The Stop

Allow the eyes to see. Better yet, allow the silent Awareness that is enabling the eyes to see, to see itself. Silent pure Awareness is all around, in front, behind, everywhere. You don't have to look for it — just stop looking for it. It's right here. The whole beautiful, boundless field of the pure light of Consciousness has been right in front of us all along, animating our body and mind and illuminating the objects and phenomena in front of us. 

The mind can sense it. It knows and feels a silent Presence in the space around us — a feeling as though “a stillness and spaciousness is here that seems as though it is watching me”.  But the thing is, the mind is looking at it, looking for it, and so the Presence, the Self, cannot see itself. The intellect can sense it, know about it — but the intellect cannot know, by directly being, what that silent Presence really is. It can only give up. 

So just let go. Stop looking.

Stop looking for it. Stop trying to be it.  Be simple, innocent, open, not doing anything. Not minding what is transpiring. Not trying to find anything or experience anything. Just be. Be still. Be stillness itself. Be the stillness, the silence, the Presence, the spaciousness. Be this field of pure Awareness itself — more intimate than the body or the feelings. That boundless field of pure Awareness is that by virtue of which all experience can happen. 

So we just stop looking. We just stop.

But we keep the eyes open — so that Awareness can see itself everywhere, all by itself beyond the mind and beyond the objects of perception. The mind is there, trying to stop, trying not to do anything. But you can't try. You have to stop even trying not to try. We just be so simple, so innocent, so open. The Being itself, the I itself, is pure openness. Pure unbounded freedom. We just let it get a glimpse of itself — through the appearance of you, through the body-mind.

Before, we were identified not only with the body but also with the personality, the mind, and the feelings, and our perceptions covered up the boundlessness of Being. So what we want is to do nothing. Simply nothing. This is the most difficult thing for the mind — but the simplest thing for the Being. Because Being just is.  So we just stop. We allow whatever is going on in the mind, whatever is going on in the emotions, whatever is happening all around us. We just allow everything to be as it is.

When the eyes are open and we are innocent, Awareness expands. It takes in the whole space around us, and it goes beyond that — beyond all forms, phenomena, and perceptions. It continues on and on until the shift takes place, and spontaneously, it is everywhere, all at once. Just allow the Awareness to expand and open wider and wider — to a point where everything simply stops. Everything stops, and a clear separation between the body-mind and Awareness can occur. Awareness itself  — who you really are — can see the body, can see the person sitting there, because it is not the person. It just sees.

I am not the mind. I am not the intellect. I am not the body. I am not the personality. I am not the feelings. I have a body. I have a mind. I have a personality. I have feelings. But I am not that. I enable life. I animate the body-mind. I enable the body-mind to experience the environment — because I am everywhere. I am unbounded. I am Awareness itself. The same “I” that I thought I was when I experienced myself as the body. It's the same I. The same Self. It's just that I am not bound by the body-mind.

Sometimes we can witness that we are not the body, yet still be stuck in the mind. Sometimes even pure Awareness can witness the mind and body and still be caught in the intellect. Sometimes we can witness all of that and still be stuck in the emotions. What we want is not to be stuck anywhere. Just allow the Awareness to be with itself — and allow the witness itself to let go, move back, fall back into its boundlessness, its fearlessness, its infinite reality. Allow it to fall back into being the unbounded field of clear light that enables all these objects to be here.

Mind and intellect have no business here. Let them operate on their own. But you — who you really are — are this field of pure Being, pure Awareness, pure light of Consciousness, enabling all of this to be here. This includes your own body, which, from the perspective of the witness, is just another object. The whole environment around you is within the Self, within Awareness itself. The whole world, the whole universe — everything ever known, experienced, or imagined — happens only because of Awareness. Everything is in Awareness. Pure Awareness is the container of all of this. Everything is within the Self.

And the Self is that same “I-sense” that has been entangled in the body-mind. It has been stifled, unable to experience the boundless freedom that it really is. This is because we have been holding on — holding on to our problems, our worries, our regrets, our past experiences, our fears of the future. And the intellect has been holding on, conditioned to experience itself as some spiritual person who knows more truth than anyone else. But that spiritual persona has been in the way of ultimate freedom.

So just let go. This is the greatest Mahavakya, or phrase revealing reality, there is. Just let go. Allow what remains of “the me” to be swallowed up by this Presence, the wholeness that is everywhere in the room right now. The Presence continues to build until it overtakes that small ego-sense still holding on for dear life. If the me still remains, know that it is not who you are. It is not what the “I” actually is. It is not what you have ever been.

You are this field of pure Awareness itself — pure clarity, beyond all time and space, beyond mind, intellect, body, or world. You are the timeless, pure field of unbounded Awareness that is everywhere, all around, seeing itself at every point. Above, beyond, behind everything, it sees itself all by itself. It knows itself all by itself. It doesn't need a mind. It doesn't need a body. It just is.

It is the all-seeing “I”. The universal Self of everyone — the real, true Self that you are, that you have always been and will always be. Eternal, undying, unmoving, unmanifest — and yet the source of all this manifest life. The pure simplicity of the timeless, infinite, eternal moment of now.

Just let go.