We begin from Here, where we are. We are in the particular. We are completely identified with all that we perceive. We see thoughts and consider them our own; we sense and believe the body to be our self. We sense emotions and think they are us. We say I am happy or I am sad.
So, from here we bring attention to sensing and become aware that sensing appears in our consciousness. Everything that we notice appears in our consciousness and yet we are aware of all things. By being aware of all that is in consciousness, we are out of the particular. Only that which is on a higher plane can perceive. We are, in a way, above and beyond all that we sense and yet it is in us. We have been identified with the sensing – we move now to the identification with the Awareness of sensing.
In this awareness of sensing, we notice sensation around the heart space. We pay attention to our breathing. We see that we can only perceive one object at a time. If we are paying attention to our breathing, we are not able to give attention to the thoughts that are dancing just on the periphery. It is almost as if our attention is retreating from dispersion out into the particular and coming back home to our heart. It seems that all experiencing is a projection from this heart. Staying here with the heart, we notice that the energy that was occupied in the head is drawing down into the heart. We can almost feel it slide down into the heart. Perhaps down through the back of the head, down the spine, and into the heart cavity. This beingness we sense in our heart is nourishing, it is mothering, it is loving, it is welcoming. It is Now and we rejoice.
We realize that this being is indivisible. It is undifferentiated. It is Individual, and we are aware of it in us, in our consciousness. All of this experiencing is still happening within the space of non-experiencing, otherwise how could we possibly have perception? There must be a background on which the perceiving can manifest. This background, this unmanifest, this not-knowing, this unborn mind is our home in the absolute. We can never know it directly but can only infer it. It can never be an object of our awareness because it Is awareness. It is the ultimate subject. It is not divided although all multiplicity springs forth from this Oneness. This Awareness is never for a single moment not here. We cannot – not be in it.
This Awareness is our own true nature. If we remember the One to which all appears, if we understand that this is our one true abode and refer back to this unknowingness, this unborn mind, this original face, then it pulls us, it calls us back home. The pulling out into experience falls away and we rejoice, first in our beingness of the heart, and then even that experience leaves as we are rejoined from whence we came – back to Behind.
-purushottama
This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.
Sat Sangha Salon 