What is Awareness of Reality?

     Human beings have various attributes. For instance, we all have a head, a brain, a mouth, a heart. We also all have consciousness, or at least anyone who reads this does.

     Consciousness is not an unimportant human attribute. It is our experience of life. Every individual has one's own experience, our subjectivity. The experience of a person is not observable by others. Behavior, of course, is observable. Every person experiences one's own behavior, as well as the behavior of others, and of all objects. We have a unique perspective on our own behavior. Only we personally are able to compare our conscious experience with our behavior. Only we experience our motivations, intentions, perceptions. We are the only ones who can really say "what we knew, and when we knew it."

     In fact, consciousness is the most important human attribute. Our experience is our life, although we know that our body is the vehicle of our experience. It appears logically that when our hearts stop, our experience must stop. We really don't want to accept that. Awareness of reality is the path of discovery of what one is. It is stepping across the frontier and into now, into the realm of the Uncertainty Principle, where no dogma guides or limits us at that moment.

     Any choice about anything depends on our consciousness-what to do, next week or right now; what to think; how I should feel about anything; and the essence of free will, how I should direct my attention. So it is very remarkable how little attention this basic reality of ours receives. We just take our consciousness for granted. We pay attention to everything else.

     I wish to consider this question: am I aware of reality? If I am awake, conscious, then I am aware of something, I am having experience. But am I aware of reality?

     What is reality, for me? Reality is present, both the present moment and present experience. It is that which I am presently experiencing. Reality is whole, the totality of my present experience. Awareness of reality must be simultaneous with one's present experience and it must be impartial, that is, whole.

     It is immediately apparent that any kind of thought about or description of reality does not meet these criteria. And our thought about our lives is dominant in our consciousness, much more dominant than we realize. Our consciousness is totally entangled with our stories about who we are, where we are, what is going on, what we hope for, what we hope to avoid, etc., etc. Those stories are actually confused with and called reality. And if anyone asks what reality is, we are compelled to answer with a story, if we respond verbally. According to legend, the great Zen masters responded otherwise on occasion. Storytelling is the nature of language. Nobody is suggesting that we should try to forget language, undoubtedly the greatest of human inventions. But there is no requirement that our consciousness has to be completely fascinated and hypnotized by these stories that we tell others and others tell us, even if they continue to run through our mind constantly, most often automatically and unconsciously, maybe in the form of fantasy. We don't have to pay attention to these thoughts of ours. They are just little aspects of our present reality. Our world does not revolve around our thoughts, even if we imagine that it does.

     In order to understand what awareness of reality is, one has to have some experience of this kind of awareness. Fortunately, we do, but this experience is exceptional and we usually ignore it. For example, a physical accident of some kind such as a fall may produce awareness at that moment. Any situation in which intense alertness is required may produce moments of awareness of reality, such as combat or childbirth, or skydiving, bungee jumping or extreme surfing. This kind of experience may be precipitated by an unusual train of thought, an unusual perception, very intense physical effort, or spiritual exaltation. L.S.D. and similar drugs can produce awareness of reality.

     We really don't know what to make of such accidental experiences. This practice is about the possibility of an alchemical transformation of our consciousness, transmuting the lead that we have into the gold that we need. Awareness of reality is the Philosophers' Stone.