Awareness watching awareness

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A quote by Sri Muruganar from Garland of Guru's

(Sri Ramana Maharshi's Sayings):

 

1038. "Awareness is not a quality of the Self.

 

The Self is without qualities.

 

Awareness is not an action of the Self.

 

The Self does nothing.

 

The Self, our Being, IS Awareness."

 

A quote by Sri Ramana Maharshi from Day by Day with

Bhagavan:

 

"You are awareness.

 

Awareness is another name for you.

 

All that you have to do is to give up being aware of

other things;

 

that is, of the not-Self."

 

If one gives up being aware of them,

 

then pure awareness alone remains,

 

and that is the Self."

 

Since the Self is Awareness,

 

Self Awareness is:

 

Awareness of Awareness.

 

This discovery, translated into practice as

awareness watching awareness

was a great blessing for me.

 

I was trying to find a clear easy way of understanding

and practicing Sri Ramana Maharshi's

and Sri Nisargadatta's instructions regarding

focussing the attention on I or I AM.

 

The awareness watching awareness discovery

solved everything.

 

I wrote about the details of what lead up to that

including practice instructions here:

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/AWA_DISCOVERY.htm

 

That discovery was back in December of 2001

and I have not yet put an update on the

Direct Path Links Directory

describing the progression of the practice.

 

The following is a brief report

on the progression of the actual practice of

awareness watching awareness:

 

In the beginning of the practice,

Sri Muruganar's quotes regarding

refraining from looking at thought, the body, the

world etc., and instead turning the attention towards

awareness watching awareness

were helpful.

 

Because the habit of looking outward is so strong,

reading these practice instructions

and then actually practicing them was helpful:

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/inquiry_abidance.htm

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/world.htm

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/READING_AND_DISCUSSING.htm

 

http://uarelove1.tripod.com/TURNING_INWARD.htm

 

There were other things that were helpful to read

such as descriptions of liberation

which helped increase the desire for liberation

and quotes by Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Annamalai

Swami,

Sri Muruganar and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

that encouraged intense, constant,

continuous practice.

 

I won't list all those links here,

they can all be found here:

 

http://uarelove.com

 

As the practiced progressed

there was far less reading.

 

Very rapidly the practice simplifies

and it is just awareness watching awareness.

 

Awareness watching awareness is the perfect practice.

 

It instantly becomes awareness of awareness

which instantly becomes abiding as awareness,

which instantly becomes being awareness.

 

Or one might say:

 

awareness watching awareness

is really awareness of awareness

which is really abiding as awareness

which is really being awareness.

 

I prefer to shut the eyes.

Because the habit of abiding as awareness is there,

upon shutting the eyes,

there it is.

 

Instant abidance.

 

Just awareness by itself.

 

As the practice progresses,

it becomes simpler.

 

One just abides as awareness.

 

Awareness only.

 

No thought, no body, no world, no universe.

 

As Sri Ramana describes it in Talk 17:

 

Questioner:

 

"Does Maharshi enter the nirvikalpa samadhi?"

 

Sri Ramana:

 

"If the eyes are closed, it is nirvikalpa;

if open, it is (though differentiated, still in

absolute repose)savikalpa.

The ever-present state is the natural state sahaja."

 

If the attention is turned inward away from the body,

thought, world, universe, etc.

and towards awareness watching awareness

it does not take long to realize

that I am that awareness that lives forever.

 

Thinking will not help.

One has to feel the eternal life within

for the fear of ending the human known to disappear.

Awareness watching awareness

makes one aware of that feeling

after only a little practice.

 

Having felt that eternal life within,

one wants only that,

and the desire for a bodily imagined existence

that is really a kind of death and not life at all,

diappears.

 

Or as Sri Ramana Maharshi described it:

 

"So I am the spirit transcending the body.

The body dies but the Spirit transcending it

cannot be touched by death.

That means I am the deathless Spirit."

 

"All this was not dull thought;

it flashed through me vividly as living truth

which I perceived directly..."

 

It begins just as a subtle feeling,

then rapidly it emerges as the Reality.

 

That subtle feeling can be felt

after only a little time spent turning within towards

awareness watching awareness.

Maybe from the very first time one attempts it,

or maybe after a few attempts.

 

Because of the long habit of looking outward

and calling a dream reality,

it is good to continue to look inward

long after one's first glimpse-feeling-awareness

of what one really is.

 

Knowing who one really is,

is to remain without any sorrow, suffering,

disease or death.

 

Thus one trades in this limited imagination

for Infinite-Eternal-Being-Awareness-Bliss-Love-Peace

and those are not seven,

that is just one.

 

The solution to the fear of losing the known

(imagining oneself to be a body living in a world)

is just to turn inward,

to cease looking outward at a world, body and thought

and towards awareness watching awareness.

 

The ending of the fear comes with the experience.

Some experience comes very quickly.

One begins to feel the eternal life within.

As that feeling grows,

the worry about losing what one formerly called life,

which was not life at all,

disappears.

 

If one just starts turning inward towards

awareness watching awareness,

there is nothing one need think about.

 

One falls in love with empty awareness,

and discovers I am empty awareness,

then I am disappears

and one remains as:

being-awareness.

 

That being-awareness is eternal life.

 

Just see the beauty of it!

 

Being-Awareness is:

 

Awareness.

 

There is no thought, no body, no world and no universe

in that awareness.

 

Although empty of all these, it is full.

 

Full, whole, complete, perfect Awareness.

 

The above is the progress report.

 

Here is a brief commentary:

 

Due to the fear of ending the known,

almost no human wishes to end the human known.

 

In almost all humans the desire to preserve

the ego illusion is trillions of times greater

than the desire to end the ego illusion.

 

This includes those humans who study,

think about and discuss spiritual topics.

 

Therefore, having a means to end the ego illusion

which is extremely quick rapid and Direct,

really does not matter,

until the desire for liberation is awakened.

 

Pretending that it has been awakened

when it has not been awakened,

while the fear of ending the known is still there,

does not help to awaken it.

 

Self honesty does help.

 

There is more that should be said about this,

however, to keep this email message from being too

long, it can wait.

 

There are thousands of relevant quotes by

Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Muruganar, Sri Sadhu Om,

Sri Annamalai Swami and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

and I will continue to add them to the

Direct Path Links Directory.

 

Ceasing to think about such quotes,

and intstead taking one quote at a time,

and not moving from it

until it has been put into practice,

is a powerful key.

 

Here is a quote by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:

 

"Give up all questions except one:

 

'Who am I?'"

 

One might read such a quote many times with no effect,

because the extremely intense desire for liberation

has not yet been awakened.

 

After the extremely intense desire for liberation

awakens, then when one reads the very same quote,

instead of thinking about it, or discussing it,

one puts it into practice.

 

Putting it into practice,

there are no more questions,

not even questions on spiritual topics.

 

One never allows the mind to give the answer to the

queston 'Who am I?'.

The answer to the question is the end of the

experiencer and the end of the human known.

 

In the practice of awareness watching awareness,

no questions arise.

 

Take care,

 

with Love,

 

Michael L.

 

 

 

 

 

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