The first key to Living Realization is found in the last chapter called “Recognizing Present Awareness.” Don’t skip over that chapter. In fact, stick with that chapter only for a while. Move to this chapter and the following chapters only when you are comfortable with the direct experience of what awareness is.
If awareness is our primary identity, then why even talk about appearances? The answer is that appearances are inseparable from awareness. They have no separate existence. They are movements of awareness itself. Many people report an oscillation (like a fan that moves left to right) between moments of recognizing pure, formless, nonconceptual awareness and moments in which appearances are predominant. This is a common report on the spiritual path. This oscillation comes from the notion that awareness is something separate from your everyday existence in which all sorts of thoughts, emotions, states, sensations, and experiences come and go. If you believe that awareness is some state in which you are free of these movements within awareness, you set yourself up for the oscillation. This oscillation is dualistic. It creates the notion that there is a split in reality between awareness and what appears within awareness. There is no such split. It is only the mind that believes this split is real. Appearances are not separate from awareness. Therefore, it is important to discuss what appearances are and how they are inseparable from the basic, unmoving, unchanging space of awareness.
This Chapter contains a general, introductory discussion of appearances. Each of the broad categories of appearances introduced in this Chapter will be more specifically discussed in later chapters.
Suffering, seeking, and conflict arise through clinging or identifying with appearances within awareness. This creates and maintains the sense of a separate self. In Living Realization, we are not trying to get rid of appearances or do anything with them. This is not about a project to get rid of the ego. We are simply recognizing that appearances are inseparable movements of awareness. In recognizing our identity as awareness, instead of believing that the appearances contain our identity, appearances are naturally allowed to come and go. The clinging and identifying energy relaxes naturally. Suffering, seeking, and conflict release themselves in that seeing. This is an effortless seeing. It does not involve personal will.
For purposes of this sharing, an appearance is anything that moves or changes or comes and goes within awareness. All appearances are temporary. Awareness is the pure, permanent, unchanging, unmoving, spacious seeing within which the temporary appearances move and change, and come and go.
Appearances generally fall into at least one of the following categories: thoughts, emotions, sensations, states, or experiences. Below is a more detailed but non-exhaustive list of appearances. These categories are not rigid and we may find that some appearances fall within more than one category. Remember, the material in this Chapter is not meant to provide new information for us to memorize, learn, and remember. This material consists of tools that assist us in seeing that our real identity is present awareness and that appearances come and go inseparably within awareness.
Thoughts: thoughts, beliefs, ideas, interpretations, concepts, opinions, judgments, stories, spiritual concepts, identities, roles, and titles.
Emotions: fear, anxiety, worry, elation, happiness, resentment, anger, rage, grief, disgust, shame, guilt, sadness, despair, love, surprise.
Sensations: pain, pleasure, contraction, pressure, smelling, touching, tasting, hearing, seeing (visual), tingling.
States: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, drug-induced or altered state, egoic, witnessing, emptiness, fullness, conflict, confusion, doubt, uncertainty, certainty, relaxation, nervousness, peace, frustration, freedom, bondage, depression, excessive thinking, illness, boredom, and any other temporary mode or condition of being.
Experiences: Too numerous to name. This literally includes the wide range of human experiences from going to the prom to sitting on the toilet. It is easier to define what the word experience means. Webster’s Dictionary defines an “experience” as any event “personally encountered, undergone, or lived through.”
Appearances are temporary movements that come and go within awareness. Appearances can never truly define or be what we are because of their temporary nature. To define yourself conceptually in any way is to identify with a fleeting image, an idea that rapidly comes and goes within awareness. In the same way, to define yourself through any appearance including an emotion, sensation, state, or experience is to do the same. Because of the temporary, fleeting nature of all appearances, they cannot provide the deepest, most authentic answer to the question, “Who am I?” The answer to that question is not found in any appearance. The answer reveals itself in the direct, immediate, timeless recognition of awareness as our real identity.
The metaphor of a movie on a theater screen is helpful to illustrate the invitation in Living Realization. Appearances are like the characters and scenes in a movie. Awareness is like the screen. Remember that, when we say awareness is like the screen, we do not mean that awareness is an object or appearance that we can see or find. Awareness is the pure seeing itself. It is like space itself without any boundary. That is what we are.
Suffering, conflict, and seeking happen when there is identification with the temporary appearances (i.e., the characters and scenes) coming and going on the screen of awareness. There is a constant looking for a sense of self in the temporary appearances. We are looking for permanency and stability. Yet these appearances do not hold our identity. They are fleeting and therefore incapable of providing stability. We want the characters and scenes to stop, to remain as fixed and permanent things, something we can personalize and hold onto. But they come and go so quickly just like the characters and scenes on the theater screen. It is impossible to hang onto any of them. And awareness has no agenda to try to hold onto them anyway. Awareness naturally allows these appearances to come and go, to be as they are, without any need to manipulate them or grasp at them.
Freedom is realized through recognizing awareness to be our real identity and seeing that the characters and scenes in the movie are appearances of awareness. In this recognition, the appearances are seen to come and go freely, temporarily, seamlessly, and inseparably within awareness. The appearances are movements within awareness. Awareness is what we are. It is perfectly stable. And the beautiful thing is that these movements are not separate from awareness. This inseparability is important so that we don’t make the error in believing that the screen of awareness is trying to get rid of or manipulate the appearances on it. It simply does not have that agenda. Only thought does. And thought itself is nothing more than a temporary appearance on the screen.
The screen is the most fundamental aspect in the theater metaphor above. This is why we say that awareness is our real identity. Without the screen (i.e., awareness), there can be no characters or scenes (i.e., appearances). Yet, without the characters and scenes, there would be only the screen. There would be only awareness without anything appearing within it. This is why we say that appearances are not separate from awareness.
Another way of talking about awareness and appearances within awareness is by way of the distinction between internal and external appearances. Internal appearances are thoughts, emotions, sensations, and states. These are things we experience within what we call body and mind. External appearances include objects external to the body and mind such as chair, house, moon, apple, and road. Awareness itself is not any of these appearances, whether internal or external. The physical object “road” is an appearance of awareness. It seems to appear “out there” in the world. But it cannot appear without awareness. The two are inseparable in that way. In other words, without awareness, the road cannot be seen. In the same way, a feeling of anger is an appearance of awareness. Anger cannot be experienced without awareness. It is inseparable from awareness. The energetic form within the body that we call “anger” never appears outside of awareness. Therefore, it is inseparable from awareness. Therefore, in Living Realization, we cannot know whether something exists except by its appearance. “To exist” is the same as “to appear” in Living Realization. We can only know a road exists if it appears. Similarly, we can only know anger is happening if it appears.
Awareness is not any of these appearances, internal or external. It is “farther” back, so to speak. It is the seeing itself. No matter what appearance comes and goes temporarily within awareness, there is still ‘something’ that sees the appearances. This is awareness. It does not come and go. Awareness is that which sees all appearances. Awareness is what you are. The word “road” and all other words pointing to apparently external objects happening outside the body and mind in an objectively separate world are actually thoughts appearing internally. In other words, the thought “road” and any mental image that appears in conjunction with the thought are occurring within what we call the mind. So, what appears as a world of objectively distinct objects “out there” are creations of thought “in here.” Stated another way, a chair is known to exist only when we see the apparent physical object “out there in the world” and the thought “chair” appears within the mind simultaneously.
Now take an even closer look at what is happening. The notions of “internal” and “external,” “out there,” “in here,” “awareness,” “appearances,” “body,” and “mind” are all just thoughts appearing and disappearing within the actual awareness (not the thought) that you are. This is the awareness that is looking at these words right now. All concepts that appear and disappear in the awareness that is looking right now give the appearance that the world is divided into separate things. But the separation is a product of thought. It isn’t real. In this seeing, separation between what you call you and what you call the world is seen through. All appearances are appearances of awareness. And even that distinction is conceptual. All is. No separation.
Living Realization is not about passively witnessing appearances as if awareness is somehow separate from what appears within awareness. It is not about being “spaced out” or stuck in emptiness. It is the recognition that our real identity is the present, spacious awareness within which everything is happening. In this seeing, the division between the space and what is happening in the space is seen to be nonexistent. Awareness and whatever appearance is happening within awareness right now are “not two.”
We are also not inviting you to get rid of anything. The invitation here is to not manipulate or do anything with any appearance. In the recognition of awareness, every appearance is naturally allowed to be exactly as it is. The sense of being a separate self — and any personal suffering and seeking or interpersonal conflict resulting from identification with appearances — is “seen through” in this recognition. As these appearances are allowed to arise and fall within present awareness, without any movement to manipulate or change them, it is realized that awareness is already effortlessly accepting of everything that appears and disappears in awareness. Every appearance is seen to come and go within awareness, leaving no trace. This is perfect acceptance of everything.
Acceptance is not something we do as persons “trying to accept” situations and people in our lives. Acceptance is a natural by-product of recognizing our real identity. In that recognition, every character and every scene in the movie of life is allowed to be just as they are.
Keep it simple: Above all else, recognize present awareness right now. Don’t move to manipulate the appearances of awareness. See that the appearances are not separate from awareness.