The Naked Awareness

Lead me from dreaming to waking.
Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.
Lead me from intention to attention.
Lead me from what I'm told I am to what I see I am.
Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace
- The Upanishads

*note* Candice O'Denver knows the truth...a bit about her taken from http://www.saieditor.com/stars/odenver.html site ..quote"She had been raised Catholic, but as a child she intuitively rejected substantial portions of what she was taught through that religion, yet she had a strong, natural faith in God, and prayed every day for many years to be “able to see the face of God”.

She then went through an profound personal crisis which led her into states of intense fear, alienation and despair. During that period she found that everything she had learned through psychology, philosophy, religion, and all other belief systems she had studied were of no help to her whatsoever.

Furthermore, every remedy she had previously relied on to give her relief, including alcohol and marijuana, now gave her no relief at all. During that extended period of being overwhelmed by negative emotional states, she somehow discovered that beneath all those states, there was a “basic space of pure awareness” which was free from suffering, a space of complete relief. She gradually familiarized herself with that basic space by resting as awareness for short moments, repeated many times, and soon she was able to rest in that awareness for 10 continuous days. At that point “awareness rose like the sun”, and from then on that unchanging space of pure awareness became her primary reality, and the painful thoughts and emotional states which had tormented her faded away like stars in the light of day. Her discovery of all-encompassing pure awareness, and the complete relief that comes with it, proved to be permanent"
-added by Danny-
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What is resting as awareness?
What is awareness?

What does it mean to be aware; what is awareness? Just stop thinking for a moment, stop thinking. That is awareness; alert vigilance, alert cognizance, restful alertness that has nothing going on within it; that is awareness. Now awareness is required equally for no thinking and thinking. But when we take that first moment of awareness without thinking, and we repeatedly take a short moment of awareness, then we have more moments of awareness every day. As we have more moments of awareness, awareness is no longer a moment of not thinking.

By taking that short moment of awareness without thinking we begin to see that awareness is required for all thinking, including not thinking, because you see, even the term non-thinking is a thought. Awareness is required for everything we know, everything we’re aware of: just like we’re aware of the bird chirping outside, or aware of the sound of the ocean. Hear it? That’s it. There isn’t anything else, so don’t look for some fantastically altered state, and don’t look for esoteric oddities that are going to preoccupy your day. That will only lead you into an extreme.

First of all, that there is nothing required but brief moments repeated many times. That all we are doing is acknowledging the native state of everything anyway, when we take that short moment. It doesn’t need to be accumulated, because it already is, so we are just acknowledging it repeatedly, just as we didn’t acknowledge it, so it didn’t seem to be there, so when we acknowledge it repeatedly, it becomes evident. It’s as simple as that. What becomes evident is that in this brief moment, everything is appearing just as it is, without any kind of descriptive framework. Everything that appears just is the dynamic energy of this moment that is alert and cognizant of itself. There is just this moment that is alert and cognizant of itself, that’s it.

When we make a 100% commitment, we’re saying, “Yes, nature is as it is. Everything is as it is, and I am committed to being in complete alignment with that. I’m committed to being completely absorbed into reality itself, completely absorbed into the very nature of everything as it is. I’m willing to have all my ideas about everything outshone by the light of my own awareness.”
In the simple way, it’s like having a talk with a small child. You are having a little talk with yourself. “Honey, do you want to feel better or do you want to feel worse”? “If you just rest, you will feel better. If you don’t, you will feel worse.”
It’s as simple as that. If someone had talked to us like that when we were kids, then no one would be in that mode. It’s very, very simple. It doesn’t need to be made anymore complicated than that.

When we begin to rest as awareness, then it seems like there’s resting as awareness and then there’s all the thoughts—like a tiger watching its prey. However, we don’t have to worry about any of that—the merging or if it’ll happen or any of that. If we just continue to return to the ease that is at the basis, very naturally and very quickly we will arrive at the point where it won’t be two any longer. We won’t be even able to say when that happened or anything else. It’s so organic and natural to our being. When we acknowledge who we are and return to that repeatedly—rather than getting caught only in the thought, its label, and its proliferation—then it very swiftly becomes totally obvious. Now, it does require just this simple practice: listening until conviction dawns, or resting naturally, or a combination of the two.

What has no cause and what requires no effort cannot be brought about by trying to cause it or effort for it. It’s already accomplished, already naturally present effortlessly in the here and now, the pure presence of the here and now, the complete perceptual openness of the here and now. This is the basis of everything.

To have complete perceptual openness means to relax our perception into wide-open spaciousness with no need to close in on any thought, emotion, object, or experience to make sense of what’s happening. When we completely relax our attention from its habitual pinpointed focus, we see everything as it is: a limitless, seamless expanse of changeless pure awareness, in which myriad ephemeral forms of awareness appear and disappear. Most of us have learned to fix our attention on whatever is appearing and to describe it as if it had a separate existence. However, when we do so, we immediately disconnect from our natural openness and collapse into the idea of a separate self that relies on thought to describe what’s going on. When we have this individualized thinking and the fear-based emotional field that thinking creates, then we’re very restricted and limited to that emotional field. We live on the head of a pin when we do that, and that’s a very cramped and uncomfortable space!

We keep it simple: we keep it totally simple. Everything that appears is a point of view appearing within the pure view of awareness. That’s it.


I have negative thoughts, afflictive states, uncomfortable sensations etc. I feel something is not right.

I invite you to put a complete stop to the addiction to labeling each and every occurrence. When we persist in labeling ourselves and others, we engage in a machine-like war within ourselves. In doing so, we judge certain of our appearances to be good and others to be bad, and we become like robots sorting thoughts: “These are the good ones, and these are the bad ones; I’ve got to get more good ones, and I’ve got to get rid of the bad ones. I’ve got to show everybody else what my good ones are, so they will accept me, and then maybe I can think that I am acceptable.” Beyond all the extremes, beyond the labels of good and bad, is wisdom. Wisdom does not need anything to be good; it is already wholly positive in and of itself.

Come to a complete stop and enrich yourself and the whole world with the awareness that’s at the basis of everything. No one is dependent on any label to be. Being is, regardless of labels. The only self-essence of any label is forever flawless awareness, so why not look at everything from the vantage of awareness rather than through the foggy filters of labels? The essence of your own being doesn’t need anything to prop it up—it simply is, so relax and enjoy! Please don’t be mean to yourself any longer. I really ask you this from my heart.

Just allow everything to be as it is, as you would in any other moment. Don’t force anything—just relax. Whatever the thoughts, emotions, and sensations are, they’re the unconfined capacity and creativity of awareness. They’re inseparable from awareness, just as the brilliance of a diamond is inseparable from the diamond itself.

It’s much easier to just rest as awareness and let everything be as it is. No matter what appears, it’s like a mirage. Like a line drawn in water, it is its own undoing and will vanish naturally. There isn’t a single thing that needs to be done about anything that appears. We don’t need anything to make the clouds go away; they disappear in and of themselves. They come from space, they are space during their duration, and they disappear into space. The space remains unaffected, and that’s what we really are: aware pure space. The coming, staying, and going are all space as well. So, what can we say? There’s nothing going on. There’s nothing to react to. When we just let go in evenness, then life becomes a lot easier, and we don’t need so much for anything to change. In letting everything be as it is, we open up to the space of profound insight and the ability to act skillfully. If we don’t let everything be as it is by the power of resting as awareness, then we’ll never be in touch with this level of insight and skill.

In the unhindered space of awareness, whatever comes, just as it arises, there is nothing exact or precise, not any reality that can be found to exist. By maintaining short moments of awareness, many times, you realize that the whole world of description comes into being moment by moment. Outside that moment there is no way to really examine anything and prove that it exists; and that moment cannot be captured. So even in that moment, whatever is there can’t be shown to exist either. Do you see what I am saying? When you see this moment to moment in your own perception, you get a firsthand experience, the instinctive realization of what you are, which is all of this: The moment, pure presence, unhindered, alert, cognizant – that’s it. The experience of everything being up and down, that evens out in awareness.

By relying on short moments of awareness, repeated many times, it guarantees the authentic naturalness of awareness. Initially, we are not at all familiar with awareness and there are no thoughts we can have that are going to make us instinctively realize it. So, by just resting all mental processes, including the ideas about the body and mind and being somebody, this allows us to briefly, super-completely, spontaneously, and naturally moment-to-moment acknowledge awareness in an uncontrived way, In this way, we become convinced. We become convinced of the efficacy and the power of it by its results in our life. There wouldn’t be any other way for us to become convinced. Our confidence grows when we see the results of awareness in our life. It can’t come about in any other way.

In order to get along in life, we don’t need to rely on descriptions. The most powerful way we can be in life is entirely free of descriptions. It’s entirely beyond descriptions yet it can use all descriptions effortlessly and enjoy them thoroughly. The phenomenal world cannot be fully and completely enjoyed unless there is familiarity with the nature of the mind. In becoming familiar with the nature of the mind, then life can be completely enjoyed in all of its aspects from the wonderful parts of life to the things that aren’t wonderful at all. There’s a deep gratitude and sense of wonder at what occurs no matter what it is.
This is important because it’s this that we can count on. We can’t really count on anything else. It’s important to count on what is immediately beneficial in our human life and what ensures our well-being. That’s what’s important to count on; what is immediately beneficial and ensures our well-being right now, not at some point in the future, right now, immediately beneficial right now, ensures our well-being.


How can I rest with my negative thoughts, emotions and experiences?

We have a very easy choice. It’s the choice of continuing to describe and perpetuate stories based on an inaccurate perception of our identity, or getting to know the awareness that is the sole source and basis of all these descriptions. When we rest as awareness for short moments, many times and just allow everything to be as it is, we’ll realize what wisdom is. We’ll understand the true nature of existence. The clear light of wisdom begins to dawn in us, and we can start to laugh for having taken ourselves so seriously! In that complete relaxation is revealed the naturally present awareness that is the mind’s basic space.

Thus the single practice in the Great Freedom Teaching is short moments of awareness, repeated many times. By engaging that instinctive realization for short moments, repeated many times, the already accomplished, already present, instinctive condition becomes obvious. It’s not going to come about by trying to change yourself in any way. It’s only going to be realized by settling into what you already are.

Many people rest actively throughout the day for short moments repeated many times. What that means is that something appears, whether it’s a thought or emotion, a sensation or experience, and rather than getting involved in the story about that experience, initially the choice is made to rest as awareness, to acknowledge awareness. to sustain the essence of awareness rather than getting involved in all the old descriptions and ideas that have been used to describe everything. That is one way of practicing short moments repeated many times.
Another approach that some people use is simply listening to the teachings and reading the teachings. Just by listening to the downloads repeatedly, and reading the Teachings, conviction dawns.

Everyday awareness is just everyday life itself. Since nothing needs to change, there is no need to behave in any special way or attempt to attain anything above and beyond what you actually are. There should be no feeling of striving to reach some "amazing goal" or "advanced state." The timeless wisdom of awareness naturally reveals its qualities in simply resting imperturbably in all experience. There is no effort to make.


How can I gain confidence in awareness?

Short moments repeated many times. Just that. And if you want to examine how you’re doing, don’t look at how far you have to go, look at how far you’ve come. Keep the focus on yourself and look at how far you’ve come rather than how far you have to go. So if you find yourself in the midst of an afflictive state, don’t worsen it by saying “Oh, this isn’t working. I’m not resting. Resting is never going to help this afflictive state. I keep doing it over and over again.” Don’t go there. Those are all points of view too that have no power or significance, so just rest. Allow everything to be as it is.

Say, you had an incredible talent for baking bread, but you had never baked bread in your life. You wouldn’t know that you had a talent for baking bread, and once you started to bake bread, you would get more and more familiar with your talent for baking bread. So, awareness is similar in that once it’s identified as the source of experience, then by short moments of awareness, repeated many times, there’s more and more awareness that is noticed in one’s daily experience. It’s the source of that experience. It’s seen that awareness is really the mainstay or ground. It’s the absolute nature. If we’re looking for human nature it’s not only the absolute human nature but the absolute nature of everything.

It is in our practical day-to-day experience that we gain confidence in awareness, as we go through each step of the day. Whereas before we may have been relying on our points of view or our perspectives that we gather in order to make sense of reality, instead, we start to rely on awareness rather than relying on any of those opinions that we’ve gathered about the nature of reality. More and more we rely on our own direct experience of awareness, our own instinctive recognition of awareness, rather than relying on all the opinions about everything, our own opinions and others.
Gaining confidence in awareness is like a wildfire because when you’re first introduced to awareness that first moment of recognition of awareness becomes the basis of your experience. Then, if you return to short moments of awareness it will encourage the flame of awareness to grow. It will be like the breeze that fans the forest fire. As more short moments of awareness become obvious then the whole forest of points of view goes up in flames.

Short moments repeated many times, always works. It always works. If it’s watered with a little bit of diligence and commitment, then beautiful flowers grow. Awareness has always been present. It’s just that you may have trained yourself to not notice it. By taking short moments of awareness in a totally uncontrived way repeated many times it does become automatic. You begin to notice that what appears within your awareness whether it seems internal or external is actually an appearance of that awareness and poses no threat and also poses no promise no matter what it is. This is very, very clear.

Awareness is the balanced view and at the same time it is all-powerful, it’s self-perfect. It doesn’t have any characterizations or descriptions, qualifications or quantifications, and so this that you mention is very, very important. It’s key, because the more we gain confidence in awareness the more we find ourselves able to do the undoable. And the way that this comes about is when we feel that we can’t do anymore, rather than stopping and saying, “Oh I give up. I’m a victim of this point of view”, we get support for resting if we’re not able to rest and in that way we really gain confidence in the self-perfected nature of awareness because we see that there really are no boundaries or limits. There aren’t any restrictions.

Gaining confidence in this in one’s experience is the very basis of mental stability. By the power of relaxing the mind for short moments, many times, the naturally settled nature of the mind and all phenomena becomes obvious at all times. The key point of this practice is the release of tension of belief and assumptions about the workings of the mind that is demonstrated by this relaxed state.
The way to remain in this state is leaving point of view as it is. When this key point is realized, it involves no striving or effort. It is the zenith of understanding the nature of the human phenomena. Rather than confining the use of awareness to the reification of points of view, it releases the effort and striving involved in this into its already natural effortless state, eliciting the balanced view of the true nature of phenomena. In its all-encompassing perspective that includes all points of view within it, it recognizes these as its own self-appearances that are fundamentally free of any independent empowerment.

I feel the impulse to change my afflictive states, negative thoughts. What can I do?

So if we are trying to alter disturbing emotions or our thoughts or sensations or experiences in order to get to some payoff that’s going to permanently relieve anxiety, then it’s never going to happen with antidotes. The only way it can occur is to get familiar with and gain confidence in the basis of all disturbing states, all disturbing states are due to awareness. Without awareness they would not be. Awareness is their fundamental condition. There would be no way to be aware of disturbing emotions without awareness. So rely on that and that alone and don’t look to anything else. That’s just the way it is.
Now, disturbing emotions are the seat of tremendous energy and the seat of vitality, the seat of wisdom and the seat of complete mental stability. And the complete mental stability does not come about by forcing disturbing emotions out or covering them over with some kind of antidote. Perfect mental stability comes about by just simply allowing the disturbing emotion to be as it is while resting as awareness.
By allowing the disturbing emotion to be as it is, which is as resting as awareness, it is resting awareness, then we recognize that resting awareness is the essence; it is the causal structure of that disturbing emotion. When we realize that then we can continue to rest, and as we rest we see that this disturbing emotion is free in its own place. It vanishes without a trace spontaneously; it spontaneously self-releases without anything being done about it.

Troubling states will continue forever, and troubling states are where you’ll find the instinctive realization. That’s where your realization of awareness really gets profound. It’s resting in those troubling states, just allowing everything to be as it is, while you take comfort in awareness. You don’t go into the thoughts or emotions and encourage them in any way, you ground yourself in awareness and just see how they spill out however they will.
It isn’t in figuring out what the behaviors and properties of phenomena are that we’ll ever find any relief. So we stop trying to figure it out when we really understand the exact nature of phenomena. We stop figuring out how this phenomenon relates to that phenomenon. We stop trying to figure out how one thought relates to another thought. We stop being swamped by our thinking and emotionality and sensations and other experiences as being one that leads to another. In other words, “I’m angry because so and so punched me in the stomach, and now I’m going to get him, or punch him back, or yell at him, or gossip about him, or whatever it is.” You can see how we’ve trained ourselves to go into that narrative of linking every experience to the next one and making something out of it. When we understand the exact nature of phenomena we do not do that any longer. When we do not do that any longer, we have increasing mental and emotional stability, just like that, without any effort or anything needing to be done.

If we have some kind of urge come over us and we don’t take those short moments repeated many times, whether it’s a momentary urge or an urge that lasts off and on for months, then we’ll never see that that urge is just an appearance of awareness. If we go into indulging it or avoiding it or replacing it with something else, then we’ll never see that. But if we just allow everything to be as it is, which is the utterly lucid basic space of awareness, then we will see all clearly. We’ll see that everything is free in its own place of basic space. Everyone is free in their own place of basic space. There is no other place than the basic space. All words, labels, phrases, no matter what they are, are the place of basic space and are free as that place of basic space. Nothing has ever been made into anything. There has never been any kind of identity whatsoever of anything, consolidated or amassed. Now that’s very clear isn’t it?


What does it mean to not change anything?

We are meant to be completely relaxed. Look at the trees, flowers, birds, and everything else. It’s all at rest, all effortlessly in harmony with nature no matter the conditions. The wind may be raging, but its essence is total rest. There isn’t any resistance; everything is just the way it is—and because there’s no resistance, the great power and ease of awareness is effortlessly present.
Nature is at ease with whatever is occurring, and this is how we are meant to be as well. Nature is at ease with all extremes. Whether the ocean is rough and tumultuous, or still and calm, it is content with itself as it is. It isn’t trying to fiddle around with the big waves to make them smaller, or trying to make the calm areas rise up into waves. It is simply resting as its own nature, and letting the waves be as they are.
This is how we are meant to relate to our thoughts and emotions. Rather than trying to control each wave of thought and emotion as it appears, we simply rest as the vast ocean of awareness, seeing each wave as a perfect expression of that awareness. In this way we live in harmony and peace with whatever appears in our mind from moment to moment, identified only with the all-encompassing awareness that is our true nature.

Everyone in this room has lived for at least decades now, so there is now probably a lot stirring in everybody here. Whatever it is, it’s okay. It doesn’t need to be changed. If its painful, if it hurts, whether it’s a past point of view or something happening now or something you are afraid of in the future or that you are hoping will happen in the future—no matter what it is, just rest and allow the ease of being just as it is, to be what you are getting familiar as your true nature.

We see everything as it is. We have great compassion and wisdom, which is naturally occurring and inseparable from the super intelligence of awareness. It’s not a mental position. It’s the wide-openness of the vast expanse of awareness in which there is no need to take a position. It’s so clear that everything is itself and that there’s never anything left out. Yet no one thing is a place to take up residence. This just becomes very, very clear, and then ideas like my thinking is so important, or my emotions are so important, my sensations are so important take on a different felt-sense. They just are what they are, but they’re only part of the picture

When a troublesome thought comes up, just don’t think about it. Just let it be as it is. That’s what awareness is. Awareness lets everything be as it is, just like nature lets everything be as it is
Just remain as you are and just let everything be as it is. When extremely afflictive states come up, they are made more afflictive by commenting on or correcting them. So all that is done in making the choice to comment or correct is to feel worse. That is what happens. So, essentially if you chose to comment or correct you are choosing to feel worse. Yikes! Sounds a little sicko doesn’t it.

When we look at it in a practical way, we just need to be entirely ready to let point of view be as it is. We no longer cling to all the descriptions of who we are that we put together from what people have told us about ourselves, what we’ve read in books and what we’ve decided within our own mind about ourselves. We no longer invest in those descriptions. The sole identification is with awareness and its wisdom powers.

Whether running, sitting, standing, making love, defecating, turning cartwheels—the natural state of the mind and body are completely at ease. This effortless ease is the best information we have about everything. In the field of information, the field of super intelligence, the field of awareness, all the information that appears are points of view of that awareness and nothing else. That’s all they are, and none is better or worse. When we just allow the ease of that awareness to be as it is, then we realize ourselves to be this super intelligence.


How do I know if I am resting?

You know whether you are resting, just by whether or not you have any results from it. Rest isn’t a thing. If you are able to do what you think is rest for an instant and you notice a change in your life in some fundamental way, like you are not as likely to go for certain points of view, then you know it is rest.

There’s no one resting as awareness, awareness is at rest. Initially it seems like there’s someone resting as awareness, but by the power of resting as awareness, the rester disappears without any doing, without any effort.

Now, there’s a likelihood at first to associate resting with pleasant states. This has been our old game all through life; our old game has been to try to get a lot of pleasant states going and to keep them in place. When we see that all the unpleasant states we’ve been trying to avoid or push away are profoundly restful, just like all the pleasant states, then we’re really facing everything as it is.
It may be, and it very likely is, that this completely shatters the confines of our reality, what we’ve taken to be reality because we’ve taken ourselves to be someone. We find that that someone rests in the basic state; it’s a phenomenal appearance resting in the basic state. It has no more significance or power than any other phenomenal appearance. In other words, it has no independent identity, just like no other appearance has an independent identity.

If you begin resting and you feel that you are “experiencing rest” or “practicing rest,” that’s perfectly okay in the beginning. The whole idea of someone practicing or experiencing rest will naturally slip away without any need to think about it. There’s no need to take up a position anywhere, no need to say this way is right and that way is wrong. Just relax into the essence of your own being, and all is revealed exactly as it is. There’s no need to describe anything as fixed or definite, no need to put labels on your experience. Just relax. In the natural equalness of everything as it is, there’s perfect wisdom.

Even though we may hear short moments many times and be practicing it for a while, there will be the mechanical regeneration of all these ideas about, “Oh, it must be this” or “it must be that” or “it couldn’t include all those horrible negative states or total indifference” or whatever it might be. “It couldn’t include all my sexual fantasies; there has to be something wrong with me, when I see someone I’ve never known and the next image is hopping in bed with them,” or whatever our fantasies are or our points of view are. When we begin to gain confidence in short moments many times that frees up the ecstatic spontaneity of what’s appearing, so we might have all kinds of thoughts and emotions that we have never allowed us before, because we are too busy keeping the clamps on.


How can I have easy, loving relationships? How do I relate to those who are not resting?

Timeless awareness is complete perceptual openness in all experience. It’s freedom in immediate perception rather than being focused in on stories. The whole field of perception opens up in timeless awareness to include all perceptions. We may find ourselves having a lot of thoughts and a lot of emotions, even very, very strong emotions that we could have never tolerated before we began gaining confidence in awareness. However, this is the source of compassion. This is really the source of compassion to allow everything to be as it is about ourselves. It is the source of compassion for ourselves and for everyone else.
Once we have that compassion for ourselves, it automatically unleashes for everyone and everything. We find, much to our bewilderment, yet also delight, that even though we are having these intense emotions that we would have wanted to get rid of in the past, at the same time, they are inseparably married to, or blended with timeless awareness. They are not anything else. There is intensive emotion appearing but at the same time there is complete freedom in, of, as and though it from your natural place of rest.

In order for us to have intimacy as a couple, for example, or with our kids, first in ourselves we have to let everything be as it is. Say, it’s with our intimate partner or our kids, we have to allow every feeling we have about those people, to be just be as it is - the love, the irritation, the hate, the ambivalence, bad memories, good memories, the hopes, the fears, the realization that you never got what you wanted out of the relationship – to let all of it be as it is while we maintain awareness rather than trying to get rid of these feelings. “Oh, I shouldn’t be feeling that way. I shouldn’t be feeling like I’d like to put rat poison in their food right now,” or whatever we might be feeling because we never know what thoughts are going to occur to us.
As you ground yourself in the wisdom, love and compassion that is the basis of every single description and thought and emotion and sensation, experience and action—as you ground yourself in that brief moment of wisdom, that is the way you see the world more and more, your lenses that have been clouded over with all kinds of ideas and descriptions. It is like cleaning them with a magic cloth. And where you saw a world of descriptions, now you just see a spacious world—an open space of love, wisdom, compassion. It is up to you.
It is just like all the ideas you have about yourself and all the other people in your life. There is no way that you are going to find release from those ideas in any kind of contrived way like trying to be nice to the people, because they are your family or whatever it might be, or trying to be nice to yourself because you are a human being. If you are really interested in having a compassionate, loving face that looks out on the world, that is going to be found in short moments repeated many times.

If you want to heal all your relationships with everybody in your life, that is going to be found in short moments repeated many times. That is the only way you will see the relationship with yourself and these other people rightly. It is the only way. The only possible way. So give up all other measures and gain confidence in awareness. In awareness is already present love, compassion and wisdom. It is already present, as well as energy to really have good relationships with other people. So that is all that is required. Go to that wisdom. Return again and again to that wisdom.

The beauty of everything as it is, is that it is so simple and benevolent. The entirely beneficial and wholly positive fundamental nature of being is the one and only reality, and it includes everything. That’s very simple. There’s no way to talk about anything or describe anything as finite and definitive in and of itself, because nothing is separate from this all-encompassing reality.

Before you had relationships based on points of view, a mutual wounding regarding the nature of reality and this is what you shared with each other. Right? All your view points about everything and, oh, they were so real. And oh you have your rights and oh if other people would just do it your way – right? Then everything would be okay. However, when we begin to gain confidence in awareness we see that that’s only one way of living. And as we gain confidence in awareness we see that there is a better way of living, and that is to gain confidence in awareness rather than identify ourselves with all our points of view.

And so we can either continue on with that lifestyle of identifying with all points of view, or we can gain confidence in the direct encounter with points of view. What that means is that for example: you see a friend, so that’s the viewpoint of a sensory impression, someone you see. And then you have a thought about that, first of all that they are someone, and then maybe that you are someone too – this may happen very, very quickly. And the next thing you know is that you are having all kinds of points of view about them: at one time you liked them, now you dislike them, or maybe you feel indifferent to them.
These are all just points of view: like, dislike, indifference. These are all viewpoints. The friend is a viewpoint. The only way to come into fully complete compassionate relationship with the person is to do exactly what you did with your family. Apply the skillful means of short moments many times, no matter what points of view appear. In this way you come into a balanced view of the relationship that isn’t based on likes, dislikes or indifference. Rather, it’s based on wisdom, compassion and clarity. Is that understood and clear? So you see, this is very simple.
Wisdom awareness is equal to love, compassion and tremendous energy. It is the heart of life itself. In order to gain complete confidence in that, all that is required is short moments of awareness until it becomes spontaneous at all times. In every single moment of awareness is present full-out love, wisdom, compassion and tremendous energy for the benefit for yourself and the benefit of all. When you maintain awareness this is what you are allowing yourself.


How can I make good decisions?

Many of us have been plagued many times in our lives by needing to make decisions about all manner of things. Before we make the decision, we toil over it, and we don’t know what to do, and this, that and the other thing, and finally we make the decision, and we toil some more. Now we made the decision, and we’re not sure it’s the right one. We find very quickly usually that there’s a trade-off in this kind of thinking about decision-making. This is a story about decision-making that we’ve been perpetuating that does not allow the tremendous energy and the profound insight of naked intelligence to bear on the problem. If we’re all wrapped up in the story, then we won’t have the benefits of keen insight.
We find that by resting as awareness, rather than spinning off into the old decision-making method, we find that there’s an ease, an inherent ease that’s always the case in all these ways that we’ve been going about things. It’s in that inherent ease that we’re going to find the most profound solution to the problem. It’s not in spinning out the story about everything that’s going on. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. It can be going home to visit the family of origin and watching everyone flail in their points of view, and see all your own points of view come up in relation to that whole scene. It can be something at work, where you are facing some kind of situation at your work place and a decision needs to be made, or it can be related to an intimacy, a personal relationship, either with a child or with a significant other.
Any of these situations that require decisions, the best decision is going to come from this naked ease. So, we start to see this trade-off very clearly. First of all we see that we really don’t have to worry; worry is a choice. Getting all wrapped up in worrying and negative thinking and all of this kind of thing, it’s a choice, it really is, so we see the trade-off.
When we are all wrapped up in our points of view then we don't know what to do a lot of the time. This is just the way it is. We are kind of lost little beings in the world. We don’t know how to choose the right relationship. We don’t really know where to live. We are never quite satisfied with our work or totally unsatisfied. One of our big things is that we really have a tough time making decisions. And when we are all lost in all of these points of view, it is like being in a dense forest. And we are so lost we are willing to look anywhere for hope. So when we want to make a decision, we are lost in the dense forest, and we look up and we see all the trees of the dense forest. And we think well, these are the trees that are here. So I am going to take this tree and that tree and the other tree and that is going to be my decision.
Then the decision is made, but we are still in the dense forest so we say, “Well, did I make the right decision?” This is the world of point of view, and this is what our life feels like when we are obsessed with all the points of view that we have taken to be our identity. When we begin to rely on short moments many times, there is still this rush of points of view. We are still in the dense forest, but now rather than being so identified with all the trees we are noticing the space. This is what we are noticing about the dense forest.

Awareness itself is a vast expanse, like unchanging space. Its display of perceptions is the expression of its dynamic energy. All perceptions or points of view are the luster of the basic space of awareness and nothing else. All perceptions proliferating and resolving are the dynamic energy of awareness. Because the basic space of awareness is entirely beneficial yet arises as countless and ceaseless points of view, its benefit is dynamically expressive.
However points of view appear within the vast expanse of the basic space of awareness, they do not stray from their natural equalness as awareness. Since the timeless basic space of utter relaxation is naturally open and without transition or change, all points of view constitute the scope of naturally occurring timeless awareness and merge as a single expanse, without any effort, without anything needing to be done.