Hey blu,
I hope you’re doing well ! I can’t wait till be able to experience life as you are now having learned all of this and accomplished what everyone is striving for!
My question is regarding learning more about the nature of what I am. Rupert Spira mentioned that it’s not enough to know that one is awareness. He emphasizes the importance of exploring the nature of it. Ex. Knowing it’s infinite, knowing the world is in it or a modulation of it. So my question is what’s the best way to figure this out. My mind cannot know of awareness so is asking questions about the nature of it really beneficial ? The next option would be experiencing it/being it. I know that I’m it all the time but when I try to go deeper and get to a place where it’s just awareness, I find that thoughts/perceptions/sensations are never ending and I want to experience it without these things, like we do in sleep.
Regarding sleep, if it’s our true nature with the absence of objective things, why doesn’t sleep bring us closer to understanding awareness if we experience it daily.
Is it because we don’t know the context of what it actually means? - if this makes sense
Thank you, I appreciate your time 💗
hi love! :] 🩵 longgg post ahead woweee i apologise.
in response to the first part of your ask:
i can only extrapolate based on the limited context, but i imagine rupert spira was emphasising the importance of not just simply knowing that what i call "me" or "i" (the person) is unreal, but that the entirety of the dream and everything in it is unreal too. you are not just an illusory form/projection of Awareness interacting with a real, separate, immovable world. the whole of the world and all of its contents, everything that is imaginable and conceivable, all physical and mental activity is nothing but a form of Awareness taking place within Awareness. the reason Awareness is infinite is because it is boundless. and time is a boundary. if Awareness is subject to time i.e. if it has a beginning/end, tell me what could possibly come before/after it? and notice that whatever answer you can offer is an answer produced by the mind, meaning it is yet another form of Awareness in and of itself. whatever you imagine could take place before/after (aka ‘outside of’) Awareness, requires Awareness in order to imagine it (i.e. in order for it to exist). therefore, Awareness inherently surpasses all limits and bounds. it is all-pervading and all-powerful.
as for how i suggest you come to this understanding, simply self realise. everything else will take care of itself. there are zero questions or doubts left when knowing is ultimate. reality becomes self obvious. simply keep remembering that nothing you are conscious of can be you …so what are you? what is the single unchanging element of all changing phenomena? what remains when all else goes?…
continually keep in mind the absolute and all-encompassing nature of Awareness. i have people all the time tell me "i know i’m Self, but …" and then they go on to spiral about a particular "problem" or circumstance. if you truly knew, you’d treat everything with the calm indifference that you do your dreams. there’d be no ifs or buts or maybes. if you understand that this thing/person/event/thought is unreal, why would that one be any different? if you know this thought is illusion, why is that thought somehow real? if you know that ideas are unreal and meaningless, why do they still trigger you? why do you still spiral? why do you fight to change/get rid of/affirm against what you see? because the knowing is incomplete and unsustained, that’s why. we remember our true nature for a little, and then something happens that feels very serious and scary and we forget again. we go back to believing in the world. the solution is just to keep at this ‘practice’ until it’s permanent, until you remember all of the time. then the need for any practice or remembering is over. you are just Being, forever, regardless of whatever costume (character) You playfully put on.
i know you said you want to go deeper beyond thoughts, but thoughts won’t stop for as long as you’re wanting or willing them to. the good news is, that’s fine! thoughts exist because You exist first. they are an indication of Awareness, not a hindrance of it. the only reason you can know of them in the first place is because you are. use them as an opportunity to remember your true Being instead of seeing them as a problem to overcome. let them be, watch them the way you’d watch bustling traffic from your bedroom window; sometimes it’s loud and crowded, sometimes it’s quiet and empty, but either way You stand apart from it. observe. the noise will fall away on its own i assure you.
as for sleep:
this person talks about how sleep brought them closer to understanding awareness.
in deep dreamless sleep, personal consciousness vanishes. the world, the body, the mind, the sense of "i am" all cease to exist. the lack of sense objects leaves only pure, primordial Awareness (distinction explained here).
even in deep sleep, You (Awareness) are. that’s why you do not say "i ceased existing last night" even though the person technically did (and that’s because You are not the person, therefore You continue even when the person does not!!! think on that). now imagine this state of deep sleep, except without ever waking up. You would be no-body in no-thing forever, formless and shapeless and undivided. yet you cannot say You wouldn’t exist, because it is into this state that you (the character and world) submerges (falling asleep) and re-emerges (waking up) every day. there must be something (= Awareness) within which the world and person can dissolve and arise. so in short, You are the space/canvas for the entire universe. preeeetttttyyy cool right? : ))
but yes, for the vast majority of people, they awaken from sleep and immediately assume the identity of a person in the world. it appears very much that the world is already there upon awakening, and you are a mere victim of it. memories of the past are carried into every new moment, and it’s this apparent continuity/cause and effect within the dream which gives it its sense of reality. the illusion you have set up for yourself is a very convincing one. hence the advice to behave as if you were bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, effectively embodying (mentally) the state of deep sleep.
this is why i recommend meditation, yes as often as possible, but especially before sleep and after waking. seek to extend this meditative state, in which you are allowing everything its being whilst remaining undisturbed and unattached, further and further into the day until you’re in it constantly, until you realise it is your natural way of being and the activities of the world can no longer bind you.
when i speak of meditation, i don’t mean you must force yourself to sit only in one place in a particular position with your eyes closed and total silence surrounding you. yes, it can help in the beginning to find somewhere private to sit peacefully, but you can very much meditate all of the time regardless of what the body is doing… essentially what this anon described here, in what is one of my favourite posts ever.
ramana maharshi has lots of interesting quotes about sleep that you can find simply by googling. here’s one:
nisargadatta maharaj also has a quote that’s only semi-related to sleep but i love it so much that i’m including it here anyways :p
