There will be times when you’re consumed by your own reactivity. The cacophony of voices in your head will cloud your vision and the tsunami of emotion will flood your heart. Lost and disoriented, you may reach for the nearest quick fix or withdraw beyond sight, opting for distraction and absence over braving the storms of your fragmented inner life.

Then there will be times when you’re able to hold it all. Amidst the chaos and confusion your seeing will penetrate the clouds and your presence will part the waves. No longer blinded by your own tempest, you’ll look gently into that dark night and your gaze will cast the first rays of light.

Through attention and devotion, you make contact with your true nature. Your attention relaxes. No longer fixated on thought and external stimuli, it comes to rest in its Source, which is Awareness itself. This peace of mind is reflected in the body as Loving Presence. As the body relaxes and lets Life in, the peace of Being floods the system. The breath deepens, the heart opens and your capacity to feel heightens. Slowly but surely you become the space – the container and the field – where healing takes place.

In moments of overwhelm, collapse and full blown reaction, there’s an invitation: 

You’re invited to notice that You are the Seer and not the seen.

In hindsight you’ll see that even though it felt as if you lost yourself, you were still there watching it all. So who (I might ask!) is this one who got lost? If you were the one watching it, who was the one kicking and screaming?

To notice that You Are Aware is to begin to carve out the space that’s needed for weathering such storms. At times it might feel as if awareness is all you have. As the waves crash against the shore of your inner world, you can hold fast to this life-raft: I Am Aware. Like the eye of the storm, you can rest as this silent centre as chaos erupts around you.

At other times, even this may seem like a tall order. Your attention will merge with the experience and it will seem as though you’re one with it. In those moments, you can inquire Who Is Aware? This inquiry serves to re-direct your attention from the experience to your awareness of it. This may forge just enough distance (between you and your experience) to break the spell of identification. This subtle inquiry (which is really just a catalyst to re-direct the attention) is essential and foundational for all inner work. 

Once your attention has sufficiently broken free from the content of experience:

You’re invited to notice that You are not separate from that which you see.

As the wind picks up and the rain falls, a sun appears on the horizon. Light filters through the dark clouds, illuminating the waves on the ocean. This sun is your inner eye – your capacity to witness this inner landscape. As your attention comes to rest as awareness, you notice the distance between You and that which you look upon. It’s this recognition of distance, which in truth is simply space, that allows you to turn towards your experience rather than being merged with it. In this direct meeting, you can notice how intimate you are with it. Not only do you see it but you also deeply feel it. In truth, there’s no actual distance between the one seeing and feeling and that which is seen and felt. They’re simply different aspects of the same fundamental reality. Even the space between you and everything you see is not empty. Rather than creating distance and division, space actually connects you to what you see. It’s almost as if your seeing is the space itself, gently reaching out to touch what it sees.

In this intimacy of seeing, where everything is recognised to be intimately connected to the one seeing it:

You’re invited to notice that You are the Holding Space for everything you see.

In this recognition of non-separation, there’s a natural impulse to make contact with what arises. When you’re intimate with your experience you can’t help but hold it with compassion, for you recognise that it’s inseparable from who you are. You discover that your very awareness can touch your experience in ways that transform it. Like a Mother with a child, even the softness of your gaze can soothe and revive.

When you turn towards the content of your experience – the physical, emotional, and mental layers – you can notice how all of these layers comprise a sense of someone, the identity itself. As you rest in the intimacy of your own Loving Presence, you can turn towards this ‘someone’. From the wholeness of your Being, you can see that this part of you is rooted in a misperception of separation. Caught in a fear-based narrative, it churns out physiological and emotional alarms, designed to defend the organism from threat or harm.

As Awareness infuses the body space and realises its intimacy with all of Life it becomes more than simply ‘aware’, it becomes Presence itself. We might describe Presence as embodied awareness – awareness that loves. Without Love, we are like flowers without sunlight. It’s this nectar that all pain cries out for, a nectar that’s freely given through your undivided attention and attuned presence. In this way, you can resolve all misunderstanding and dissolve all fear. In this way, you can bridge the gap of perceived separation between the false identity and who you truly are. In this way, you can come to know the Truth of your Being, and everything that lost its way can be touched, included and absorbed by this endless embrace.