Awareness Is First

As he does so often, my teacher recently captured the essence of spiritual knowledge in this one sentence: Your body is not holding awareness – Awareness is holding your body.


For many, the seeking starts from a point of awareness. We have worked hard to get the new house, the big job, the perfect relationship and the spiffy car, and yet something is missing. We seem to have everything we wanted, but we no longer feel the same sense of satisfaction or fulfillment. And if we do, the happiness is short-lived. Longing for meaning, a need to make sense, or an increased restlessness, are the signs of our inner being’s awaking that will gently (or not so gently…) nudge us to explore new territory.

In this day and age so many avenues are available. Countless modalities, teachings and methods offer everything from material abundance to enlightenment - and everything in between. There is no shortage of exciting new horizons and ways to engage our minds in the quest for purpose and meaning. The methods vary greatly in what they promise or offer, but most of them speak in one way or another of getting in touch with a higher power.

Searching for connection with that higher power, we do so from the perspective of a separate, independent human being who is looking for something outside of himself. We seek to make contact with something bigger than us, somewhere “out there”. Guided in our quest by the information we have received throughout our lives by the different channels of society, the starting point is generally something to this effect: “If I am a good human being, then maybe I’ll be rewarded with divine grace. If I do the right thing, maybe I’ll deserve to feel the presence of God. Maybe I will be able to feel and hold that awareness in my body and mind”. The premise being that the human body/mind as a separate entity will create or act in a way that opens the connection to Awareness (another word for higher power, Self, Knower, Universe, God).

The path of Awareness offers a radically different approach. It starts from the Vision that Awareness is first. It is the source of body and mind, and therefore Awareness is not separate from them. As a ring is still inherently the gold it is made of, the human being IS that Awareness, even though it now appears as a human form.

It means that we are not going to become divine at the end of a long process or if we are a good person. We ARE, we always have been, and we will forever be that divine being, the Awareness.

The practice is not to become That, but to remember that WE ARE THAT.