Is there a difference between thoughts and awareness?

[lmfao]

During meditation, we like to focus our awareness on sensations and thoughts flowing through our consciousness. But what really is awareness? Is it a type of thought? Is it possible to become aware of awareness? Or is that impossible? 

[RawJudah]

In my opinion, when I’m thinking I’m not in the present moment at all. And when I’m aware I feel more in focus and in the present moment. Leo said in one of his videos is that all meditation is is making the distinction between thinking and awareness.

ive been meditating for just over a month now every day, and it’s one of the hardest things I have done, but it’s early days!

keep going!

[Source_Mystic]

Yes there is a diference. Thoughts are not awarness and awarness are not thoughts. You can either Think or be aware not both. 

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by Source_Mystic

[molosku]

6 hours ago, lmfao said:

Is it possible to become aware of awareness? Or is that impossible? 

Thats called enlightenment, my friend. And yes, it is possible.

[Psyche_92]

Awareness is the space between two thoughts. 

[Nahm]

@lmfao Contemplate on which one transcends the other. One directional not two. 

[jse]

11 hours ago, lmfao said:

Is there a difference between thoughts and awareness?

The consciousness/thought argument goes back millennia.  With "Cogito ergo sum", Descartes may have got it backwards, placing the cart before the horse.

From a non-duality point of view, thought appears to manifest from consciousness, just like sunlight flows from the Sun.
Therefore your question could be seen as comparing the source/stream of consciousness, which in my humble and limited view is like comparing a tree to its fruit.

[Afonso]

Awareness is the "silence", beneath/between/behind thoughts. You can't really know what awareness is if your mind isn't enough still. Just sitting alone for 20 minutes a day for some months should start revealing what awareness is.

[Shin]

Thoughts are content, awareness is aware of content.

[Dodo]

Your thoughts are based on your web of beliefs. The web of beliefs swims in an ocean of Awareness.

There is a sure and easy way to be aware of awareness alone. Beware, this is like exercising, you have to do this consistently to get some proper results in your actual web of beliefs.

Whenever you can/want ask yourself the experiential question "Am I Aware?" (Rupert Spira™) and be interested in that. To be aware of objects, awareness needs to rise in the form of attention and place itself on objects. In order to know itself, it needs to relax attention away from the objects of experience and remain as it naturally is.

So it's actually a non-practice, it requires no effort. You can visualize the process as awareness just shining in all directions without a limit (object) in its way to shine on, and so it simply is, like a star if you will, feeling it's own being. The light is used to shine on objects, but the core knows itself by itself without the need to shine itself with attention (well it can't, it's not an object)  

 

oops forgot to label the rays as 'Attention'

Edited January 6, 2018 by Dodo

[zazed]

Everything is a awareness.

We experience the world trough our senses and construct an entire mirror world in our "mind".
You do not see a tree, you see the mental abstract construction of a tree. But if a bat notices a tree using its sonar, it has an entirely different construct in its internal world. Colors do not really exist as an actual property of light, it is just a label our eyesight places upon wavelengths of light. A tree has no color, it reflects photons of a specific wavelength. Green is not a property of the tree, it is not a property of light, it is a property of our eyes and brain.

If you look at a flower, your mind world does not only construct the flat 2d representation that you really see. It is constructed as a 3d object, you have the sense of the back of the flower you cannot see also. Our vision is not just a flat canvas, you are innately aware of depth, size, and the backside of things. This is because you know what a flower is, and you add information from somewhere, memory, intuition?

You cannot prove anything exists. Because everything you ever experience is in the mirror of your mind. Even the existence of your hands, feet, eyes are made seemingly real in your mind only. If you touch your feet, this feeling is an idea of your mind, and you conclude this is where my feet begin. But what is this where, where exactly does this feeling exist in space?

The physical world cannot be proven to exist by a mind that can only see itself. The only thing we experience is the content of our mind changing, we do not experience a world outside our selves. There seems to be something causing the change, but we cannot prove this is an actual world seperate from us.

As such it may be that we are all individual minds of awareness, connected within one global consciousness which provides consistency when two minds interact. Ideas just appear in our mind, when they are created by the one consciousness. If you kick me in the nuts, the one consciousness gives you the experience of your foot touching my balls, and me the experience of the sensation of pain.

 

[Ruby White]

I haven't read the replies so my answer comes from the heart,

To me thought it an articulated process emanating from the brain computer. Awareness is something that is beyond the physical body altogether. It's what exists once you remove the brain, the thoughts, the body and the ego. Awareness = pure presence, free from the "I'. I hope this makes sense.

[Markus]

On 1/5/2018 at 10:59 AM, Source_Mystic said:

You can either Think or be aware not both. 

 

That's actually a very common misconception. 

[Torkys]

11 minutes ago, Markus said:

That's actually a very common misconception. 

Thinking may occur while you are aware, but the word to pay attention to is "you". If you think, you aren't aware.

[Markus]

The way you use the word "awareness" here can also be called "attention". Attention and thought are completely different. Thought is a perception. Attention is, well, if you want to know, play around with your attention and contemplate what it is. I could give a metaphor of attention being like a flashlight that you shine on aspects of the field of awareness, but I don't really know.