Rather than kick things off with the usual navel-gazing, let’s be more interactive and get you involved. This only takes a moment and can be an eye-opening experience depending on how deep you want to go. It starts with the following question:
What happens when you awaken each morning? Literally, what happens during that very first instant when sleep recedes and, for lack of a better description, the world returns?
Really think about this for a moment. What returns first, “you” or awareness? Are you instantly “Bill Smith” or, for the briefest of moments, is there simply conscious awareness? Do you immediately identify yourself and the world around you or, ever-so-briefly, are you simply there, in bed, no thoughts, no nothing (no-THING) at all?
I think if you really look at it, there is a moment or two where awareness or consciousness is there but “you” aren’t – the “I” hasn’t reentered the picture because the mind hasn’t yet grasped that a new day has dawned. The instant the brain realizes this, however, “you” come flooding back in with all of your body’s standard aches and pains (“I’m so tired.” “My back aches.”) and the thought machine kicks back into high gear (“I can’t forget that meeting this morning.” “Ugh, it’s only Tuesday.”) and “you” have returned for another day on planet Earth.
But just prior to that, where were you?
If the mind and body shut down for sleep but consciousness remains, the implication is that the brain and body are a part of consciousness and not the other way around (i.e. if you drive into a telephone pole and knock yourself out cold, consciousness is not “lost.” It clearly never goes anywhere). Rather, the body simply loses access to it much the way it does during sleep or anesthesia.
Which in turn begs the biggest question of all: Are you the mind and body awakening to a new day or are you consciousness itself experiencing life through the twin material portals of mind and body? Most of us believe the former to be true. But the mystics state that it is the latter: that we are awareness itself and that all of our pain and suffering results from the misguided identification with the mind and body. In essence, the real me is that all-encompassing awareness made visible in those first instants of each morning rather than the brain and body elbowing their way in to the picture.
So to reiterate, if “I” awaken and awareness is already there even before “I” in the form of mind and body realize it, am “I” experiencing the awareness or am I the awareness itself?
