Guided Meditation for Advanced Practitioners: The Body and Mind are Guests in Awareness

We go to the background of Awareness. So what I want us to do with our own efforts for a moment for a few minutes is to go back to that Awareness by our own self, by our own efforts, the more we can do that as we begin the meditation, the stronger the energy becomes when we do meditate. So if we can remind ourselves of the processes, the methods that we learned in the previous weeks of going back to that Pure Awareness in the background. So remember this Awareness has been there watching you has been the same 'you' five minutes ago, five hours ago, or five months ago, five years ago, or when you were a five-year-old, that Awareness has been the same and it's not changed at all. So go back to that or use the analogy of the screen. For example, you have a TV screen, no matter what is colored on the TV screen. What images appear on the TV screen, the TV screen, when the TV is turned off and the screen is blank, it does not associate itself with the film. It never does associate itself with the film or the movie or the TV program, whether it's a horror movie, whether it's a romantic movie or a comedy, the screen remains as it is. If we can go back to that Awareness, that Formless, Boundless, Imageless Energy for few minutes, I know that some people are probably new to this, that's why I've done a bit of a commentary in the beginning, but if we can go back to that Awareness sink into that Awareness and then we'll see where the meditation takes us. Okay. So for a few minutes with your own effort, go to that Formless Awareness, that Boundless Awareness, that Imageless Awareness, that Shapeless Awareness that's in the background currently, but with your effort, you're going to bring this to the forefront and you'd be experiencing Yourself as that Formless Awareness as It is. As it truly is your own existence. Okay. So if we can start that. Remember if your mind creates thoughts that's okay. Just be aware of the thought, don't entertain it. Don't exercise it. Don't empower it. Just let it float by. Just watch it and it will dissolve by itself. So any thought, image, perception of the senses, anything, let it just pass by. Don't entertain it. Okay. Just a reminder, keep your breathing as natural as possible. There's no need to do deep breaths or anything like that. Just breathe as you normally will because our focus in the beginning is on the Awareness, not on our breath. As you dissolve your apparent existence of this body and mind, and you come to the realization more and more that you are this Formless Awareness. Now, why do I call it Formless? Is because it has no name and it has no roop. It has no image. No body at all. And the body, not just in terms of the physical form, but it's Formless because it is not thought, it is not emotion of any kind, happy or sad, pain or pleasure. It's not any of our sense projections. So it's not what we see, not what we hear, not what we feel, not what we smell and so on. This Awareness itself, if you notice, it's colorless. It has no color at all. However, when we were in this relative world, when we're functioning in the world, as we should do this Awareness only appears to be colored in experience. But actually Awareness remains colorless. This is our true identity. This is our true internal home The body, the mind and its ego. These are all guests in Awareness. You allowed them to stay for as long as they want in terms of your identification to them. Otherwise, as we know, the body is subject to the laws of nature, but Awareness doesn't belong to nature, doesn't belong to the sense projections doesn't belong to the ego and its identification with all naam and roop, or name and form. Awareness remains as it is. As a silent presence in the midst of all experience, it's even that silent presence that appears to be meditating. But because you have been able to differentiate, you'll be able to see that it is the mind that is meditating, but Awareness is simply Being. Even if you can hear the sounds from outside. The room that you're in, or if you're in the garden, Awareness remains the same. If you have your eyes open and your eyes are seeing everything, the 10,000 things, as they say in the Dao Te Ching. Still Awareness remains the same. The monks that belong to the christian tradition, those that deeply inquired into this Awareness, they referred to this silence, this presence of silence as the presence of God. And in Vedanta they've used the mahavakya from the Chandogya Upanishad for us to realize its closeness, which is Tat Tvam Asi - You Are That. In the Kashmir Shaivism tradition, they refer to Awareness as Being Everything. That everything is Shiva So here we get rid of the apparent duality, that Awareness is separate to its contents, or to what he appears to show it's inherent nature is the same. This Awareness doesn't belong to just human beings. But it's present in everything Whether it is an animate object or inaminate. Sometimes we struggle on a daily basis to remain in Awareness because we see Awareness and the ego as two separate things. But if we are able to keep ourselves grounded in the Awareness that may be in the background of our mind, whenever our ego identifies with anything, we're able to bring it back to Awareness. So, therefore we identify less with the ego and more with Awareness. And as we continue to practice this throughout the week, in the times, in your happy, and in the times when there may be great stress, you can go back to that Awareness. You can go back to being aware of being aware at any time, you don't have to get caught up in the entanglement of experience. Or identifying that you are the experience for example, I am happy. I am sad. I am content. I am not content.. I am hungry. I am thirsty. Allow yourself to be thirsty and drink a glass of water, but go back to the 'I am'. The 'I am' that is aware that you are thirsty. That is the Formless Awareness. This 'I am' can never be escaped. It's just that, because we identify with the ego, and it's whatever it identifies with, we bypass that Awareness. But It's with us 24-7, 365 days in a year. And it will be there at the time that we leave this earth. It will remain. And as we shed the body, we hope that we can remain in that pure Awareness. It's not that you merge into that Awareness. You cannot merge into something you already are. This Awareness, that is Formless Shapeless, Boundless, Infinite It's inherently peaceful, inherently blissful, inherently happy, inherently content. Inherently at ease. Inherently still. Inherently changeless. Inherently joyful. You do not need to become these things. These are the natural byproducts of being in Awareness, of resting in Awareness. It's inherently silent and whenever we want to experience this, because we have lost touch with who we really are because we have drawn ourselves into experience and identified with experience, then all we need to do is remind ourselves to be aware of being aware. Or to just be as you are to be as the 'I am'. The ego may try to name Awareness and try to objectify it in some way. Remind yourself of the powerful words of Lao Tzu. The Dao that can be named is not the Dao. So the Awareness that can be named is not Awareness. This Formless Awareness is what is referred to as the natural state. Or in Zen they say, it's the original face. When all masks are taken off of naam and roop, of name and form, we're left with this everlasting ever present. Awareness.