Object Consciousness versus Pure Awareness

The world of duality that most people focus on is one of object consciousness. Physical items, thoughts, accomplishments, and other people are seen as things to be observed, acquired, or avoided. This way of viewing the world is based on thought, and it is what causes desire and fear.

We are pure nondual awareness. We don’t have to think. We can put thoughts aside, thereby exiting object consciousness. Our beingness, awareness, true self, or whatever you want to call it, is simply aware; it does not need to think or to focus on objects.

This is a difficult concept to grasp when our entire lives have been an exercise in thinking. For example, in school, every class we took taught us to think. There was no class called Not Thinking 101. We are so used to expending effort in thinking that we don’t realize that not thinking is easier than thinking, or even that we’re doing it.

When we stop thinking and sit in pure awareness, we begin to discover who we really are.

We cannot “attain” pure awareness by trying not to think or by any sort of effort, for the following reasons:

• We are pure awareness. We cannot become what we already are!
• When we try to attain something, we are in object consciousness, so trying to attain awareness is an attempt to make awareness an object.
• We use our mind when we try to attain something, and since the mind is an object, all it can possibly understand is object consciousness. It can never fathom pure awareness, the true self, or the absence of thought.