Awakening
What does “Awakening” mean?
Morning musings. Just writing. Not really thinking. Musing. I like that. Not driven by the mind of this ego, but just being present to this moment. Present to the rain falling off of the tree’s leaves and onto the roof. A blessing. Reminds me of Hawaii where people know that rain is a blessing. Thank you God for this day. Thank you Divine Heavenly Wisdom that organizes all of this into manifestation … an open point. A point where the mind doesn’t know what direction to go. Must it go in a direction? Can it just rest in the open space? Breathing. Feeling the heart beat and hearing the rain fall.
It seems that the mind is like a small child, always wanting to experience something. Like a toddler that grasps an object and puts it into their mouth to see what it is like. Our mind does the same when confronted with open space, it grasps at the next thought and holds it in mind without knowing whether it is worthy of our time and attention.
As I study consciousness research shared by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., (Doc), it seems like this is the key between a person that is “awake” as the Buddhist would call it, and one that is “asleep.” The degree of awareness (or mindfulness of what is being held in mind) is the difference between one that is highly conscious and one that is asleep to their conscious nature. The one that is asleep to their conscious ability to be present in this moment, is focused on the finite, the content of the moment and the conclusions the mind draws from the thoughts and emotions that this limited focus brings. We get caught in the fog of perception or “mitote” as Don Miguel Ruiz calls it which “clouds our vision so we can’t see who we really are. We can’t see that we’re not free.” This is the egoic operating system as Cynthia Bourgeault describes it in Wisdom Jesus.
The Unawakened mind
This unawakened mind pulls us off of the center of our being and into a space of judgement, evaluation, comparison, making us more or less than another. It takes thoughts that may not be in our highest good and plays with them without consideration of the consequences. This mind is uncomfortable with spacious stillness, because it’s way of being is being challenged. It wants content, something to hold on to, something to experience and get energy, attention, information from. Doc calls this “juicing” an experience. We juice an experience for all it can give us. Injustice, times we have been wronged, are the juiciest and most difficult to let go of because our ego loves the payoff. What is the payoff? Content, something to focus on, to be right about, to be better than or to be victim of, and to enroll others in the same focus of the same content. Meanwhile, we pay our freedom for this preoccupation with content.
Finding Freedom
What is freedom from the mind’s preoccupation with content? As far as I currently understand, it is not identifying with the mind’s fascination with the thought of the moment. Freedom is sinking down beneath the surface thought (content) and opening awareness to a broader perspective. This broader perspective includes the spaciousness that content exists within. It is the space between the letters that make it possible to read what is written. It is the silence beneath sound that allows us to hear anything. It is the space between objects that allow for an object to exist. It is the stillness and openness of the Divine Mind that is the Consciousness that all thoughts exist within.
This larger, more expanded awareness is what Doc calls context or the field. An awakened person zooms out from the content of the moment, not identifying with it, but rather identifies with the field, the larger context. This reveals a more awakened state of consciousness.
Just like a mother who can see that the rose stem is not something a small child can safely grab ahold of, even though the rose may smell beautiful. So too this larger awareness can inform us of what is worthy of our focus and attention. It can help us to awaken and find a freedom the unawakened mind gets lost within.
David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., shared a list during one of his lectures called, “Progressive Fields of Realization,” slide 22 from The Book of Slides. Replicated below it shows a progressive list of awakening from focusing on the finite to the Infinite:
Form
Register
Recognition
Watcher/Experiencer
Awareness
Observer/Witness
Light of Consciousness
Manifest as Allness/Self
Unmanifest (Godhead)
As you move down this list you’re moving from content to context; from the finite temporal to the Infinite Eternal. More freedom, more spaciousness, more wisdom come with each level as we move down this progression of awareness to Awakening.
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