What Is Awareness?

[Principium Nexus]

You could say that you are very aware of a lot of things. Being more and more aware gives you a greater understanding how these things interact and represent themselves. But really what is it? Is it being concious of your own thoughts and sensations and surroundings and does that mean if some senses fail?

Are we really more aware than for example a blind man or someone who is deaf and what do we mean with expansion of awareness? Is this only a perspective that zooms out but still has equal amount of awareness at any state of perspective but only more specific?

[Barna]

All the confusion about awareness comes from the structure of the language. Let me explain. If you are saying that "I am aware of an object", then this sentence suggests a subject-object relationship. You are the subject who is aware of an object. However in reality there is no subject and no object, because of the non-dualistic nature of reality. Therefore awareness is simply reality, awareness is simply the here and now moment. Awareness is everything which you are "aware of".  

Rupert Spira explained this understanding a little bit differently. He said that there is no experiencer and no experience, there is only experiencing. And the only reality of experiencing is simply the awareness of it.  

Don't try to make it an abstract thing, awareness is literally the here and now moment. Awareness is literally the experiencing which occurs here and now.  

You don't believe it? Have an enlightenment experience and you will understand all of it. On this forum almost everybody knows how to get an enlightenment experience easily.  

[Principium Nexus]

I understand what you mean, entire reality is awareness otherwise you could not experience it. However i'm looking to expand my awareness in a practical way that i can focus on things that are still out of my current perception? How can you make a blind man aware of colors? He clearly lacks skill in survival and is not able to experience that visual reality and all the concepts that arise from it.

His experience might be awareness but it is still limited in some sense where he can go with his mind. I'm looking for techniques or tools to can broaden my perspective to become more aware of how thing arise from reality. An example of raising awareness with a tool is an infrared camera, a completely unseen world but now gives deep insight of states of matter. Psychedelics might be a tool for the mind but are there any other techniques outside of meditation?

[PureExp]

7 minutes ago, Principium Nexus said:

However i'm looking to expand my awareness in a practical way that i can focus on things that are still out of my current perception?

You are making the common mistake of confusing awareness with contents of awareness. What you are looking for is to bring yet unseen content into your experience. New sensory contents (coming from places external to mind via senses or other means, just like your examples), or new non-sensory contents arising in the mind itself (e.g. dreams, hallucinations, oobes). Note that whatever the contents are, whatever their channel is, the awareness which is aware of those content is always the same.

So in essence, if you succeed, you will end up expanding the range of your experiences, variety of the contents, not your awareness. Awareness cannot expand, cannot contract, cannot go away and cannot come back. It cannot change, what changes is just contents.

Well, that is the first realization, which is easy to have. Just check Leo's exercises first and master them, it is very important to experience it directly, else you will remain confused forever.

The second step is to see, that the contents are awareness too. What changes is awareness too. Confused? I bet you are

[Principium Nexus]

@PureExp @Barna Thank you both for your comment! I think i confused becoming "more aware" with having a larger variety of contents (which is also maybe an illusion).

[Barna]

If you want an interesting life, you can broaden your perspective, you can have a large variety of experiences. There is nothing wrong with that. If you want to see the strangest things that one could see, you can try N,N-DMT and you can meet "machine elves", and so on.  

However, when you sit down to meditate, and to understand the basic nature of reality, you should drop the need for expansion. Reality is always already here, doesn't matter how expanded or contracted it seems.  

[Principium Nexus]

@Barna The machine elves already showed me some awesome stuff.  Haven't broken through completely with a large dose since I still have a lot to work on. What I experienced so far was very cool and didn't know that there could really be something so intelligent out there in hidden reality but that's a story for another time  

[Barna]

6 minutes ago, Principium Nexus said:

@Barna The machine elves already showed me some awesome stuff.  Haven't broken through completely with a large dose since I still have a lot to work on. What I experienced so far was very cool and didn't know that there could really be something so intelligent out there in hidden reality but that's a story for another time  

I haven't tried NN-DMT yet, but I think I already reached the limits (or limitless nature) of experiencing with 5meo.  

[Principium Nexus]

@Barna Stop teasing me! I want to experience 5-Meo so bad haha.  It will probably knock my socks off and much more lol..

[Barna]

10 minutes ago, Principium Nexus said:

@Barna Stop teasing me! I want to experience 5-Meo so bad haha.  It will probably knock my socks off and much more lol..

What's holding you back? The usual "it's not legal in my country" excuse?  

[Principium Nexus]

@Barna Basically the illusion I currently live and that will be destroyed anyway, but that has already happened with a ego death on shrooms.

I don't know, is it not weird to feel afraid for the most revealing experience?  

[Barna]

1 minute ago, Principium Nexus said:

@Barna Basically the illusion I currently live and that will be destroyed anyway, but that has already happened with a ego death on shrooms.

I don't know, is it not weird to feel afraid for the most revealing experience?  

It is weird to be afraid, but you are not alone with it. My hand shakes every time I hold my pipe to go for a trip.  But coming back from the trip I realize how silly I was to be afraid and to think that I am less then infinite.  

[Principium Nexus]

@Barna Do you know if the freebase experience is much different from the salt form (commonly hcl)?

[Barna]

No idea, I only tried freebase so far. I think it's harder to vaporize the salt form. I read somewhere that HCL is for snorting.

However I prefer vaporizing because the duration is shorter. It may seem a disadvantage, but if you think about it, this way it's easier to convince yourself to go for trips more frequently. The coming back from the trip is what breaks the ego, not the time spent in Infinity.  The trip will feel like at least an hour anyways, even if it was just 10 minutes.  

[kuwaynej]

@Barna @PureExp

What i believe @Principium Nexus  is trying to findout, is  : what do you guy's do to maintain your awareness for a long period of time; Like how to train yourself to maintain pure awareness, do you have a technique that  you developed yourself ?

I can become aware multiple times for the day but only for a short period of time.

[PureExp]

52 minutes ago, kuwaynej said:

what do you guy's do to maintain your awareness for a long period of time; Like how to train yourself to maintain pure awareness, do you have a technique that  you developed yourself ?

I don't

It slips often, but its ok. We are here to have this "forgetting", this human experience. So let it flow. I can go there whenever I want, that's all. Don't have any techniques.

Some people use reminders, like a ring on the finger with some sacred text, or an image of some deity. Some people wear clothes of a special color, with mantras written on them. Some people hang posters/pictures on walls that remind them. So on and so forth. I do not use anything external at all. Why depend on stuff? It promotes ignorance, it becomes a mindless ritual. Some people mechanically do that, the religious people, they do not know what they are doing.

The "spiritual" types, meditate. They sit for long hours and focus on nothing but being aware. It works, its the real training. However, if you don't carry that state into everyday activities, it becomes yet another magical ritual. One hour of bliss, and 23 hours of Ego worship.

The important thing is, when I see in the mirror, or eat or talk to people, I do not automatically assume that I'm a body with a bunch of thoughts/likes/dislikes etc. I was like that long ago. Now "I am that" !

[jse]

What do you call a wolf that's aware of its surroundings?

Awarewolf

 

What do you call a werewolf that doesn't know he's a werewolf?

An unawarewolf.

Edited February 3, 2017 by jse

[Barna]

@kuwaynej I can answer your question, it's an effortless practice, you will love it!  I will formulate the answer today evening because I'm pretty busy right now. But meanwhile, you can check out the Trinfinity Academy. This is where I learned the most about consciousness and awareness, it contains practical and experiential teachings.  

[Barna]

First understand that awareness is always already here, without awareness, there is no experiencing.  

By maintaining awareness, you mean being conscious of awareness or focusing on being aware. This is indeed a very relaxing and enjoyable exercise.

To go deep, you first have to have two realizations:

1. First you have to realize, that the only reality of experiencing is awareness. Nothing exists without awareness. No experience exists outside of awareness. There is nothing outside of awareness. As Leo said "There is no stuff behind the scenes!"  
2. You are awareness. All of it! You are every experience in the here and now, including thoughts, emotions, sight, hearing, touch, all of it! And the here and now is nothing else than awareness itself.  

So now it is clear, that the here and now is everything that exists, and the here and now is nothing else than awareness, so it is all you, it is all intimate. 

These were the basic understandings. Now comes the practice:
Ask yourself the question: "Am I aware?". After a short pause, the obvious answer is "Yes.". It's a no-brainer, let's move on.  Now ask yourself the question: "How am I aware?" or "How am I experiencing?". For me this is the question that keeps my focus on awareness. Everything is happening BY you, try to feel into the "how" of it. It's a miracle that you are aware of anything, just ask yourself "How am I aware?", and try to feel the answer, by feeling into experiencing.  

This practice can be done in a meditative setting, for 15 minutes for example. However I recommend to have mini-realizations throughout the day. You can do this practice of being aware in 2 to 5 seconds. First a big breath, then you just ask yourself the question "Am I aware?", answer it, and then ask yourself "How?", and on the how question reality immediately expands. Then you continue whatever you were doing, but you will still inevitably feel the spaciousness of awareness. I do it in nearly every half an hour. 

I have learned all this on Trinfinity Academy. Try it out for more realizations!  

[Barna]

If you want to enter in a dream-like state of mind, you can also ask the question: "From where?" 

For example you can ask the question:

"Am I aware of the sensation in my feet?"

Usual answer: "Yes."

"From where?" 

Now this is interesting because you won't feel that you are aware from your head or from your brain. You are aware from your feet. 

Ask the question: 

"Am I aware of the touch of the table?"; "From where?" 

You are aware exactly where the touch happens. 

Ask yourself:

"Am I aware of this sound?"; "From where?" 

Now it is interesting because you will feel like you are aware from the air. 

When you are dreaming you don't use your dream body to experience sensations, you experience everything directly because everything is in you (everything in the dream is happening in your brain). It's funny when you realize that it feels the same even when you are awake. It feels like you are experiencing everything directly, and not through your senses.