Being Aware of Awareness

Noticing The Space That Contains The World

What can looking around the space we're in teach us about having a more calm and settled mind?

Well I think quite a lot.

If you were to look around the space you're in now and just notice what you see, the chances are your eyes are going to be drawn to various objects.

I'm looking around a bit of woodland right now and what's instantly being noticed is trees and grass and the path ahead and if I look up I can see clouds.

But typically what we don't do is notice the space around these objects.

It's almost like there's us here, the object over there, and nothing else exists.

But if we were to think about that for a second, these objects that we see couldn't possibly exist if it weren't for the space around them that contains them.

The Silence That Contains The Sound

And it's the same with sounds.

In order for us to hear a sound and to know what it is, there first must have been a silence out of which that sound came.

If the silence wasn't there, we wouldn't have been able to perceive the sound in the first place.

And it's exactly the same with our thinking minds as well.

The Blank Landscape of The Mind

Most of the time when we're going through our days on automatic pilot and thoughts are just automatically arising in the mind, we can get very attached and identified and wrapped up in them.

And it can appear that those thoughts are all that exist.

But just like the space around an object, or the silence out of which a sound appears, thoughts can only arise out of a kind of blank canvas of the mind.

And this is what mindfulness helps us to connect with.

As we grow our awareness, what we're really doing is we're practicing taking the perspective of the space out of which all of our experience flows, and recognising that the space itself isn't caught up in what we're experiencing.

The space isn't the object, the silence isn't the sound, and that blank landscape of the mind isn't the thought.

So as we take the perspective of that space, it means that we can be with whatever arises without having to get caught up or overwhelmed by it.

Now I can fully appreciate that all this may sound a little bit odd if you've never practiced mindfulness before. But I can also assure you that it really doesn't take long to get the hang of this and for it to click.

But anyway, does this make sense to you? Is it clear or is it as clear as mud? Let me know down in the comments.