Open Aware Presence

What are we prior to all the surface things that seem to define and divide us (name, age, gender, race, nationality, etc.)? Rather than thinking about this question, is it possible to feel into it, to look back with open attention to find what this word ’I’ most deeply refers to? We may discover that we can’t find anything! There is nothing at the center of our experiencing! Simply an empty, open, spacious aware presence that can't be seen or grasped. And at the same time as we are nothing at all, we are absolutely everything. It's all here! We include the whole universe.

The character we play in the movie of waking life appears in this vast openness, as do all the other characters and all the dramas of everyday life. Open awareness beholds everything from wholeness rather than partiality. There is no separation, no division, no inside, no outside, no other. This awaring presence is timeless, uncontained, limitless, formless, boundless, all-inclusive. It is invisible and subtler than space.

And yet, it shows up in infinitely diverse, playful and sometimes challenging ways. This one bottomless moment is ever-changing in appearance while never departing from the ever-present immediacy of right here, right now. Thought conceptually divides, labels, categorizes and seemingly concretizes the evanescent flow of experiencing into apparently solid, separate, independent, persisting things. This is necessary for everyday functioning. But all apparently formed things are like waves in the ocean—ever-changing and inseparable movements of a seamless, undivided whole.

When we are hypnotized by the thought-sense of being small and separate from the rest of life, feelings of deficiency, anxiety and dissatisfaction inevitably follow. We search for certainty and something to grasp. But in holding on to nothing at all, there is immense openness and freedom.

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.