The essence of all life, of all appearances, is not separate from perceiving and sensating. In other words, we apply our mental beliefs and concepts to what is a raw and unfiltered moment or appearance to create reality.
When we embrace life with a prayer or intention of not knowing, we seem to drop into vulnerability, rawness, and an openness to what is appearing as awareness awaring, instead of living in our head, knowing and suffering, as most of us do. Awaring is the raw, unfiltered perception or sensation of presence, aliveness, awareness, before we apply the mental beliefs, opinions, and judgments about what we believe we see and feel. Embodying presence is not escaping who you are but realizing what you have always been and but forgotten.
The mental processes and some call this thinking mind or the thought stream, divide raw appearances, what is, into body and mind, subject and object, self and not-self, thus creating and projecting a virtual reality or mirage we believe to be substantial, personal, and lasting in time. This mirage was my unexamined habit for fifty-three anxious, weary, and fearful years.
Here’s the good news…there is a deep, quiet, peaceful aliveness that vibrates right here, right now, but we are so enmeshed within the story of ourselves and our mental processes that we completely overlook, disregard, and shut out this perfect peace with the noise and stories in our heads. Embodying presence is not escaping who you are but realizing what you have always been and but forgotten.
Perception and sensation are the magnificence, the intimacy, and the wondrous mystery of this aliveness, this awareness.
Anita