This is a Deeper Understandings article, and is directed toward people who have already begun a practice of one kind or another and are beginning to ask questions about some of the key elements of ‘waking up’.
Often on this site I talk about how Awareness is the key to discovering our natural selves. This might seem like a simple and straightforward statement, but what exactly does ‘Awareness’ mean? This question was brought to the forefront by a reader who recalled a quote of mine: “All of the symbols we’ve placed on the world around us dissolve in the same way – by the application of observation. All we need is awareness.”
Take a look at that quote (I can happily dismember it since it’s mine), and notice how it sets up a rather impossible puzzle. It suggests that the ‘application’ of observation will work some sort of magic. Doesn’t this seem to be asking us to do something? To somehow apply observation or awareness to a situation? And yet, elsewhere in this site, I’ve suggested that the type of awareness we really need is a ‘no effort’ awareness. So how do we do something (apply effort) without applying effort?!
This is the big trouble with awareness, and it’s the puzzle we all face in attempting to discover our natural selves. Our very language and methods of thinking are built around this ‘effort = results’ type of world-view, and we’re hard-pressed to transcend the limits of our language and thinking. How the heck do we just be ‘natural’?
Naturally Occurring Naturalness =)
There’s a fun transformation that happens to people if they’re living out in the wild. When our lives are lived without schedules, cell phones, television, music, and all the other distractions of society, our mind starts to go through some powerful shifts – it’s usually after about a week in the wild when people’s minds suddenly slow down and begin to develop a new awareness. Thinking slows, and the endless repetition of thoughts and songs and everything else careening through our minds begins to dissipate. Our minds, often without any special practice or urging, begin to see ‘what’s really going on’ around us. I sometimes dream of opening up a wilderness retreat where people could come to experience this for themselves, but until that day, I’ll do my best to help people realize this same awakening while they’re still living in our world of plastic and cement and noise.
So How Do We Get Aware?
Let’s cut right to it. How do we get this awareness that will dissolve our symbols and let us see the world ‘as is’? What’s the darn recipe?
This, of course, is the question that has spurred so many answers. Zen is one answer, and Advaita is another, and Eckhart Tolle is offering another, and the list goes on. All of these ‘ways’ are offered because they all appeal to different types of minds. Depending on how your particular way of thinking is structured, each of these ways will have different assets and liabilities. You only need to beware when any path claims that it is the ‘only’ or the ‘best’ – that’s a sure sign that what they’re offering is not a path to awakening, but rather a path to becoming one of their followers.
The trick that any of these ‘ways’ has to face up to is to find a way to get our minds to stop trying. Yes, it’s really as simple as that. But we’re so used to thinking in our effort=results manner that we immediately want to ask a question. How? How do we stop trying? And then we have to laugh at ourselves, since we’re asking how (implying some effort on our part) we can create a state of no-effort. Aaargh!
But these sorts of things aren’t that foreign to us if we stop and observe our lives. We can’t fall asleep by forcing it. Falling asleep is a release. We can’t get totally immersed into a movie or book by concentrating on it. We have to ‘let go’ into the story. Indeed, all of life is like this – we taste foods most exquisitely, experience emotions most deliciously, and immerse ourselves in the moment most completely when we ‘release’ into the experience.
Why is this so tough when we’re trying to ‘see the world as it is’? The answer is that we tend to make ‘awakening’ into something big and grand. Falling asleep is one thing, but ‘waking up’ – well, that’s like Zen Enlightenment, the Meaning of Life, the Accomplishment of 1000 Lifetimes! And we’ve been taught quite well that big things require big effort. We’re not going to get the Grand Prize if we just sit around and do nothing!
Get Me the Grand Prize, Then!
The trick to discovering your natural awareness (for it is indeed natural and effortless, going on right now whether you’re realizing it or not), is to start watching things as they go through your mind. First of all, realize that although Awareness is effortless, you’re going to be stuck (at least for the moment) using a lot of effort to try to ‘get it’. Don’t be ashamed of that – just accept it as a momentary fact and jump right in. Observe (go ahead, make an effort observing) the effort! You’ll watch your mind trying to do all sorts of things. It will try to concentrate on one thing (A single breath, or a candle’s flame, or a mantra), it will try to relax (Come on! Just relax!), or it will try to calm its thoughts and achieve moments of stillness. These are all strategies offered by many of the different ‘ways’ we mentioned above, but the secret is that none of these strategies are meant to actually ‘get you there’. Instead, they’re meant to show you how pointless it is to try to make an effort-full attempt at non-effort. Those teachers who understand their ‘way’ will know that these strategies are simply ways of letting students experience, first-hand, how pointless effort is.
It’s all and well to deliver riddles about how ‘we’re already there’, or ‘the Way requires nothing’. But for most of us, our minds just don’t get this. These riddles have their purpose, but sometimes it’s best for us to just jump into the act of ‘trying’ and to observe where it gets us.
Meditation, mantras, navel-gazing – go for it! These are not bad things. But notice what these things do in your mind. Do they get you results? And if they do, what do you imagine those results will amount to? Discover what you think your destination is, and consider how your efforts will get you there.
Herein lies the value of trying all these methods. They get us further in touch with our effort-full attempts to reach a destination that most of us don’t even understand. But as we get intimate with these processes, we’ll learn to recognize them working, and eventually a time will come when we’re ready to try ‘not-trying’. And when that time comes, our past efforts will reward us – we’ll have trained ourselves in the skill of observing our mind’s effort-full activity.
Time to Not-Try
When we’ve put in some good efforts, developing the skill of observing our mind’s effort-full activity, we might then begin to wonder just what this ‘not-trying’ or ‘non-effort’ nonsense is all about. And it’s exactly that – nonsense. In other words, our ‘sensability’ – our thinking mind – can’t figure it out. This is the time when we’re ready to embark on a new and fabulous adventure – and it’s all about getting in touch with our natural selves.
Nature As A Teacher
It’s important to understand that when I speak of ‘nature’ as a teacher, I’m not merely referring to walks in the woods or fields. YOU are natural. Often we like to think that we humans are spiritually different from other animals – more highly evolved or containing souls or higher on the reincarnation scale – and I won’t challenge those beliefs just now. But there is something magical that happens when we just see ourselves as mammals, no different spiritually than a squirrel or a rabbit. Nature is inside of us – is us, and we don’t require any special formulae to find our pure awareness.
Get Natural!
Pure awareness is something that is as natural as sleeping. It’s disturbed only by our thinking minds and the world-view we’ve constructed. Being out in the wilderness, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, can have a wonderful way of opening us up, but if it’s not feasible for you to spend a lot of time in the woods, consider exploring your own natural landscape – the landscape of your mind and senses. The exploration is both the end and the means – concerned with a destination, we’ll try to focus our efforts, but engaged in pure exploration, we’ll begin to accustom ourselves to Awareness – the pure observation that sees even the myth of the observer.
If there is one single gift we should give ourselves in this life, it is this natural curiosity – this delight in our pure awareness. This is the Grand Prize itself – there really is nothing more.
Often on this site I talk about how Awareness is the key to discovering our natural selves. This might seem like a simple and straightforward statement, but what exactly does ‘Awareness’ mean? This question was brought to the forefront by a reader who recalled a quote of mine: “All of the symbols we’ve placed on the world around us dissolve in the same way – by the application of observation. All we need is awareness.”
Take a look at that quote (I can happily dismember it since it’s mine), and notice how it sets up a rather impossible puzzle. It states that the ‘application’ of observation will work some sort of magic. Doesn’t this seem to be asking us to do something? To somehow apply observation or awareness to a situation? And yet, elsewhere in this site, I’ve suggested that the type of awareness we really need is a ‘no effort’ awareness. So how do we do something (apply effort) without applying effort?!
This is the big trouble of awareness, and it’s the puzzle we all face in attempting to discover our natural selves. Our very language and methods of thinking are built around this ‘effort = results’ type of world-view, and we’re hard-pressed to transcend the limits of our language and thinking. How the heck do we just be ‘natural’?
Naturally Occurring Naturalness =)
There’s a fun transformation which happens to people if they’re living out in the wild. (I’m talking about living in a wilderness situation in which we’re free of most of society’s influences, but in which we’re also able to meet our basic needs for shelter, water, and food.) When our lives are lived without schedules, cell phones, television, music, and all the other distractions of society, our mind starts to go through some powerful shifts – it’s usually after about a week in the wild when people’s minds suddenly slow down and begin to develop a new awareness. Thinking slows, and the endless repetition of thoughts and songs and everything else careening through our minds begins to dissipate. Our minds, often without any special practice or urging, begin to see ‘what’s really going on’ around us. I sometimes think that I should open up a wilderness retreat where people could come to experience this for themselves, but until that day, I’ll do my best to help people realize this same awakening while they’re still living in our world of plastic and cement and noise.
So How Do We Get Aware?
Let’s cut right to it. How do we get this awareness that will dissolve our symbols and let us see the world ‘as is’? What’s the darn recipe?
This, of course, is the question that has spurred any number of answers. Zen is one answer, and Advaita is another, and Eckhart Tolle is offering another, and the list goes on. All of these ‘ways’ are offered because they all appeal to different types of minds. Depending on how your particular way of thinking is structured, each of these ways will have different assets and liabilities. You only need to beware when any path claims that it is the ‘only’ or the ‘best’ – that’s a sure sign that what they’re offering is not a path to awakening, but rather a path to becoming one of their followers.
The trick that any of these ‘ways’ has to face up to is to find a way to get our minds to stop trying. Yes, it’s really as simple as that. But we’re so used to thinking in our effort=results manner of thinking that we immediately want to ask a question. How? How do we stop trying? And then we have to laugh at ourselves, since we’re asking how (implying some effort on our part) we can create a state of no-effort. Aaargh!
But these sorts of things aren’t that foreign to us if we stop and observe our lives. We can’t fall asleep by forcing it. Falling asleep is a release. We can’t get totally immersed into a movie or book by concentrating on it. We have to ‘let go’ into the story. Indeed, all of life is like this – we taste foods most exquisitely, experience emotions most deliciously, and immerse ourselves in the moment most completely when we ‘release’ into the experience.
Why is this so tough when we’re trying to ‘see the world as it is’? The answer is that we tend to make ‘awakening’ into something big and grand. Falling asleep is one thing, but ‘waking up’ – well, that’s like Zen Enlightenment, the Meaning of Life, the Accomplishment of 1000 Lifetimes! And we’ve been taught very well that big things require big effort. We’re not going to get the Grand Prize if we just sit around and do nothing!
Get Me the Grand Prize, Then!
The trick to discovering your natural awareness (for it is indeed natural, going on right now whether you’re realizing it or not), is to start watching things as they go through your mind. First of all, realize that although Awareness is effortless, you’re going to be stuck (at least for the moment) using a lot of effort to try to ‘get it’. Don’t be ashamed of that – just accept it as a momentary fact and jump right in. Observe (go ahead, make an effort observing) the effort! You’ll watch your mind trying to do all sorts of things. It will try to concentrate on one thing (A single breath, or a candle’s flame, or a mantra.), it will try to relax (Come on! Just relax!), or it will try to calm its thoughts and achieve moments of stillness. These are all strategies offered by many of the different ‘ways’ we mentioned above, but the secret is that none of these strategies are meant to actually ‘get you there’. Instead, they’re meant to show you how pointless it is to try to make an effort-full attempt at non-effort. Those teachers who understand their ‘way’ will know that these strategies are just ways of letting students experience, first-hand, how pointless effort is.
It’s all and well to deliver riddles about how ‘we’re already there’, or ‘the Way requires nothing’. But for most of us, our minds just don’t get this. These riddles have their purpose, but sometimes it’s best for us to just jump into the act of ‘trying’ and to observe where it gets us.
Meditation, mantras, navel-gazing – go for it! These are not bad things. But notice what these things do in your mind. Do they get you results? And if they do, what do you imagine those results will amount to? Discover what you think your destination is, and consider how your efforts will get you there.
Herein lies the value of trying all these methods. They get us further in touch with our effort-full attempts to reach a destination that most of us don’t even understand. But as we get intimate with these processes, we’ll learn to recognize them working, and eventually a time will come when we’re ready to try ‘not-trying’. And when that time comes, our past efforts will reward us – we’ll have trained ourselves in the skill of observing our mind’s effort-full activity.
Time to Not-Try
When we’ve put in some good efforts, developing the skill of observing our mind’s effort-full activity, we might then begin to wonder just what this ‘not-trying’ or ‘non-effort’ nonsense is all about. And it’s exactly that – nonsense. In other words, our ‘sensability’ – our thinking mind – can’t figure it out. This is the time when we’re ready to embark on a new and fabulous adventure – and it’s all about getting in touch with our natural selves.
Nature As A Teacher
It’s important to understand that when I speak of ‘nature’ as a teacher, I’m not just referring to walks in the woods or fields. YOU are natural. Often we like to think that we humans are spiritually different from other animals – more highly evolved or containing souls or higher on the reincarnation scale – and I won’t challenge those beliefs just now. But there is something magical that happens when we just see ourselves as mammals, no different spiritually than a squirrel or a rabbit. Nature is inside of us – is us, and we don’t require any special formulae to find our pure awareness.
Get Natural!
Pure awareness is something that is as natural as sleeping. It’s disturbed only by our thinking minds and the world-view we’ve constructed. Being out in the wilderness, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, can have a wonderful way of opening us up, but if it’s not feasible for you to spend a lot of time in the woods, consider exploring your own natural landscape – the landscape of your mind and senses. The exploration is both the end and the means – concerned with a destination, we’ll try to focus our efforts, but engaged in pure exploration, we’ll begin to accustom ourselves to Awareness – the pure observation that sees even the myth of the observer.
If there is one single gift we should give ourselves in this life, it is this natural curiosity – this delight in our pure awareness. This is the Grand Prize itself – there really is nothing more.
Hi Kenton,
Your gift is being able to see this from the “unawakened” perspective. You writing resonates with many because they feel you right beside.
The effort thing–for me, effort was necessary to see that it is not. When effort is given up, it is a gloriously freeing thing…awakening then deepens on its own, all we have to do is get out of the way.
Awakening as the other of asleep is an apt metaphor–perhaps a little upside down in that awakening=no-effort and being asleep=effort.
What you call ‘releasing into’ I call flow. I think it is the same as the athlete’s Zone, or when the music plays the musician, or Grace. It is the most natural, the most effortless we can be.
The wilderness retreat sounds great!
Thanks for another illuminating article.
k
Dear Kaushik,
Your words do me a great honor. I also appreciate you giving a fresh perspective to this matter — you always have a wonderful way of approaching the same thing from a different angle =)
And thanks for the input regarding the retreat — mayhaps I’ll have to give it more serious thought!
Sweetwater,
Kenton