Something deeper
 

Awareness of awareness is said to be the highest form of meditation but it is not in my opinion, unless you have realized that when you are resting in awareness, when you are aware of being aware, you are aware of yourself, you are resting within yourself. I am not talking about the apparent self, the mind, but about the substance that the mind is made of and in which it appears and through which it appears. Pure consciousness.

To know mentally this, is not enough, you have to realize this. And when you will realize this, awareness of awareness would not need the cessation of all doings, it will always be there. The apparent self who has always been the center of your experience collapses into consciousness and now all there is, is consciousness.

What about you, have you realized this?

I have not.

Thank you for your wonderful posts and sharing support, ThatMan. :smile:

Having said that, I am in agreement with all you say. As you indicate, the key is self-realization, and according to my teacher, integration.

:hug3:

@ ThatMan ~ bliss energised awareness, ever present, void centric, a magnetic current humming, enlivening body-mind, positioning presence in vibrant peacefulness. Here, now in body, not spaced out somewhere else.

I’m not yet convinced though that identity fades easily. For example, if we were to wake up from sleep, gender rotated, any sensory ability erased or diminished even, can we say we will remain joyful and nonchalant?

On microscopic levels, moment to moment, we see the subtle play of desire and aversion invading mindful presence.

In being to become the flame of awareness itself, is samadhi. What you speak of seems to be samadhi in permanence, in an active mode of singularity. I experienced samadhi ‘passively’ once becoming one without a second wherein space time too disappeared but the after party question is ~ what ‘higher’ aspect of consciousness enabled return to body? If we disappear, there’s no one here! A paradox.

A question I feel I should ponder over, thank you for this thread ThatMan!

ॐ

I see it as an issue of identification.

Everyday conscious awareness identifies with the personality and body.

In certain circumstances conscious awareness may transcend identification with the lower personality and instead identifies with Higher Consciousness, even if only briefly. Here there is no separate self, there is just Being.

But in most cases conscious awareness cannot sustain this higher identification. It falls back to its habitual level of awareness. It is not that a "‘higher’ aspect of consciousness enabled return to body". It is more that consciousness was not ready to fully surrender to this higher state.

In rare cases there is complete surrender and complete identification, and then the samadhi state becomes permanent and effortless, even in everyday life. Ramana Maharshi called this Sahaja Samadhi.

"Holding on to the supreme state is Samadhi. When it is with effort due to mental disturbances, it is Savikalpa. When these disturbances are absent, it is Nirvikalpa. Remaining permanently in the primal state without effort is Sahaja."

Peace

Thank you too! When I have these realizations it's like being so full of joy that you want to share this joy with others so that they too may come and taste the joy you are experiencing.

Yes, and that is a process, one that can be observed. For me, personally, it's like becoming a child again. One could easily say that integration is the other end of dissolution and vice versa.

Beautiful words! :smile:

The deep rooted behavior and mental patterns can still be expressed automatically by the body, we have been spending decades to enforce them, but they slowly dissolve, I know this from first hand experience, and surely it does not need to take decades.

I can tell you that waking up from deep meditation and having no sense of who or what I am, was confusing and scary most times but slowly this has been and is being integrated.

That happened to me a few times, I called this a heightened state of awareness, suddenly, not even meditating. I remember once that I was taking a walk and from nowhere I experienced this massive love and feeling of oneness with all things.

I think the answer is related with the sense of identification, as I have touched in a different post this thing. If there's no identification, there's no "I", just pure presence, even though the body may keep going following it's old habits for a while.

This is beautiful. Thanks, iamthat :hug3:

Did Ramana Maharsi talk about what leads one to the permanent state of such, while others might just glimpse at it?

Nan yar. :wink: