Thank you for this. I find often this stuck focus on the outside from many spiritual teachings, teachers, and lineages also creeps into spiritual bypassing and denying of the reality of sufferings and events happening. This writing and offering you have shared is so valuable for new and “experienced” meditation practitioners, is grounded, and tempers expectations.
Really appreciate the clarity of this writing- the metaphor and symbolism. Yes, I notice the lack of problem with the changing focus but also feel a breath out in hearing how you describe it. I Am - unknowable. 🙏🏻
I love this: "But why should awareness be mysterious?"
And this: "If you were to ask a photographer whether they believed the ‘panned out’ mode of the camera lens was superior to the ‘zoomed in’ mode - what do you think they would say?"
And this: "For the real purpose is to flow.
To move seamlessly and freely between the two."
And this: "I will never truly see myself. And that’s ok. Because I am myself."
And yes, yes. "this freedom to move between the personal and the impersonal....to be able to inhabit the full breadth of modes that awareness is capable of."
It is this that brings so much sparkle, that I can fully live both the intensity of all that appears, as that, in tha - feelings, beauty, overwhelming love, intelligence too...AND to be and deeply know the background of peace...this freedom is breathtakingly awesome. As you say in your last line: "I am free to be myself."
So ordinary, this awareness that we are, and yet so extraordinary. Thank you for being so clear on this.
Thank you for this. I find often this stuck focus on the outside from many spiritual teachings, teachers, and lineages also creeps into spiritual bypassing and denying of the reality of sufferings and events happening. This writing and offering you have shared is so valuable for new and “experienced” meditation practitioners, is grounded, and tempers expectations.
Yes, Cole. In the end all this spiritual rhetoric boils down to something far simpler and more common sense than our minds want to make of it.
Really appreciate the clarity of this writing- the metaphor and symbolism. Yes, I notice the lack of problem with the changing focus but also feel a breath out in hearing how you describe it. I Am - unknowable. 🙏🏻
Dear Shiv,
I really enjoyed this piece!
I love this: "But why should awareness be mysterious?"
And this: "If you were to ask a photographer whether they believed the ‘panned out’ mode of the camera lens was superior to the ‘zoomed in’ mode - what do you think they would say?"
And this: "For the real purpose is to flow.
To move seamlessly and freely between the two."
And this: "I will never truly see myself. And that’s ok. Because I am myself."
And the whole thing!
Thank you for sharing as always!
Love
Myq
I’m changing my screensaver to a camera
Love this, Shiv, thank you. Always your clarity.
And yes, yes. "this freedom to move between the personal and the impersonal....to be able to inhabit the full breadth of modes that awareness is capable of."
It is this that brings so much sparkle, that I can fully live both the intensity of all that appears, as that, in tha - feelings, beauty, overwhelming love, intelligence too...AND to be and deeply know the background of peace...this freedom is breathtakingly awesome. As you say in your last line: "I am free to be myself."
So ordinary, this awareness that we are, and yet so extraordinary. Thank you for being so clear on this.