How do I stabilize nothingness to enter pure awareness?

[Aknaton]

What comes first, pure awareness or nothingness?

[Maisy]

Originally Posted by Aknaton

What comes first, pure awareness or nothingness?

I think neither really because both are words, ideas, concepts and I think we are talking about a non-concept state.

[Maisy]

I think if someone is talking about this non-conceptual state of being, of experiencing, and using words, they are not really describing it at all. Not even close. Words and concepts like non-dual, nothingness, emptiness, pure awareness, etc are all mental images. Mental images are never what they are describing, they are symbols of the other, the real.

If we ask what is it, and are fine with getting a word or a few sentences for it, maybe a whole paragraph, a mental idea of "it" a description, then we can never find it. We have to live without descriptions and ideas of the thing, of everything really, as what the mystics are describing is a non-conceptual state of being. A way of being in the here and now with not one idea. Mental ideas, descriptions, concepts are not needed to experience what is.

Reality and an experience of it exists prior to the word for it, prior to a description or interpretation of it. It always just is. To experience it, as it is, non-conceptually, requires we drop ALL ideas of it. If we add an idea, we are then experiencing it through a filter of the concept or idea. So then really we are experiencing a mental image and description and not the thing itself as it really is.

Reality is an objective experience for the enlightened I think. It's not this is my experience of it and that is your experience of it. Subjective experience is a result of adding an idea or concept or mental interpretation to the what is.

[Miss Hepburn]

Your question in the op is How do I stabilize nothingness to enter pure awareness?

If you came to me for advice I would say ...''Let's take it step by step or one step at a time;
meaning lets start first with 'entering pure awareness' and let
the chips fall as they may.
It's your basic -Seek the Kingdom of Heaven first and all else will come...
advice, I'd say.
Things don't have to be made so hard...that's what the Mind wants to have us do ...be all complicated.

[movingalways]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Your question in the op is How do I stabilize nothingness to enter pure awareness?

Things don't have to be made so hard...that's what the Mind wants to have us do ...be all complicated.

True. Mind is noisy, clinging and doubting and the emotions it stirs up act as a barrier to just being' where existents or phenomena are realized to be instantations of awareness, not separate objects.

But also true is that for most, the mind has a powerful grip and must be tamed before pure awareness can be realized. One of the best images that illustrate this truth is that of the Buddhist Ten Ox Herding pictures.

[Aethera]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Your question in the op is How do I stabilize nothingness to enter pure awareness?
If you came to me for advice I would say ...''Let's take it step by step or one step at a time;
meaning lets start first with 'entering pure awareness' and let
the chips fall as they may.
It's your basic -Seek the Kingdom of Heaven first and all else will come...advice, I'd say.
Things don't have to be made so hard...that's what the Mind wants to have us do ...be all complicated.

Taking things a step at a time is always good show of mindfulness.

you brought up a good point about the mind. I think it's cause the mind's used to the condition of being controlled, and by lower energies, so it doesn't want to break away from that attachment. The attachment to the lower energies are what bring the complications, cause it doesn't see how things would become easier.

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Things don't have to be made so hard...that's what the Mind wants to have us do ...be all complicated.

Indeed. Perhaps the irony of a discussion such as this is that all the ideas put forward about the nature of the mind and awareness are themselves the product of the mind.

The mind as we experience it is actually very simple. Just one thought at a time, arising out of emptiness and dissolving back into emptiness. Let go of that one thought and there is just emptiness. If another thought arises, then let go of that and again rest in emptiness.

But of course, this posting too is just another product of the mind.

Peace