noticing and rest in that
• You can feel yourself seeing what you are seeing, hearing what you're hearing

Q: Do you resonate with any of these?

Q: What would you add to this list when you think of natural awareness?

If you leave your mind as it is it will become calm...That everything is included within your mind is the essence of mind. Even thought waves arrive, the essence of your mind is pure; it is just like clear water with a few waves. - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Try this: choose anything you can sense right now, inside yourself or outside (other than the screen). Tune into that object, thought, emotion, sensation as "just this". After a few moments, gently ask yourself: is it OK to simply be aware of just this?

Q: What was your experience?

In meditation we discover that no effort is required to dissolve thoughts. We discover that the very same thoughts that cause all of our problems actually arise by themselves and dissolve by themselves; all we have to do is relax and let them be. - Lama Surya Das, What is Dzogchen?

Benefits of a Natural Awareness Practice

• Some people are more orientd to spaciousness rather than focus
• Like any awareness practice, it can be cultivated and become more available
• It can disarm a subtle (or not-so-subtle) struggling or striving in your meditation practice

What To Remember (Excerpt)

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

• David Whyte, What to Remember When Waking

Practice Suggestion

In this meditation try something different and amazing. Move away from focusing on a particular thing, and instead try to stay with awareness of the mind itself, resting the mind as if resting on a beach chair: with extreme relaxation and ease.

In meditation we relax and rest in this state of the simultaneous arising, abiding, and disappearing of all mental phenomena: we abide in the natural state of the mind. We rest in the space between thoughts. - Lama Surya Das What is Dzogchen?

Note: this post was inspired by Diana Winston on the Ten Percent Happier blog and includes excerpts from it.