Tracing Back to Your True Nature

If lost in experience, ask: ‘What is aware of my experience?’ Whatever knows your thoughts isn’t itself a thought. Don’t seek this with your mind – anything found would be an object. Your mind can only go towards objects, not towards your essence; it can only relax back into awareness. Like actor John Smith playing King Lear, we derive selfhood from awareness but personhood from experience. King Lear traces back to his true nature: ‘I’m not my thoughts; I’m what’s aware of them’. Some teachings use intermediary steps – focusing on breath or mantra – recognising the mind’s habit of attending to experience is strong. This steadies the mind before stepping back to awareness. In this approach, we go directly back: ‘What am I in the absence of thinking?’ Each return erodes old habits until you make your home in being, no longer visiting briefly but living there, where causeless peace rises from within.