The Knowing That Isn't a Thought
El Conocer Que No Es un Pensamiento
A student explores the difference between intellectually understanding awareness and directly recognizing it, particularly during moments of emotional turmoil when identification with thoughts becomes overwhelming.
The Knowing That Isn't a Thought
A student explores the difference between intellectually understanding awareness and directly recognizing it, particularly during moments of emotional turmoil when identification with thoughts becomes overwhelming.
I've been going into the body much more, but at the same time there's this idea that I am what knows the experience, that I'm not the emotions. It's an idea I try to convince myself of, but I also know I'm not going to know that I'm knowing just by thinking about the idea and then trying to go for it.
I think one thing is seeing it as an idea, and another is looking for it in your experience. Does it feel more to you that you are your hand, or that which is aware of your hand? In your experience, forget about what anybody has said.
I feel I'm aware of my hand.
So you're not your hand; you're what is aware of your hand. You could say that your hand is part of you, but are you more the knowing and the awareness of the hand, or are you more the hand? When you say "I," that which "I" points to is that which is aware of the hand.
That's confusing. Not as a criticism, but it just ungrounds me.
The direction out of resistance
Your hand has less information about you than you have of your hand. Let's go back to what you said: going into the body is a way you can do this. And that's correct, because the resistance is always about going into thoughts and beliefs. That is the direction of resistance. The direction out of resistance is first moving out of thought, out of the focus on thought, into the focus on sensation and feeling.
What that brings me right now is: I don't really have much to say except that I hear my heart beating in my ears, and I can feel a heat in my body, around me.
And then there's the knowing of that. The knowing of the heartbeat in your ears, the knowing of the heat, the knowing of your thoughts, the knowing of sensations, sight, sound.
My experience is that the sensations and the knowing of the sensations are the same thing. I just have the sensations.
That's true. But I would assume that's not always true for you. What I'm saying is helpful when that's not true, when there becomes an illusion of that not being as you're describing. Because if what you say is your experience all the time, with sensation, with thought, with sound, then there wouldn't be any turmoil. The turmoil means something's in danger. Do you relate to what I'm saying?
Yes. If I'm in turmoil, I'm mostly in thought. I can be aware of the body for maybe a couple of seconds and then I just can't look at the body, can't feel it.
A tool for moments of identification
Exactly. In those moments, what I'm offering is a tool: to notice, are you more the thought or that which knows the thought? Are you more the sensation or that which knows the sensation? When we are not identified, what you describe is true. The knowing of a sensation and the sensation are the same thing. But when we're identified, we are something that is an imagined self, a mental construct, a narrative of somebody: "All I am is this which was born and will die and is limited to this body."
Yes, it's the person inside the body and all the stories that go with that.
When that becomes very tight and very much your reality, you look at that which is aware.
When you say "look at what is aware," I can only look at the body, the feelings in the body, or feel the body. Because when you say "look at that which is aware," it's like an idea I'm trying to figure out.
But there is a knowing right now which is not an idea. For example: are you aware?
Yes.
Where is that answer coming from? Does it require thought?
No. I mean, I can support it because I'm seeing, I'm hearing the question.
But that's interpreting, or assuming that you're aware because you're seeing or hearing, as if seeing and hearing are evidence that you're aware.
If I remove the seeing and the hearing (it's easier to remove the seeing than the hearing), I know I'm aware of thoughts because I'm having them. If there's nothing to see or hear, there are still thoughts.
Awareness before the thinking process
Just stay with that: being aware is not something you know because of a thinking process. You could say, "Because I'm aware of thoughts, I know that I'm aware." Let's say that's good enough. Because you could also have no thoughts and have sounds and know that you're aware. Maybe this is not something you know experientially yet, so that's a question.
I think that's what I'm trying to say. It's almost like I know it's something people say a lot, but I don't know if I'm experiencing the power of that question.
Just contemplate it. Take from this the suggestion that it's valuable to contemplate, even if it doesn't seem like it, and bring a curiosity to it. Just explore it.
The question to contemplate is: am I aware?
"Am I aware?" and "How do I know?" Does it require you to think to know that you're aware? Explore those kinds of questions.
Thank you.
You're welcome.