The Heart of Awareness Is Awake within YouTHE HEART OF AWARENESS
Enter with Love the temple that is your own heart . . .
silently allowing the deep within to flow
on and into the deep beyond.1
RAMANA MAHARSHI
When we feel deeply about something, when we experience love, when something touches us in a way that seems profoundly true, we put our hand on our chest, over the heart space. When we speak with passion about our “I,” we do not touch our head; we touch our heart. Perhaps the true “I” resides in the “temple that is your own heart,” and yet it is the Heart we share rather than a separate heart. If this is so, where can we enter?
Within you at this very moment there is a doorway to the Infinite. It is so available and so simple that we miss its entrance. We are always unknowingly standing at the threshold. We stand at the entrance with every description about our self, but we are looking out from the doorway, rather than turning our attention to look back into it.
Notice the continuous thread in each of our self-descriptions: I am happy. I am depressed. I am smart. I am stupid. I am selfish. I am generous. I am anxious. I am calm. I am a mother. I am a son. I am rich. I am poor. I am a student. I am a teacher. I am improving. I am stuck.
We spend an entire lifetime dwelling on the “I,” claiming the “I,” beginning every moment’s experience with a sense of “I.” And this “I” or “I AM” is the center of our universe. The experience of anything is run through the “I” and is claimed by the “me” and “mine”: My house, my body, my experience, my knowledge, my ignorance, my thoughts, my agitation, my journey, my life! Can we look more deeply into what is seen and unseen in who we are, into what changes and what does not change in our experience?
THE “I” CARRIES OUR SENSE OF BEING AND BEING AWARE
In any experience we claim as ours, there is the sense of an “I,” the sense of existing. Whatever we may add to the “I,” the “I” carries our sense of being and being aware. How is it that we search for something called awakening, enlightenment, the Divine and never contemplate who or what the “I” of the seeker actually is? Whatever this sense of being conscious is, it witnesses all of our comings and goings, all of the changing dimensions of our daily life, all of the objects that appear in our awareness. While it claims no name, it has been called our true Self, the Heart of Awareness. This Heart of Awareness illuminates our mind and our experience of the world. It is not our thoughts that illuminate experience, but awareness that illuminates both experience and thought.
Have you contemplated this “I AM,” felt into it, put attention there rather than on all of the objects of awareness—including body, senses, mind, emotions, and experiences? We are so fascinated by the objects of awareness that we fail to pay attention to the awareness that is ever present in our waking state, in our dream state, and even in deep sleep; but in deep, dreamless sleep there are no objects—no self, no world, no other, no god. The “you” you imagine yourself to be disappears in deep sleep. And yet we may be awakened out of deep sleep by a sound or a sensation that obviously has been witnessed by something within that remains open and aware. At times, we may even experience being consciously awake while the body is in states of deep sleep, dreaming, or supposed unconsciousness. What remains awake?
We have been perched at the doorway of the Infinite looking out at objects—a birth date, body, gender, race, memories, thoughts, feelings—and imagining that our “I AM” refers to an ego or a body-mind. We imagine there is a small self looking for something distant called our true Self, hoping that someday the one will discover the other. Are there really two selves? In the words of Ramana Maharshi:
The ego is like one’s shadow thrown on the ground.
If one attempts to bury it, it will be foolish.
The Self is only One. If limited, it is the ego.
If unlimited, it is Infinite, and is the Reality.2
Where we put our attention creates our sense of reality. If we want to discover who or what we are, what is truth, what is awake, we turn to our felt sense of “I AM,” of being, of being aware. There is something deeper than an I-thought that is identified with form, thought, and emotion. What are we paying attention to? What are we giving our time and attention to? What knows when attention moves?
WHAT IS UNSEEN MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO SEE
In itself, awareness is unseen yet makes it possible to see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and experience our Being. This invisible awakeness is what sees, what notices whom we take ourselves to be, what knows our experience, perceptions, dreams, beliefs, or philosophical assumptions. It moves as consciousness in the body-mind, identifies with a body and thought, then comes to believe that a single body is our separate self.
Pay attention to the one whose “self” you claim is you. I am not speaking here about adopting a philosophy or belief or denying that there is a body. I am suggesting finding out, in your own very real experience, who or what is this “I” we all claim. Who or what is it that is always searching for control, for security, for greater knowledge, for a better life, for reassurance about the future, for signs of approval or disapproval from others?
Let’s face it: by any stretch of the imagination, the egoic consciousness that takes itself to be separate and limited to a body never tires of thinking about, hearing about, talking about, or evaluating this “self.” It is like the old joke about the narcissist who goes on and on talking only about himself, but finally stops, saying, “Well, I have talked long enough about myself. Now tell me, what do you think of me?” Use this self-interest, self-obsession, self-centeredness in the spiritual search. Find out the true identity of this precious and all-consuming “I.”
SOMEPLACE WE LOVE OURSELVES
Although we imagine we know, we are actually ignorant of who or what this “I” is and remain unconscious of the deep and unconditional love that is present within us. Yet we all want to feel happy or content; we want to experience love and peace; we want to feel a sense of worth. Someplace, regardless of our ignorance, we wish ourselves well. Who is this self? What is this “I” that is aware whether we feel terror or great joy, whether we are truthful or deceitful, whether we remember or are forgetful, whether we feel happy or unhappy?
THE DESIRE FOR HAPPINESS
While all beings wish to be happy, for most, happiness is conditional. It is the happiness you imagine will be created by something external to yourself, the happiness you imagine would come “if only”—if only someone, something, or you yourself would change. The ways we imagine happiness will arrive vary; some ways may seem quite perverted to the average way of thinking. We protect ourselves or try to avoid pain because we want to be happy. We eat or shop or drink to keep ourselves from feeling empty because we imagine “empty” means alone, unloved, unworthy. We seek more and more and better and better because we imagine it will make us happy.
When we do experience moments of happiness, when a desire is fulfilled and the mind is content, we imagine these moments were caused by something outside of our self. But the reason we are temporarily happy has nothing to do with what just happened. We are temporarily happy because we temporarily stopped wishing to be someplace else. Our mind rested for one moment, stopped its craving and straining for one moment, and we simply experienced our natural state, the Heart of Awareness.
WIDEN YOUR DESIRES
Some traditions tell us that the real reason we do not experience happiness is because we have desires. If only we could renounce our desires, we would live happily in desirelessness. Who imagines he can do away with desires? Freedom from desire, or nonattachment, is not something the ego can attain through practice, although we may have tried to pretend we had no desires or attachments, only to find we had lost joy and spontaneity. Freedom from attachment arises naturally when one knows one’s true nature. Realize that all desire is ultimately a desire for a deeper happiness. As Nisargadatta so beautifully expressed:
Increase and widen your desires till nothing but Reality can fill them.
It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness.
Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite,
the eternal heart of Being. Transform desire into love.
All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be,
are expressions of your longing for happiness.
Basically, you wish yourself well.3
What knows your experience? The intimacy of true knowing is love. Our mind has forgotten the Heart of Awareness, the Heart of Being, the true Heart that is the source of an uncaused happiness. Where do we enter this Heart? “I” or “I AM” is the doorway. Put your attention on this “I AM” in the Heart. The mind is busy telling you stories about who this is; the Heart is the knowing itself of your true nature. It is the Heart of Awareness in which we live and move and have our being. It is what continues regardless of the modifiers—the additions from memory, conditioning, and programming—regardless of the thoughts, emotions, moods, or sensations that are in continual flux.
UNDRESS YOUR “SELF” FROM ITS CONCEPT CLOTHES
The Self (Heart of Awareness, limitless Being) is already present. What is required is to undress our “self,” to discover what is beneath the concept clothes our so-called ego is wearing. Egoic identity is maintained through habits of mind and unquestioned assumptions that we are only this body-mind and its conditioning. If we turn our attention inward at the doorway of “I,” however, we have an opportunity to step into the Infinite and discover for ourselves whether there really are two selves, whether there is an “other,” whether there truly is an independent entity called “me,” whether what we call “mind” is the same or different from the I-thought.
Even when we discover the divine “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14), there is still something deeper than what we call God. Before a name or a description, what is here? The threshold of the “I” is the beginning of the discovery of the true Heart of Awareness. It has been called “nondual awareness”—pristine, pure, space-like, shining, and illuminating whatever is here. Zen master Bankei called it “the Unborn Buddha mind.”
AWARENESS MOVES AS LOVE
Awareness is silent and unseen. And yet its luminosity moves as all that is seen, all manifestations of Being. And in the movements that are free of the veils we call “ego,” it moves as Love. Love itself cannot be seen, and yet its movements can be seen, felt, delighted in, and they can melt us out of separation into Oneness. It is not a personal love, or a romantic love, or a friendship love, although all of these are its expressions. It is an unconditional love that is beyond anything most of us have ever experienced in our human lives. It is an intimacy that comes from nonseparation. What the deepest Truth is cannot really be named but can be felt, sensed, intuited. The Unseen has no name but contains all names and forms, including our own.
Call it by any name—God, Self, the Heart, the seat of Consciousness—
it is all the same. The point to be grasped is this,
that Heart means the very core of one’s being, the center,
without which there is nothing whatsoever.4
RAMANA MAHARSHI
Our egoic “me” center is not the center Ramana is speaking about. It is that “without which there is nothing whatsoever.” If there were no awareness, would you know, perceive, experience anything at all? If we stand at the threshold of the “I” that is aware, without identifying with any content of that awareness—even for a moment—we will notice a profound silence and stillness. That which is silently awake to all sound and movement makes it possible for all sound and movement to be experienced. If we feel into a sense of simply being, without being “this” or “that,” we notice that something quiets down immediately.
One reason I use the phrase Heart of Awareness in attempting to point to what has no name is to include in the discussion the understanding of love (heart) being the authentic movement of the purity and clarity of awareness. In itself, awareness has no qualities apart from its luminosity, that which both sheds light on and is the knowing of experience. But this knowing comes from oneness, from nonseparation, which itself is a movement of love and compassion. Love beyond any concept of love is the expression of nondual awareness in life. Within you there is a loving Presence that allows all things to be exactly as they are in the oneness of Being.
The Heart of Awareness Is Awake within You
For a moment, let yourself be awake and aware in the following invitations.
Breath
I would invite you to awaken to your breath in this moment, letting it be exactly as it is. What is the experience when you simply allow the breath to breathe itself? Can you separate your awareness from your knowing of each breath?
Body
Become aware of your body right now, noticing sensations, tensions, places of contraction or openness. What happens if you make no attempt to fix anything or change anything, but you just allow a compassionate awareness to become intimate with the experience? What does awakeness feel like in your right leg, your left hand, your entire body right now? What notices? What knows?
Sounds
Can you spend a few moments awakening to sounds? Right now there are many sounds in your field of awareness. Without needing to name the sounds, even if your mind does so, go beyond the names and notice what is noticing sound. It is not your conditioned mind, not your ears, but consciousness itself that is listening. It is Awareness moving in the body-mind as your own consciousness.
Awareness Itself
Can you become conscious of your own awareness? Are you aware of your own consciousness? Ultimately they are one, but they function a bit differently. Consciousness is fluid, can seem to expand, contract, focus attention, change perspective, move as we become aware of listening, sensation, feeling, thinking. Consciousness is conscious of objects and can reflect on itself.
Notice what is aware of being conscious. This appears silent, still, nonjudging, unmoving even as it moves as consciousness in the body-mind to intimately meet the moment. Notice what gives consciousness its strength. That source is what I am calling “the Heart of Awareness,” but words are meaningless. Sense it.
For just a moment, can you allow what you experience as your consciousness to simply flow into its Source or return to its home ground—without naming, without defining, without needing to control anything or change anything? Simply be quiet and allow your consciousness to melt into its Source. The felt sense might be of attention moving down, down, down into the depths. Or it might be a sense of looking backward from the doorway of the “I” into what comes before. Or perhaps there is a sense of flowing into the vastness of the deep beyond. Stay open to however and whatever wants to reveal itself. 
LISTENING IS A PORTAL TO THE HEART OF AWARENESS
Legend states that enlightenment was revealed to Quan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion, simply by her listening deeply to the sounds of the world. Listening to the cries of the world, compassion arose in her open heart and mind. Our listening is always open. Even in sleep, our hearing is open, although it is not as sensitively attuned to our environment as in the waking state. Of course, we all know the difference between hearing and listening. Listening requires more attention than hearing. True listening comes from the Heart of Awareness.
So often our listening is interrupted by our egoic desire to be heard, to argue, to put forth our own viewpoint, to judge. However, the openness of listening is another marvelous portal to our true nature. Can we begin to listen with more than our ears? Can we listen with our heart to the subtleties of our own experience and to that of apparent others? Can we listen with our whole body and allow it to be an “ear” for listening, for sensing into silence and into whatever is arising from that silence? Can we begin to experience that the song of the bird is happening inside our listening, not “out there”? In listening from the Heart of Awareness, we begin to feel the deep intimacy of our true nature that is simply awake and open.
What does not change is often viewed as the vertical dimension of life, and what continually changes as the horizontal dimension. We could say that where they meet, and the only place they meet, is in the present moment, yet what “meets”? There is only What Is. The silent, still, infinite What Is and the appearance of things—life, feelings, movement, action—are simply not two. Time and timelessness are not two. Creator and creation are not two. Manifest and unmanifest are not two.
Everything is occurring Now. Now is timeless and not a nanosecond sandwiched between past and future. The Heart of Awareness contains all in its timeless Presence. As Ramana puts it, this Heart that is our true Self is that “without which there is nothing whatsoever.” While it cannot be separated from the moment, it is simultaneously touched and untouched by the myriad happenings—untouched as Awareness itself, yet touched by all that moves in its open, undivided Heart.