What You Are Is Unharmed
Lo Que Eres Está Ileso
The teacher speaks directly to a student about the nature of awareness, pointing out that what we fundamentally are remains untouched by even the deepest pain, and the student describes the tension between hearing this and resisting it.
What You Are Is Unharmed
The teacher speaks directly to a student about the nature of awareness, pointing out that what we fundamentally are remains untouched by even the deepest pain, and the student describes the tension between hearing this and resisting it.
What you are is aware right now. You're hearing me. You experience sensations. You see, you hear, you have thoughts, you're aware of thoughts and emotions. That which knows all of this is what you are. That subjectivity, that sense of subjectivity, is what you are, and it is always unharmed by what is experienced.
There could be a tremendous amount of fear, stories of torment, of pain, but the knowing of it is always unharmed. That which knows the pain. That which knows the torment.
Before you are in torment, you're aware. During torment, you're aware. After torment, you're aware. That which goes unchanged and unaffected. That which is the same now as it was when you were a child. That knowing is also what knows you, and it is completely unharmed. It is completely okay with what's happening.
The truth as possibility
It takes time for what I'm describing as a truth to become your own understanding, to understand that that is where you are and that it is completely safe. I'm naming it, but I'm offering it for you to take as a possibility of something being true now: that what you are is completely okay and completely unharmed. The depth of torment that might come, that has come, that might come again, the pain, the fear, the heartbreak, the agonizing contraction: that which knows it is untouched. You are less the contraction and more the knowing of it. You are less the pain and more the knowing of it. That which is hearing now, what's seeing now, what's forming a little bit of a smile now.
I can feel that I'm fighting that. A part of me fights it, but then there's a subtle thing in the background that doesn't fight it. It's not exactly a part of me, but it's always a relief to hear. There's always a relief. And yet I can feel defense after defense, my mind saying things like, "I'll take your word for it." But even as that was happening, it was like trying to relax into it.
Don't take my word for it. Take it as a "what if" and then explore it yourself. I often say: just give it the benefit of the doubt that it's how I'm saying, but don't buy into it. Don't turn it into a belief, because that won't be useful. Just let 51 percent of you be open to it.
The rhythm of contraction and expansion
What we are describing is a back-and-forth bouncing. We contract, we expand, we contract, we expand. We resist, we deny, then we see and recognize, and then we resist and deny again. But over time, if we keep looking, if we persevere and remain committed to seeing truth and knowing reality, the balance shifts.