Take a moment to stretch up and settle in.
Wherever you are,
Whatever you're doing or not doing,
Just take a moment to land.
And notice in this moment that you are experiencing experience.
You're experiencing life.
You're aware of sights,
Sounds,
Sensations in the body,
Commotion in the world.
It doesn't matter if you're at a park walking around just taking in the noise and the activity of life,
Or if you're shut away somewhere private with your eyes closed in meditation.
Whatever the case may be,
You're experiencing experience right now.
And what is it that experiences experience but awareness?
Without awareness,
There'd be no experience to experience because we wouldn't be aware of experience.
Just appreciate in this moment,
Whatever the surface structures,
The shapes,
Forms,
Flow,
Specific content of experience in this moment,
It is awareness,
Aware presence that makes this experience possible at all.
And now go back to the same time yesterday,
24 hours ago.
And if you're anything like me,
You're already starting to puzzle,
Huh,
What happened 24 hours ago?
I can't remember half the details.
And that's exactly right.
Twenty-four hours ago,
Whatever you're able to remember about your experience,
The fact is that 24 hours ago,
Awareness was experiencing experience.
Whatever the details,
Whatever the specific content of awareness 24 hours ago,
Awareness was present,
Awareness was experiencing.
Otherwise nothing would have happened,
Nothing would have appeared to exist at all.
It would have been an utter void.
But as the case is,
You were experiencing experience.
What about five years ago?
Where were you in life five years ago?
What were you doing,
What was happening?
You can start to call up details,
In fact it can be fun to do this,
Pleasurable,
Maybe painful but certainly interesting.
Five years ago,
Where did you live?
Who was in your life?
What filled your heart with hope five years ago?
What were you afraid of at this time,
Exactly five years ago today?
And again,
Most of us can only remember a fraction of the details,
The content of experience,
But what we can be very confident in is that five years ago from this moment,
Awareness was aware,
Experiencing experience.
You're starting to see a pattern.
Wherever we go,
Whatever experience is arising,
Here we are,
Aware presence,
Taking it all in.
About ten years ago,
Ten years ago,
Where were you?
What was happening?
Where did you live?
Who was in your life?
What music were you listening to?
What did you do for exercise?
What did you eat?
What longing was in your heart?
And what did you set your heart ten years ago?
What did you worry about?
What were you anxious about,
Afraid of maybe?
Notice that you can call up impressions,
Impressions that experience left on the body-mind,
Impressions that were left because awareness is aware.
And what about at the moment of your birth,
Whenever that was,
However many years ago,
Because the human brain doesn't start to encode explicit memories until at least a couple years after birth,
Usually longer,
You probably don't have any images,
Although there could be some interesting exceptions to this rule.
You probably don't have any explicit memories about birth,
But no question that the experience of birth left a great impression on you,
This radical change in environment from the warm darkness,
Steady comfort and holding of the womb to a world of bright lights,
Sharp edges.
There's no doubt that this experience left impressions on every cell of your body.
And the experience of birth left impressions in every cell of your body because awareness was aware,
The cells were aware and awake and alive.
And even at the moment of your birth,
As in this moment right now,
Aware presence is aware,
Experiencing what's arising.
Who were you?
What were you 100 years ago from this moment?
Don't seek recourse and understanding in the thinking mind.
The thinking mind will just imagine and make things up.
But at the level of aware presence,
As aware presence,
Ask yourself where,
Who,
What were you 100 years ago from this moment?
Go back to the time before your parents were born as aware presence.
What are you aware of in the moment before your own parents were born?
Don't think,
Just feel.
If aware presence gets captured in this moment by thoughts arising,
Feelings and so forth,
That's fine.
Just notice and practice relaxing.
Practice letting go.
Not trying to focus on this or that,
But just resting in and as aware presence.
Breathing as your original faith,
Original identity,
Before aware presence started to become aware of a body mind born into the world.
Now let's Commander.
Just keep relaxing,
Keep falling back.
There's nothing to know,
There's nothing to figure out.
You're just resting,
Just being in your natural state.
Before a thought arises,
Before an experience arises,
Before a human life arises.
Show me your original faith.
You're just resting,
You're just being in your natural state.
You're just resting,
You're just being in your natural state.
What about your original faith a thousand years from now?
Experience will still be arising.
As a aware presence,
We will still be aware.
Whatever content arising,
Whatever the nature of experience on whatever planets and solar systems and galaxies.
What about a thousand years from now?
A billion years from now?
How do you feel resting in your essence,
As your essence?
As essence.
As essence.
As essence.
As essence.
