The Shift

Awareness: it is what it does

Awareness is aware

"Awareness is the Self" ~ Shiva Sutras of Vasugupta
The most amazing thing about you is that you are self-aware.

Awareness is You

 

The Shift that Shifts Everything - there is no 'you' yet there is functioning.

The Shift is to remain as Awareness that sees and the authentic action that spontaneously arises with it rather than enter the reactive realm of thinking and acting from there.

 

How do you know what you know?

Do you know through the thinking mind as thought based on the past knowledge, memories and experiences that you have accumulated or do you innocently, clearly, see things as they are?

 

Seeing is doing - your actions spontaneously arise out of how you see what you see as who is seeing is what is seeing.

This means that when you see through your past memories and experience as thinking, then who and what is seeing is the past such that your actions are not truly actions, rather they are re-actions. And when you innocently see things as they are in the current moment, then who and what is seeing is innocent, choiceless Awareness such that your actions are appropriate to the moment.

Seeing as choiceless Awareness does not mean that knowledge and experience do not have a place. For example the information you are currently accumulating about choiceless Awareness is knowledge. The shift is that its application is not based on knowledge as choiceless Awareness is always available (it is highly significant to realize that Awareness is timeless; it can be said that it is prior to knowledge and that this is why it can only be lived and never known by a knower).

Seeing is doing (energy follows Awareness/attention). This is self-evident as the act of simply being aware of an action like breathing has a beneficial impact on it. In this example Awareness is the instrument that is acting through and as its form - You (the process is a feedback loop wherein the innate intelligence of your bodymind that regulates breathing is aware of breathing as you consciously, innocently, observing it).

 

A path is formed by walking it.

Awareness itself is formless yet it expresses itself in form by simply being what it is.

When you examine Awareness you see that it is not a thing or any kind of form that can be found, yet it is self evident that what is examining it is it as embodied Awareness. In other words Awareness is the formless-limitless that is what it does such that its action takes and is form as embodied-limited Awareness (Awareness acts by being aware - its action is energy that coalesces into form. In this way Awareness is the seeing that is being and being is doing).

It is important to understand that Awareness is what you are and see that this is not a mental conclusion that leads you to think that you are identical to Awareness (there literally is no 'you'). It is like understanding that Hamlet is not Shakespeare because it is obvious that Hamlet is Shakespeare's creation as the means whereby Shakespeare expresses himself and is known. In the same manner Awareness is you as embodied Awareness (Hamlet and Shakespeare are the same in kind yet Hamlet is not identical to Shakespeare - in the same way, you as your psycho-physical form are not identical to formless Awareness because your form limits you). And, just as Hamlet is the form whereby Shakespeare expresses himself, you are the form whereby Awareness expresses itself (it is self evident that your body, your five sense doors and mind, and attention are embedded forms of Awareness).

"Every appearance owes its existence to the light of awareness. Nothing can have its own being without the light of awareness." ~ Kshemaraja (Kashmiri Shaivism)

"Our surroundings are not contained by name and form. You are neither the body nor the mind, these are limits you identify with through a lack of clear-sightedness. When you are attentive to a tree or flower, the perception, shape, name and concept are not the only things present. There is also the All-presence that you share with them and that you are both part of. The very name and form spring forth from this eternal background, the All-presence. This is instantaneous awareness that cannot be reached by thought." ~ Jean Klein

"The Power that resides in the heart of Awareness is freedom itself." ~ Abhinavagupta

The Shift: there is no 'you' - there is only Truth and its functioning.