Open Aware Being: The Simplicity of What Is

Perhaps what we most deeply want is simply to be here, free from the illusion of separation, solidity and encapsulation—hearing the birds or the traffic sounds, enjoying a cup of coffee, breathing—not needing anything more or less.

We are like waves in the ocean—ever-changing, inseparable movements of a seamless indivisible whole, and every wave includes the whole ocean. This one bottomless moment is ever-changing in appearance while never departing from the ever-present immediacy of here-now.

Thought poses as "me" and claims to be the thinker-chooser-doer, but no such entity can actually be found. Our thoughts, behaviors and apparent choices arise as movements of the whole. When we take it all personally and believe that we are small and separate, feelings of deficiency, anxiety, guilt, blame, confusion and dissatisfaction inevitably follow.

Liberation from this kind of suffering can never happen in the future. It can only happen now, in the simple recognition that absolutely nothing needs to happen or not happen. Both the apparent suffering and the one who longs to be free are ephemeral appearances with no actual substance. All there is in every passing wave of experience, however it may appear, is the seamless indivisible ocean.

This "indivisible ocean" has also been called consciousness, presence, awareness, intelligence-energy, God, unicity, the universe, the Tao, emptiness, groundlessness, no-thing-ness, the ground, one-without-a-second—but no name can capture the ungraspable openness of being.

What is offered here invites firsthand exploration and direct discovery, not belief or dogma. There is no finish-line, no method, no future goal, only this ever-fresh aliveness. We habitually search for certainty and something to grasp, but in holding on to nothing at all, there is immense freedom.