Is awareness a quality of the Absolute?

[Max_V]

I'm currently reading Neti-Neti Meditation by Andre Doshim Halaw and he already confused me haha, which is good. I am clinging too much to concept of me being awareness. Somewhere in the beginning stated "We are not our senses, perceptions, awareness, consciousness, emotions, bodies, thoughts." Which really made me wonder. What can I be if I am not even awareness? Of course, this is something I have to find out for myself but I was wondering how you guys comprehend this. Is awareness a quality of the Absolute? 

[AleksM]

@Max_V

You are all that is. Everything that you see, hear, touch, smell, taste. Everything that you can imagine, you are that.

The All is one, and the One is all.  The part is contained in the all. 

The infinite in one Picture below.  A fractal. Circle ->Triangle->Triangle in the opposite direction->Then that creates new triangles->You make a circle around those triangles->Make another triangle upside down inside those triangles->New triangles->Make a circle around those triangles->Triangle upside down->New triangles...........

[Nahm]

absolute is absolute.   the rest are words we use in trying to help eachother realize. if it had a single property, it would not be absolute.  if the question is, is it with this, the answer is always no 

[Leo Gura]

@Max_V What you will eventually discover is that even "awareness" and "consciousness" are misleading terms.

The closest word is Nothing.

Reality simply "knows" being by being.

The problem with terms like awareness and consciousness is that imply a human agent or a mental process. But that is NOT how reality knows itself. It knows through being. To be true, is to be known.

[Azrael]

12 hours ago, Max_V said:

Which really made me wonder. What can I be if I am not even awareness? Of course, this is something I have to find out for myself but I was wondering how you guys comprehend this. Is awareness a quality of the Absolute? 

What are you when you don't ask that question?

What are you when you fight with your mom?

What are you when you fuck your girlfriend?

What are you when you mourn at a funeral?

In all of these scenarios you are. the last three of them are very intense situations for the mind and body, completely different states. But in all of them you still are the same. So throw away all of your concepts about consciousness and awareness and sit for a second contemplating:

Who am I when I am asleep?

Because you are the very same if you are asleep or if you are awake. So find out.

[Max_V]

Thanks everyone.

[snowleopard]

The ancient spiritual traditions take quite different approaches to this question of Awareness.  Vedanta's name for the Absolute is Brahman, which is considered inseparable from the triune of satchitananda, meaning: Being/Consciousness/Bliss. Buddhism, meanwhile, seems to make little mention of consciousness or awareness.

I've always resonated with Taoism's approach to defining such terms ... From the Tao Te Ching: "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao ... The name that can be named is not the eternal name". Even the choice of the word Tao seems quite deliberately nondescript, perhaps to avoid any definitive conceptualization.

In any case, somehow it seems best to not get too attached to definitions and names, because what is truly essential is a profound realization of that which is being referred to, and ultimately defies all names and definitions -- which, given the inherent limitations of language, are always going to have to settle for 'true enough under the circumstances'.  As such, even the name 'The Absolute' can be problematic, if it is seen in prioritized opposition to 'the relative', and there is then some exclusive identification as I am That, as opposed to other-than-that, thus falling back into the dualism trap, when in nondual terms, however paradoxical it may seem, the absolute is not other than the relative, and vice versa. This is also what Buddhism's Heart Sutra is getting at when it states that "emptiness is not other than form, and form is not other than emptiness" -- albeit, that statement doesn't seem to be in contradiction to 'Awareness.' So perhaps it's as good a name as any other -- keeping in mind, as Leo rightly points out, that it's not to be confused with some dichotomous subject/object awareness, in the conventional way that perception it is understood.

[Max_V]

@snowleopard Very helpful, I enjoyed your explanation, thanks.