Obscuration, Distraction, Fuel, Existence

During sitting practice, and in daily life as well, I notice that I move between several relationships to what is experienced, to the content.

Obscurations

One is as obscurations.

The content comes to the foreground of awareness, and I don't notice the awareness itself. I identify with the content, whatever it may be in the present. I identify with the experienced, and not the experiencer/experiencing. This is the classic obscuration, a.k.a. samsara.

And this too, is part of the wonderful and rich fluidity of Existence. This too is Buddha Mind, God, Existence expressing itself perfectly, as obscuration, as only half-awake, as functioning dualisticly, as functioning in a way that creates suffering for itself in various ways.

Distractions

Another is as distractions.

Here, I have found myself as the Witness, as pure awareness, or going further back - as capacity for the world, as the formless unborn, the Original Face, deep stillness, the void, as that which is distinct from the world of phenomena, empty of any characteristics.

If I am not yet very familiar with myself as the Witness or the Absolute, then the content may appear as distractions and disturbance. I shift, involuntarily, between resting as Witness and being caught up in the fluid content of experiences. And the chances are that I don't appreciate this form of fluidity. I resist it, which - although dualistic in itself - also serves as a motivation for practice, for inquiry, sitting practice or whatever else it may be.

Fuel

Then we find that the content can be fuel.

Anything is a reminder to come to myself as Witness (pure awareness, the experiencer/experiencing), as the Absolute (that which is empty of any characteristics), or as Big Mind (embracing the Absolute and Relative, experiencer and experienced), whatever it may be.

Not only that, I find that the more intense the content is - such as strong emotions - the more stable I find myself resting as Witness, Absolute, Big Mind. The stability and clarity is fueled by the strength of the content.

Existence

Finally, there is just resting (a dynamic and active resting) as the experiencing and the experienced, as the Absolute and Relative. They are revealed as two aspects of the same fluid whole, and I am that. It is Existence manifesting, whatever it is.

There seems to be degrees of this as well.

One is with an identification as awareness, as the experiencer, although within the clarity of no separation between the experiencer and the experienced.

Another is where this identification too drops, and the experiencer is revealed as just experiencing, and all that is is just what is - the whole in which experiencing and experienced are aspects. Here, there is no "I" to be found anywhere, no identity - apart from what is in the present, the indivisibility of the experiencing/experienced.

Fluidity

And as with so many other things it seems, there is naturally a wonderful fluidity among all of these. A wonderful richness in the way Existence manifests as all and any of these.