How do I manage both being aware and interacting with others without compromising the stillness/awareness?

Written on November 28, 2009 by Tom Stine


A reader sent me the following:

The moment one has to get involved with another person for any reason (or for that matter getting involved with any functional activity for which the mind needs to get involved), the mind moves away to fully involve in the next expected activity with that other person or activity. All that calmness and peace of stillness is suddenly pushed to the background. One can’t avoid interacting with people or doing some activity as they are mostly unavoidable to a large extent. Not to react with the person would mean ignoring and activating a pain body. Even giving attention to humans or a functional activity is taking away the stillness (and the awareness?) that was there when we did only the observation.

How do I manage both the events (being aware and interacting) without compromising the stillness/awareness and the mundane activity?

This question is a good one. And even better, the answer is not obvious at all to the mind:

There is no stillness that gets pushed aside when you interact with someone. Stillness always is present right here and right now, no matter what the body or mind is doing. You are resting in stillness, surrounded by stillness, always and forever in the midst of stillness. Even the interacting, the “someone else”, the doing, the talking, your very nature, everything, everything, everything, IS the stillness. This stillness goes nowhere, does nothing. It IS.

You don’t and cannot manage the events in your life. It isn’t a question of being aware, of actively keeping your mind on “something” that we call awareness. You are awareness. Your mind and thoughts and beliefs all exist within this awareness that you are.

Awareness is something you can know readily. Right now, you are reading these words. We say you are aware of the words. Before you think about them, before anything happens with the words, you are simply aware that they exist. As you think about them, now you are aware of the thinking about them. Without awareness, there is nothing.

So, dive into the awareness. Many words can be used as synonyms for awareness: presence, stillness, God, spirit, Brahman, “the kingdom of God” and on and on. But they all point at this “something” that is prior to everything, the very fundamental ground of all of existence. And YOU ARE THAT ground of existence.

You can never compromise the stillness, never compromise the awareness. You need give no thought to maintaining awareness, holding awareness, being aware, etc. Think about it: right now, can you stop being aware? If you aren’t aware, you are have no notion of existing or not. Without awareness, you don’t exist.

The simplest thing to do is, at times when it occurs to you, put your attention on your awareness. Simply notice it. Focus on it, get curious about it, even ask questions about it. Does awareness have a name? Does it have a color? Does it do anything? Where does it go when you aren’t paying attention to it? Focusing on awareness and asking questions about it a few times during your day is one of the best things you can do.

Namaste.

 

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Guru Quotes

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what’s true, then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

—Jed McKenna

But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.

—Oscar Wilde

Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.

—Charlotte Joko Beck

Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?

A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.

—Eckhart Tolle


Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.

—What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula

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