Personality & Awareness

During the Breema intensive in Oakland two weeks ago, I had a deepening experience of the difference between personalities and awareness...

There is the personalities, the particular characteristics, of people (body, emotions, thoughts) and all fluid phenomena. And there is the awareness, experiencing all the changing phenomena. And they are of course part of a seamless whole as well.

This Personality

I find it very useful to think of "this personality" rather than "I"... There is this personality, with its likes and dislikes, its habitual patterns. And then there is the awareness experiencing sensations, emotions, thoughts. Knowing this, I can choose to not get caught up in the fluid phenomena, allow them to unfold with less interference, and relate to them all with more awareness and choice.

There is a disidentification with the fluid phenomena, and a shift of identification to awareness. I can make choices more independent of the likes and dislikes of this particular personality. I can see this personality reacting with a like or dislike to a certain situation or person, and not make choices based only on those likes and dislikes. There is more space and a softening of old and rigid patterns.

And through this, I am in the present, I am with the experiences, and all the Breema principles are alive as well...

Breema

When they in Breema say "come to the breath and the weight of the body", "know there is a body", etc., then this is a skillful means to bring the center of gravity to awareness and aid the gentle disidentification with the shifting phenomena of the personality. This is similar to counting the breath in Buddhist meditation, although more active and in movement.

Can I Be With What I Am Experiencing?

The question outlined in Unconditional Bliss by Raphael Cushnir has a similar effect. I bring awareness to what I am experiencing right now, and ask myself can I be with what I am experiencing? I shift my focus to awareness and experiencing, and there is a separation between awareness and the shifting phenomena, and a softening of any identification there may be to the shifting phenomena.

I am letting go of resistance to my experiences, and there is more energy available and a sense of expansion, spaciousness and clarity. And all the Breema principles are alive. There is body comfortable, no extra, full participation, single moment single activity, mutual support, no force...

As I allow myself to relax and melt into the experiences, there is simultaneously a separation of awareness and phenomena, and a seamless whole of the two.

Conditioned Phenomena

And there is also a recognition of the conditioned aspect of all fluid phenomena. Everything is conditioned on something else. Everything is interrelated and formed by everything else. It is one fluid whole. And most human beings are blindly identified and caught up with the conditioned personality, created by everything else...

Compassion

Seeing this, a deepening sense of compassion comes up. We are all caught up in this "prison" of the conditioned personality. Until we become aware of awareness that is... Then there is a deepening of spaciousness, more choice, and an experience of the common "source" of all phenomena and all personalities.

Personality & Source

There are personalities with unique characteristics, and one source. The timeless, spacious, luminous awareness is always there. Luminous space, and all phenomena unfolding in that space...