Awareness & Identification

It is curious how awareness unfolds...

Half-Awake

First, there is a low level and local awareness. This is expressed in most animals and humans, and epxeriences the world in a blindly dualistic way.

We identify with this one body and personality, and see everything else as "other". And we tend to get caught up in - and identify with - the processes of this one personality, the sensations, emotions and (for humans) thoughts.

The patterns of the personality has been formed by our biological history and configuration, our culture and our individual experiences. And we tend to energize and perpetuate these conditioned patterns through our identification with them. They take us for a ride, which is not always pleasant.

This is what Buddhism refers to as small mind. One that is only identified with the processes of the small personality.

Awakening into Awareness

Then, there is an awakening into awareness, as described in several previous entries. There is a deepening of spacious awareness, in which all inner/outer phenomena unfold.

Here, awareness is becoming aware of itself. It brings attention to itself, and the center of gravity moves from narrow identification with the processes of the personality to also include awareness. There is an expansion of what I experience as "me".

There is a little more than just "small mind".

Transdual Awareness - w. Center

Here, awareness is awakening further. There is a clear and spacious awareness, in which all phenomena of the inner/outer world unfold.

This is Big Mind, beyond and embracing awareness and phenomena. As long as it operates through a body and personality, there is a center. It "adopts" this one body and personalty, and lives in the inner/outer world through this.

Transdual Awareness - w/out Center

This awakened and transdual awareness can also operate without a body/personalty and without a center. This is the true (?) eye of God.

We can have glimpses of this even when there is a body/personality, although it is difficult or impossible to live and operate effectively in the world from this view. And we don't need to. This is the unborn awareness, beyond and embracing time and space - and always there. It is Existence.

The Unborn

Existence is transdual mind in which all phenomena unfolds.

It is that in which local awareness unfolds, through organisms such as us.