As with tastes of Big Mind in general, radical impartiality can show up in two ways.

Within belief in I

One is while there is still a belief in the idea of I. Here, we can have a taste of it through just noticing that this awareness - here now - is already radically impartial.

It already allows any experience to come and go, to live its own life. It allows any experience, any content, including resistance to certain experiences and content! It inherently allows all of this, and it is untouched by all of this. The particular content leaves no trace in pure awareness, it only leaves apparent trace in other content.

This space and awareness, here now, allows any content to come and go, including resistance to any content, which itself is content.

Within the context of a belief in I, this appears as an individual awareness. But even this apparently individual awareness is already radically impartial.

Within realized selflessness

When there is an awakening to selflessness, to what is with no I anywhere, to content staying the same but context shifting to realized selflessness, this radical impartiality takes a slightly different form.

This space and awareness that initially appeared as individual, as somehow a property of this human self, is now revealed to be radically non-individual. It is really the Ground of all phenomena, including any and all beings (although it is also - mysteriously and temporarily - functionally connected with this particular human self).

This Ground of radical impartiality is this physical space which everything arises within. Trees, butterflies, galxies, oceans, culture, cities, emotions, thoughts, sensations, cars, an eagle, a cloud, delusion, awakening, Buddha, Pol Pot, nebulae, solar systems, universes. It all arises within and as Ground, within and as Spirit, within and as Big Mind, Buddha Mind.

And when it is functionally connected with a particular being, for instance a human self, then it often (mistakenly) exclusively identifies with this self, and awareness is taken as individual, as a property of the human self.

Always available

The beauty of radical impartiality is that it is available in either case. It is available within a context of a sense of I, now taken as a characteristic of personal and individual awareness. And it is available in realized selflessness, now revealed as a characteristic of Ground, Spirit, Buddha Mind, Brahman.

Labels: realized selflessness, sense of I