awareness: “… You don’t become aware, for you are awareness …” ~ Jean Klein
Indeed! …
Awareness is not a state … it isn’t something you attain … you cannot come to awareness.
It’s the ground you’ve never left, nor can you ever leave! 🙂
Jean again underscores this with “… all existence is radiating around the eternal sunshine of Awareness that rests at the center of Being …”
In The Ease of Being he speaks of awareness as a non-objective, self-luminous presence that doesn’t begin or end—not a mood to generate, but the ever-available background in which body, feelings, and thoughts appear.
The book turns to recurring motifs: unconditioned listening, a softened “doer,” embodied feeling, and the quiet disappearance of the witness. Klein keeps redirecting us from producing experiences to letting experience settle in openness; to relaxing into what doesn’t come or go.
He points past collecting moments toward choiceless listening. As the reflex to “keep” fades, what we are not—body, mood, storyline—loosens from the center. Stillness isn’t a mood to maintain but the context of every appearing.
This book is a collection of Klein’s gatherings from early to mid 1980s … and …
We have been reviewing many such gatherings to explore Jean’s answers to questions – that are practical everyday concerns. The transcripts of these gatherings are available as a series of his books … all of which we are previewing – via chapter excerpts with our preambles – on an ongoing basis:
… starting with his classic Book of Listening … in a 5-part series … and
… then Living Truth which is ongoing with 2-parts so far … and
… then Who Am I … which is also ongoing with 2-parts so far …
… then Beyond Knowledge … which is ongoing with 1-part so far …
… then Be Who You Are … which is also ongoing with 1-part so far …
… then The Ease of Being … which is also ongoing with 1-part so far …
… and, more recently Transmission of the Flame … which is also ongoing with 1-part so far …
So, today, in this post – Part 2 of the series on Ease of Being – we briefly explore our True Nature through the question:
I find it difficult to understand the idea that we “have a glimpse of it,” yet return to our habitual way of living. How could that be It? It seems that it’s still an experience bound by time and concepts?
All italicized text (except noted otherwise) below is from The Ease of Being by Jean Klein and is published here with the publisher New Sarum Press‘ generous permission. Scroll to the bottom for a free downloadable Table of Contents. You can purchase the book at Amazon.
“… you are this timeless presence …”
Awareness …
Q. I find it difficult to understand the idea that we “have a glimpse of it,” yet return to our habitual way of living. How could that be It? It seems that it’s still an experience bound by time and concepts?
A. An experience belongs to somebody, to an “I.” It is understood in reference to the past, to memory, to what we already know. It still has a subject, an experiencer, and an object, something experienced. But what we are fundamentally can never be experienced, can never partake in the subject-object relationship, so we must let go of all desire for experience.
What then does it mean to become more acquainted with yourself? It means you become more informed about what you are not, your body, your senses, emotions, mind. This is a movement diametrically opposed to trying to grasp hold of knowledge. It must come to you. You must listen to your body, senses and mind, a listening which demands letting go of all that you think you know, all conditioning, all patterns. As you remain in this listening, perceptions surface from what psychology would call the subconscious and superconscious. But don’t give emphasis to these perceptions because to accent the perceived binds you to a subject-object relationship. First, the accent is on the perceived, and later you’ll find the listening itself is emphasized, until finally you find yourself in this listening.
Listening is the background of all that appears. It is stillness. Your body, senses, mind, and all states come and go, but you are this timeless presence.
The idea that there is actually something to attain is deeply rooted, so we continue to live in the becoming process, projecting energy in taking or keeping something. But motiveless listening deepens the conviction that there is really nothing to gain or lose, and conditioning drops from the mind, agitation recedes and there is stillness. You are then like the fisherman who controls neither the fish nor the water. He only watches. And he comes to feel that everything is contained in this looking, in this silence—there is nothing apart from it. At this moment you are at the threshold of your real being, but no amount of willing can take you across. You are seized by Being itself.
Klein elsewhere sharpens the same point: awareness is not a state we “enter,” and the felt sense of “nothing happening” returns us to listening itself. …
You don’t become aware, for you are awareness. Awareness of awareness comes from awareness itself. The volitional “I” can never achieve this because the “I” is only thought. So once you see that thought is helpless to elicit the timeless non-state, you stop all producing and projecting, and are still. Stillness is an autonomy wherein awareness is aware of itself being total and complete. It is not a state we enter and leave.
[…]
You know moments in your life when nothing happens, when nothing takes shape in your imagination for you to project or anticipate. You are there and nothing happens. You listen to stillness. You listen to the nothing happening and then a moment comes when this non-happening brings you back to listening itself. In this presence to listening there is freedom and completeness, with nothing to add or subtract. But you must be ripe for it.
Stay tuned for more … Jean Klein’s teachings from The Ease of Being …
All italicized text (except noted otherwise) above is from The Ease of Being by Jean Klein and is published here with the publisher New Sarum Press‘ generous permission. Scroll to the bottom for a free downloadable Table of Contents. You can purchase the book at Amazon.
And click here for a FREE downloadable copy of the Table of Contents, graciously and generously made available by the publisher New Sarum Press.
May you remain safe and healthy.
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