I don’t have to meditate to increase awareness; if I set my intention to do so, it can happen no matter what is going on. Traditionally, meditation is seen as the best way to enhance reflection on thinking patterns. When still, one naturally notices thoughts drifting through the mind and can observe them, rather than automatically act on them.
Through meditation, I experience varying types of awareness. In my drawing, Meditation Textures, I symbolize these states of mind. In the left shoulder area, a bold texture represents normal awareness. I think something, analyze, judge, then decide to follow through with action. I disagree with someone and argue, trying to prove my point.
Meditative awareness is a second way to perceive mental activity. To experience this, I don’t act on thoughts, don’t try to change thoughts or make them disappear; I simply turn toward a thought with awareness, such as, “There’s a thought. Oh, there’s another thought.” I don’t analyze, interpret or judge them, simply observe them. Varying thoughts will come and go since the mind‘s job is to produce these thoughts. But I can choose whether or not to identify with the thought. When I let go of thoughts, I gain steadiness and clarity. I become aware of the observation process: in other words, I become aware of being aware. Recognition of awareness naturally brings calm. I gain confidence in the ability to work through difficulties in life.
In my drawing Meditative Textures, I depict meditative awareness with the tiny curved lines from the shoulders down to the feet: they symbolize the tingling sensation I experience throughout my body that I feel in meditative awareness, an inner vibration. In my meditation group, everyone experiences meditative awareness differently: one feels joy, another feels in tune with prayerfulness, another feels like she’s floating. But each of us realizes the steadying calm within us, producing peace, stability and connection to basic goodness.
The next type of awareness is called pure awareness or direct realization. When I gaze at a fire or clouds or the ocean, if I let go of stereotyped thinking, I can get to a point where the movement and soft crackling of flames absorb me into its language, or I see funny faces or running dogs in the clouds or I’m mesmerized by the color and sound of ocean waves. Mentally, I become one with the fire or clouds or sea. In meditation, I lose all sense of time and become absorbed in a spaciousness I can’t define, but am part of, in harmony.
The empty places in my drawing Meditative Textures, in the head and the left knee and leg, symbolize pure awareness. Anything cerebral such as awareness is associated with the head, so my use of the head as empty space to depict direct realization makes sense. But, why include the knee and leg? For me awareness is a bodily experience, not just mental. Many meditation teachers show us that the body is the portal to deeper states of consciousness. This is the case with me, so I honor my body as a source for pure awareness.
In my examples of pure awareness, I use fire, clouds and the ocean, to show that the highest states of consciousness are available to all at any time. The most powerful tool we have is to set our intention to become more aware. Once set, ordinary activities are catalysts for deeper awareness, for observing our thoughts, for being calm and able to work through hardships, feeling close to the good in life.
