Awakening
To become enlightened or awaken is very simple, all you have to do is be consciousness. If you are consciousness it’s not an alternative to life, it is life itself, it’s all of life. If you are consciousness it doesn’t release you from the obligation to love, it demands that you be total, perfect and present love. You are conscious right now and what are you conscious of? Everything that you’re conscious of is simply the content of consciousness and as such, on its own, is not consciousness. So if you’re going to be consciousness, don’t be distracted by the content of consciousness - what you’re presently aware of. Be consciousness or that that is aware.
Everything you can tell me about, everything you can talk about, has to first of all be within consciousness. Therefore, everything we talk about is not consciousness, it’s the content of consciousness. If you want to understand who you are and what you are, you must understand who and what consciousness is. It’s similar to wanting to know how a television works. You don’t find out how a television works by analysing the plot of a soap opera. You do it by looking at the television set itself and the broadcasting system. A superficial understanding is that you plug the TV in and switch it on, but for a more profound understanding of what’s going on it’s necessary to look behind the obvious. Likewise, to understand ourselves in a fundamental way, we must look to consciousness. All the time we’re so interested in what we think, say and do (the soap opera), but during meditation we have the opportunity to put that to one side and focus, instead, on consciousness itself (the broadcasting system). In this way we can become aware of awareness and be conscious of consciousness.
It’s likely that you won’t be able to be consciousness straight away. To get to the point where you’re able to be consciousness you can prepare yourself with various practices.
1. In any moment you can entertain and be sympathetic with the idea that, in that moment, you are consciousness. The more you entertain it as a possibility, the more likely it is to be the case and the more prepared you are for it to be the case.
2. In any particular moment, you can simply assume that you are consciousness. In choosing to assume consciousness as your identity you bring a greater and more profound principle into your life. In that moment you are not living on the basis of being a separate individual with all the inherent neuroses that we, as individuals, possess. Therefore, you are, in that moment, free of all your neuroses.
3. You could make the assumption of consciousness as your identity for occasional and appropriate periods in the day. Good times to do this are in meditation and during quieter periods of the day.
4. You could assume the disposition of consciousness when you are disturbed and reactive. To do this, simply observe the feelings of disturbance or any reactive emotions and behaviour and realise, assume or entertain the possibility that, in that moment, there is a higher principle present in the form of the witness of the events that are unfolding.
If you’ve been familiar with the meditation I teach for any length of time it’s likely that you already do some of these practices. It’s in this gradual way of “acclimatisation” to consciousness that it’s likely that consciousness will awaken permanently, with enough force and energy to assert itself. In this way you’ll come to know with certainty, as I do, that it’s the underlying principle of your life and all life.