Notice, there’s no separate sense of self here. There’s not “me” as some kind of defined person within this. There’s just thoughts and feelings suspended over an infinite, wide awake, abyss. A vast groundlessness that is scintillating, and shimmering, with wide awakeness and love, never separate. See it clearly. Don’t back off from that vast groundlessness. That’s Hum.
And since what we’re doing is the activity of the bodhisattva of compassion, while we’re doing this let’s also chant the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, which we were doing before. We’ll just do it a little softer. We’re continuing the tonglen, so we have to leave enough room to breathe in, to breathe in all that suffering.
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Good. Continuing to come from the core, to come from the source, to come from radiant awakeness itself, the unmanifest, the infinitely, boundlessly, spacious, notice that this energy of awakeness is loving and joyous, it’s previous to manifestation, it’s previous to all problems. Its mood is exuberant celebration, creative joy, and love without limit. It does not say no to anyone or anything. And so, tune into that love and joy, and feel the energy of it. Feel the energy of it radiating out from this deep, mysterious, void. Radiating out as pure energy into all manifestation, because this is the primordial potential from which all manifestation arises. And so, from here, our joy radiates to the very limits of the universe and far far far beyond, into even the potential. Feel that joy, and share it with all creation, all manifestation, all beings, and even nonbeings, everywhere.
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Now, in this place of vast, open, awareness, ask yourself this question: What is peace? Don’t answer the question with the machinery of your thinking, or with a memory or some kind of cleverness. Look into the sky of your own awareness, and see if there is peace. What is peace?
Then, notice the room around you, the sights, the sounds, everything. That’s a lot of movement and color, and is that really separate from awareness? Is it like awareness is aware of that from some other place that it’s looking from? Or is all the movement of the world around never ever separate from the awakeness that knows it? Look right now. We’re used to building out an imaginary, three-dimensional box of the world around us, but if we let go of that, there’s just the appearance and the sounds, totally one thing with the awareness of them. Just awakeness itself and the display of awakeness, never separate, never ending.
So the ego is not something that needs to go away. It’s, I don’t even think, unless you’re alone all the time, I don’t even think it, um, can go away unless you just kind of, um, you know, pretend to be void all the time or something. It’s, it’s got to arise the minute you start speaking, the minute you start interacting, personality elements are being co-created, um, you know, it’s a social construction, social co-construction, right? So it’s always going to be there. We just don’t want to believe it’s us. This is the important point. This is like what I would call first level awakening. Don’t believe that’s you. Um, and have a deep, clear, absolutely fundamental experience that sure ego is something that arises within you. Ego is something that beautifully, you know, is the brocade of the shimmering, glowing existence of the creativity of the source. It’s there, but it’s not my identity. That’s what we want to get to or notice or, you know, recognize, um, to begin our journey of nondual awakening.
Now, without engaging ideas at all, and noticing this wide open wide awake spacious, boundaryless, vibratory body and mind. Just notice directly what you notice when I ask you to ask yourself the question, what separates me from anybody else? Notice how that sense of wide openness welcomes everything, welcomes everyone. It’s not rejecting anything, ever. Without adding anything, or trying to be a certain way, or imagining this, or trying to do that. Awareness itself is already completely welcoming. It’s warm. It says welcome, come on in. Awareness itself has belonging, it has connection, it has brother- and sister-hood. It has compassion. I’ll say siblinghood of any sort. We don’t have to gin up any strong sentiment of compassion, we just feel that open, welcoming, warm-heartedness that’s always there. It’s always there.
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When we’re outside the thinking mind, it’s easy to just sit with it. It just stays there, shining in our energy field, shining in our presence, shining in the body. It’s very stable, beautiful. Again, in a very simple way, without getting too complex in the mind, just imagine doing something sweet or kind for this being that you love. Something very, very simple, nothing elaborate. Not out of wanting to get anything from them, but simply to just express this kindness, this caring, towards them. And feel what that feels like, how it not only brings up even more gentleness, even more sensitivity, vulnerabilities, but even a kind of sweetness. It’s just sweet.
Now, notice something very interesting. From the place of being the stillness that knows, is the energy of the body—this tingly, dancing energy of feeling alive, is that really separate? It’s different, it’s in motion, but is it separate somehow? Is it a totally separate thing from this awakeness? Feel—is it somehow totally separate from the awakeness? It’s just in our imagination that the body energy and the awakeness are seen as two different things. That’s a thought. When you’re just in the experience, there’s no separation at all. There’s not one thing looking at another thing, there’s just the still knowing and the dancing body energy—as different, but never separate. Never separate at all. Nondually non-separate.