The awareness in every individual is all knowledge and all powerful. When you develop this awareness, it manifests within you in the form of energy and knowledge. Animals eat, sleep and move, but they are not aware of it. The act of witnessing oneself is completely absent in them. If they became aware that they were doing something, it would mean that they had developed this awareness. - Swami Satyananda Saraswati
The universe is self-aware through us. – Physicist, Amit Goswami
The evolution of awareness is the central issue of yoga. Relaxation is an important first step but the opening and expansion of awareness is the goal. But what is awareness? It is the very essence of who we are and at the same time it is elusive and unavailable for direct observation. We generally know awareness through the objects of awareness, but yoga asks “who is it that is aware?”
We are generally aware of ourselves and the world through the senses and their objects. When we turn awareness inward we are aware of thoughts and imagination. Sensory awareness is a limited form of awareness however and it is conditioned by our minds. Psychological tests show that we edit, interpret and virtually create the “reality” of our world below the level of ordinary consciousness. We become embedded in our mental pictures of the world.
Our ability to change and to evolve psychologically and spiritually is dependent on our level of consciousness – on the degree of awareness we bring to any situation. It is through the power of insight awareness that we can separate ourselves from our mental conditioning and view things and ourselves from a fresh perspective. Otherwise we are likely to remain in old patterns of habitual thought, emotions and behavior.
Deeper awareness is available to all of us all of the time. It is a matter of detaching from our narratives about the past and expectations of the future. If we are busy judging, comparing, analyzing, predicting or planning we are not truly aware of what is present, of what is truly real and alive. All of these activities of the mind can be valuable but they become habitual, chronic and incessant. We never lift our heads up from our maps of reality to check the actual terrain! And of course we can become hopelessly lost.
Unconditional awareness and unconditional love are essentially the same. When we open awareness we stop judging, categorizing and striving to make others fit in with our wants and needs. When we become truly self-aware, we stop judging and berating ourselves and we realize our inherent perfection. That perfection pertains to the miraculous pristine quality of awareness itself. This present moment of awareness is all there is – everything else is mental fabrication, illusion. “Eternity is here in this moment.” states Robert Adams. “On the most minute level, what we call our hearts, our Being, our awareness, all subside within the same breath, the same existence. As we appear to journey through Eternity, through what we call 'life', this Reality remains. And this Reality is Eternal.”
Don’t think about it but drop thinking for just a minute. Abide in stillness, in awareness, in love.
