Seeing the whole picture

 “You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-Self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone reminds, and that is the Self.”

Sri Ramana Maharshi.

 

We operate just like a camera. We pay attention to something that interests us. This attention happens at the expense of something else. When the light shines on person 1, person 2 is out of focus. When the light shines on the two people talking, the tree in the background is out of focus. Sometimes our conscious agenda drives what we pay attention two, and sometimes our subconscious has its own agenda that we may or may not awake to at a later stage; there are different circuits running in our brain.

 

There is a higher dimension of being, which we may refer to as Awareness or Presence, that is outside of that focus. It’s the whole picture. The vote, the viewer, the director and the screen. What to do when we realize that our identification with the “body-mind-world matrix” has taken over again? We can look into that identification. We may learn something about ourselves at that moment. A thought, a feeling or a happening arise, and we ride is all the way with full attention until it exhausts itself.

 

Awareness is always; the conditioned distraction comes and go. Lean back and enjoy the stroll or lean forward and take a good look at who wants to take you for a ride!