Where is Awareness?

Taken from the book “The Mystery of Being by Tim Freke

We’ve become conscious of the deep self as the

Presence of awareness. In this chapter I want to

Explore the mysterious nature of awareness to show

You something truly amazing.

Objectively I’m a physical body. Subjectively I’m the presence of awareness. My body is sitting here in front of this computer. But where is awareness? If you looked into my eyes you’d connect with the presence of awareness, which would seem to be inside my head. But is that really true?

In my imagination I’m bending down in front of you so you can take a look. There’s a big zip in my head, which I’m opening up to invite you to reach in and find awareness. You are searching with your hand amongst all the gooey porridge inside my head. And then you find it and pull it out to show the world…. Tim’s awareness… not as big as you might have expected!

It would be fun for that to happen. But it isn’t going to, because awareness isn’t inside my head. You can search about in my brain with a microscope, but you’ll never find awareness. This is because awareness is not a thing in the world. It’s not something we can see or hear or touch.

So where is awareness? Here’s an interesting paralogical possibility to consider. Awareness can’t be found within the world because it’s the other way around. The world exists within awareness. Awareness isn’t within my experience. My experience is arising within awareness. Let me take you through it.

Right now I am awareness experiencing a flow of thoughts and sensations.

It’s easy to understand that thoughts are arising within awareness, but it’s equally true that sensations are arising within awareness as well.

Everything I see, hear, and touch is a sensation arising within awareness.

I am listening to the sound of the wind blowing in the garden. This sound is arising within awareness. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t be conscious of it.

I am looking at a big pink poster of the artists Gilbert and George on my office wall. The colour is arising within awareness. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t be conscious of it.

I am enjoying the mellow flavour of the coffee I am drinking. The taste is arising within awareness. It is wasn’t I wouldn’t be conscious of it.

Everything I am experiencing is arising within awareness.

As a body I appear to exist within the world, but essentially I am awareness and the world exists within me.

The Spacious Presence of Awareness

The deep teaching of spirituality is that essentially you don’t exist in the world at all. Your essential nature is the presence of awareness within which everything is arising. It can seem a strange idea at first, but I invite you to try it out and see what happens.

Stop imagining that you are just the physical body and you appear to be.

Instead, imagine yourself to be a spacious presence within which your experience is arising.

When I first became open to this possibility, I found it too subtle to hold on to for long, but as I have experimented with it I have found that it has profoundly transformed my experience of life. Now, when I examine the present moment I can immediately see that both these paralogical statements are true:

There is an objective reality to my sense of being a physical body.

There is a subjective reality to my sense of being the spacious presence of awareness.