Thursday, January 22, 2015

Rest in awareness, and rest AS awareness.

In or As??

This seems like a big deal over nothing, and such as small point, BUT it needs to be said.. since it can have a huge impact.

Many nonduality and awareness teachers often tell people (in books or otherwise) to just "Rest in awareness", or "Rest in presence", or just relax into the awareness.. etc. etc.

There's nothing wrong with this.. BUT, simply stated, when telling individuals to just do this, it implies that 1) there's an individual to perform the action and 2) there's a separate object/thing called 'awareness', 'presence' etc. and that 1) needs to merge/attend/rest in 2).

The then causes:
a) the individual to try to find 'awareness', 'presence' etc.
b) the individual to hang on to their erroneous belief in a seperate personal self, with volition
c) the individual to keep seeking for (a), and either to give up in frustration or erroneously announce that they're actually managed to 'rest in awareness' or attain some false personal state of nondual awareness etc. (and then go off and teach others how to do the same).

Anyhow, cutting to the chase, the above can be avoided and remedied by replacing "in" with the word "as".

Instead of "resting in presence", one rests AS presence. There is no more individual. There is no one. Just presence.
Instead of "resting in awareness", one rests AS awareness. Again, the individual disappears. Resting AS something is mutually exclusive, in that two things can't be happening at once.

Try it out- rest AS awareness, AS presence, AS your natural self and what you really ARE.

Peace out.


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