After considering my original version of the Practicum section, I decided I wanted to de-emphasize concepts and focus more on physical sensations and emotional experiences. I include some of the discarded bits here for those who might enjoy incorporating these “headier” ideas into their practice. Cheers!
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Have you ever experienced anything that was not a thought, feeling, sensation or perception? Of course not. The entirety of your experience is composed of your awareness of thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions.
Have you ever experienced anything that did not occur in your awareness of it? Of course not. Every thought, feeling sensation and perception you have ever experienced has occurred in your awareness.
Who is aware? That quality of awareness, of being aware. Who is that?
The name we give to that which is aware is “I”.
Is the I/awareness that you are now a different I/awareness than the I/awareness that you were 5 minutes ago? That which you are aware of may have changed, the focus of your awareness may have changed, but is it still the same awareness? What about the awareness that you were a year ago, or when you were a child?
Notice that the depth and focus of awareness may change, the subject or contents of awareness may change, but you are still the same awareness. I/awareness as a child, I/awareness a year ago, and I/awareness when you started reading this sentence is always the same awareness. The contents of awareness change and come and go, but awareness remains constant and eternal.
When does experience take place? When does awareness happen? Can awareness visit the past or the future? You can remember the past, you can think about the future, but when is your awareness of them taking place?
Awareness is always happening Now. Everything you experience, everything in your awareness is always happening right now. Everything you have ever experienced and ever will experience will happen right now.
How long is Now? When you woke up at the start of your day, it was Now. When you started reading this sentence it was Now. Was that a different Now from the Now that is happening Now? If so, what is that difference? When did that Now end and this Now begin? How many Nows have you experienced today? Were there many? Or do you always experience just one Now, the contents of which appear to change? You don’t have to think about this – your experience is taking place right now, so you can investigate it at this moment.
If there is no difference, then Now, and thus also awareness is timeless, and does not share the limits of any particular time at which it is present. It has no beginning and no end, it doesn’t start and stop. There is only one Now. It is the only Now that exists or has ever existed or ever will exist. Now did not come from somewhere, it did not travel along an infinite timeline to arrive here, and it is not going anywhere. Now is still. Now is eternal.
Notice what happens when you think about Now. Can you think about something that is not a discreet moment in time, but rather ever-present, timeless, formless and limitless?
Notice that when you try to think about something that is not something that thinking about it always makes it into something. Even thinking about it as “nothing” is giving it the quality of a thing called “nothing”. Thinking about something that is actually nothing thus confers upon nothing the qualities of an object – thought objectifies.
Notice that thinking about Now turns it into something. You can’t think about Now without giving it some kind of form or quality, such as duration. You will also inevitably think of now against some sort of background or in relation to something, such as thinking of Now as opposed to “then”. In other words, thought turns the eternity of Now into time. Time is thus an objective illusion created by the action of thought placing limits on eternity. Time is the objectification of Now through the action of thought.
There is an alternative to the objectification of Now, and that is to simply let it be. Try this now, or rather, stop trying now. Let go of the habit of making Now into time and just allow Now to be Now. Allow yourself to simply be aware.
Notice that if you stop objectifying Now and just experience Now as it is, thought comes to an end, or rather, thought might continue, but like the train leaving the station, it no longer carries you, you are free to just be.