The Liberating Power of Understanding

What is it that enables our experience to be known, irrespective of its content? Whatever knows our thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions is not itself a thought, feeling, sensation or perception. Whatever it is, we call it ‘I’. Be interested in this that knows. In other words, be interested in your self. The fact of knowing has not suddenly appeared through this exploration, it is always present, shining, aware. But we normally become so entangled in content that we overlook or forget our self. Meditation is just remembering our self, the fact of simply knowing, and abiding as that awareness, which does not need to be maintained by practise or effort. Just as the same sun unaffectedly illuminates all events and objects on earth, however wonderful, terrible or neutral, so the same awareness unaffectedly illuminates all experience content, whether true, false, pleasant, unpleasant, painful, kind or unkind. Feel the liberating power of this understanding.

What is it that enables our experience to be known, irrespective of its content? Whatever knows our thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions is not itself a thought, feeling, sensation or perception. Whatever it is, we call it ‘I’. Be interested in this that knows. In other words, be interested in your self. The fact of knowing has not suddenly appeared through this exploration, it is always present, shining, aware. But we normally become so entangled in content that we overlook or forget our self. Meditation is just remembering our self, the fact of simply knowing, and abiding as that awareness, which does not need to be maintained by practise or effort. Just as the same sun unaffectedly illuminates all events and objects on earth, however wonderful, terrible or neutral, so the same awareness unaffectedly illuminates all experience content, whether true, false, pleasant, unpleasant, painful, kind or unkind. Feel the liberating power of this understanding.