Awareness Is Not Personal
We habitually speak of 'my awareness' — awareness as something we possess, something personal and private. This assumption is among the deepest to be examined. Awareness is not yours. You appear within it.
The Assumption We Do Not Examine
In ordinary experience, awareness seems deeply personal. It seems located inside this head, looking out through these eyes, experiencing this private inner life. We speak of “my awareness” as naturally as we speak of “my hands.” The assumption that awareness is a personal possession is so fundamental that it is rarely examined.
But examine it we must, if the inquiry is to go anywhere genuine. Because the entire structure of spiritual seeking — the me that lacks something, the truth that is somewhere else, the teacher who holds what I need — is built on this assumption. And when the assumption is honestly investigated, it does not hold.
What Honest Investigation Finds
When awareness is investigated directly — not conceptually, but through actual observation — several things become apparent. First, awareness does not have a clear location. The sensation of looking outward from behind the eyes is real, but awareness itself cannot be found at a specific point. It seems to be the space in which experience occurs, rather than something located within experience.
Second, awareness does not have clear edges. We assume our awareness ends where our body ends — but this is the body’s boundary, not awareness’s. The sounds heard, the sensations felt, the sights perceived — all arise within the same field of awareness that also includes the sense of being an inner experiencer. There is no clear line between “inner” and “outer” in the field of awareness itself.
The Recognition
What non-dual teachings point to is this: awareness does not belong to you. Rather, you — the sense of being a personal someone — appear within awareness. Awareness is the container. The personal self is the contained. When this is directly recognised, rather than merely understood intellectually, the relationship to all experience changes. There is still a person, still a life, still a history. But the identification of the deepest truth of oneself with that person relaxes — because the person, however real, is clearly seen to be arising within something vaster and more fundamental.
Practice
Look out at the room around you right now. Notice that the space of the room has no edge you can see from the inside. Now notice the awareness in which the room appears. Does it have an edge? Where, precisely, does your awareness end and the world begin? Sit with this question — not to arrive at a conclusion, but to loosen the assumption that awareness is located inside your head, looking out at a separate world.
Reflect
- ·Does awareness have edges? Can you find where your awareness ends and someone else's begins?
- ·What is the difference between awareness and the sense of being a particular person who is aware?
- ·If awareness is not personal, what follows for the seeking self?