Open Aware Presence

We are far more than all the surface things that seem to define and divide us (name, age, gender, race, nationality, ideology), all of which are appearances. They may seem solid and real, but all apparently formed things are like waves in the ocean—evanescent, ever-changing, inseparable movements of a seamless, undivided whole.

If we search for the self that we think is supposedly authoring our thoughts, making our choices, and looking out through our eyes, we cannot actually find any such entity. At our core, we find only an empty, open, spacious, awareness.

The character we play in the movie of waking life appears in this vast openness, as do all the other characters and all the dramas of everyday life and the entire universe. Awareness is wholeness, beholding everything from unconditional love rather than partiality and judgment. In awareness, there is no separation, no division, no inside, no outside, no other.

This loving awareness is most intimate, closer than close, and at the same time, boundless and limitless—uncontained, formless, shapeless, timeless, infinite and eternal—it is the groundless ground of being. It shows up in infinitely diverse, playful and sometimes challenging ways, ever-changing in appearance while never departing from the ever-present immediacy of right here, right now.

When we are hypnotized by the thought-sense of being small and separate from the rest of life, feelings of deficiency, anxiety and dissatisfaction inevitably follow. We search for certainty and something to grasp. But in holding on to nothing at all, there is immense openness and freedom.

What is offered here invites firsthand exploration and direct discovery, not belief or dogma. There is no finish-line, no method, no future goal, only this one bottomless moment and this ever-fresh aliveness.