Hi Henrik,
We'll come back to awareness, but bear with me for the moment:
Say you're walking down the street, you see a small patch of colour on the ground ahead, as you get closer it becomes clear it is a glove; how would your experience of that patch of colour change when you realised it was your glove?
No change.
OK, so the raw visual impression would not change, but how about your overall experience in relation to this 'patch of colour'?
Suddenly attaching the label 'mine' to the patch of colour introduces something new into the experience, wouldn't you say? I'm sure you can find your own way to put this, but I'd say that when the realisation dawns 'hey, that is mine!', it is as if "I" suddenly experience myself as joined to "it", the separation between "me" and "it" is suddenly very apparent, there is an urge to close the gap.... For present purposes, what is most significant is that, suddenly, along with 'mine' comes a much stronger sense of the 'me' that owns ... can you relate to this?
This is important, and worth exploring, because it provides the opportunity to witness the birth of 'me' and 'mine' ... normally we take 'me' and 'mine' for granted at face value, but having witnessed the birth of 'me' and 'mine', it may become obvious that 'me' and 'mine' are mental creations and not part of direct experience.
It might be worth checking back over the last few posts, since it should be clearer now what the intention was behind the earlier exercises: to ensure that you can clearly distinguish what if feels with and without the addition of 'me' and 'mine' to primary experience. Do you have a clear sense (in experience, not understanding) of these two states now?
OK, I realise you want to get onto awareness :-) .... I've not forgotten, but I've gone back over 'me' and 'mine' because mastering what is above would be a very helpful foundation for investigating the significance of awareness.
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So, as you ask, what about awareness?
Let's make sure some possible misunderstandings are out of the way first...
There is a field of experience that is present to 'this' awareness - 'your' experience is not 'my' experience. Realising no-self does not change the fact that experience of 'this body' is associated with 'this awareness'. So, conventionally speaking, there is a 'self' comprising 'this body', 'these thoughts', 'these feelings', 'these perceptions', and 'this awareness', and after realising that there is no "I", all of this remains as it was.
What 'no self' is pointing to is that there is nothing
in addition to this, no "I" that "owns" it all. The owner is just a made-up character in a fictional story. Realising this is just a subtle shift in perspective, dropping an assumption because it is unwarranted - everything else carries on as before, at least in the short term.
So in the light of this, when you say 'my awareness', is there
really a 'me' that 'owns' awareness?
What if 'experience' and 'experiencer' are actually the same thing?
x
Perry
