Lesson 18 – Happiness is found in trusting Awareness



Hey Friends—welcome back! This lesson is titled Happiness is Found in Trusting Awareness.

When I talk about “seeking,” I am not addressing the undeniable impulse of Creation calling to all of its portions to seek more of its own Creator, to seek more of its own union, to seek more of its own potential, to manifest more of its own potential, and so on. We cannot get rid of this; it is a beautiful impulse we generally call “desire.”

Desire is a beautiful force and it is meant to be part of life. In fact, the Absolute One has the desire to generate experience of itself; otherwise this manifestation would not be. So, even the Absolute has desire. Desire is an absolutely primal force of Creation.

When I talk about seeking, I’m referring to that excessive, overly-intellectualized attempt or need—the neediness—to find a sense of ease, to find a sense of being soothed, to find well-being inside of things, ideas, concepts, practices, religions, spirituality, teachers, and teachings. Seeking inside of ideas cannot, by definition, give you what you’re looking for.

By “seeking,” I mean the relentless, helpless, hopeless seeking that has no fruition, that has no accomplishment, that has no true result or benefit, other than when the seeking becomes so exhausting that it stops, because it can’t sustain itself; because it recognizes that the chase is illusory.

So, let’s take the short cut so you don’t have to burn out completely. Let us continue to address the idea of seeking through the understanding that what you are seeking is, in fact, already present in Awareness.

Things only gain their Beingness from Awareness, as we saw in the previous lesson. No thing has Beingness of its own; only Awareness, or Existence, gives Beingness to appearances.

What You Are Seeking Is Already Present in Awareness

Appearances don’t exist in-and-of themselves. Only Awareness generates perceptions. That is all there is in this universe—Awareness generating perceptions of itself in a certain way, in a certain configuration of energy.

Given the fact that Awareness is all there is—generating perception inside of its own cognizance, inside of its own intelligence, using its own energy, its own Presence Energy—we can also understand that Happiness is found in Awareness because everything is found in Awareness.

The end of seeking is found in Awareness because everything is found in Awareness. Everything is found and founded by Awareness.

So, Happiness is found specifically in trusting Awareness, or in relying on Awareness, or in resting in Awareness. These are all the same thing, but from a different angle.

First of all, for this lesson, I want you to attempt to understand that, to some extent, you are most probably seeking. If you are not, that is absolutely great and you can ignore these words, but let us assume that you are seeking for greater Happiness.

I want you to realize that the foundation of Happiness is found in the Changeless. It is found in the stability of knowing your own Being.

And what is your own Being? It is Beingness, or I-AM, or I-I, or I-Awareness. It is the spacious, empty, free container of the content that is generated out of I-AM or Presence Energy.

Happiness is found in I-AM and / or in I-I, because that is your True Being. I-AM and I-I are the changeless states of your Beingness. They can always be recognized because they refer to your actual Being itself, not to a particular state or configuration of energy. They refer to the actual I-Exist; to the actual existence of Awareness and Presence.

The Reset Button

You will always find the “Reset button” in Awareness and Presence. This is where focus starts. The Reset button is: “I am right here, I am right now; this has never left me.” It is about noticing your own Beingness, noticing your own Existence, noticing your own Awareness.

It is to be always already here, regardless of your thoughts, regardless of your emotions, regardless of your state of mind, regardless of the state of your circumstances, regardless of the state of your finances, regardless of what sensations may be going on, regardless of what other people think of you, regardless of other people’s feelings.

You are here right now, regardless of past and future, regardless even of the present. Awareness is always already the case. It is always already true. It is always already changelessly available and supportive to you, because it is who you actually are. It is you.

The first step to finding Happiness is to realize that, since you are the substratum of All-That-Is (and therefore you are All-That-Is), the only place to find it is obviously inside of yourself, which just so happens to be the only “place” that exists and the only place you have ever experienced.

Now, make that conscious. Start noticing and reflecting upon Awareness itself. Notice that, although Awareness does not have a feeling of its own—it is not limited to a feeling of its own—the formlessness, the essence of Awareness itself, tends to release certain types of qualities or feelings into the perceptive experience of yourself, into your sense of I-AM.

Some of these qualities are: ease, restfulness, relaxation, relief from your previous mental assumptions, a general state of peace, freedom, maybe even joy or bliss or excitement or ecstasy. These are what we would call ecstatically good feelings. By resting as Awareness, by trusting in Awareness, by relying on Awareness to be your source of happiness and joy and well-being, it will show up exactly as such.

Trust in Awareness, which is another way of saying: Place your attention on Awareness and know in your heart that this is where you will derive your stable, underlying, ever-present sense of “I am OK.”

You are even more than OK, but let’s at least gain that sense: “I am always OK, no matter what perceptions this Awareness generates within itself out of its own Beingness. Regardless of the perceptions that I-Awareness generates within my own view, I-as-Awareness will always be I-as-Awareness. And that is a restful, easy, soothing state of conscious recognition. I can always rely on my recognition, on my trust in Awareness.”

I want you to gain more trust in Awareness. Whenever you find yourself striving and seeking, rather than being excited about things—because that is amazing, that is great, that is the natural desire of life—when you feel you are getting stressful and anxious about attaining certain things or changing certain things or deleting or removing certain things from your life and so on, that is the perfect moment to hit the Reset button.

What is the Reset button? For 2 to 5 seconds (or more, if it naturally happens), absolutely clear the sky of your mind. Those 2 to 5 seconds generate enough of a state of clarity to see past the clouds and back into the Spaciousness of sky-like Awareness.

Trust that Reset button! Trust in Awareness. Trust that you find your absolute stable well-being in either I-I or I-AM, or in both—they are different flavors of the same Freedom, the same Changelessness, the same Always Already Here-ness of your True Existence.

Homework

The first part of the homework for this lesson is to write down any reason you can come up with that makes you not trust Awareness.

Next, write down all the ideas you have about where or how you will find Happiness in anything but resting as Awareness. Write down any ideas you might have regarding how or when you will find Happiness, what you will feel when you find Happiness, or what you are supposed to chase or achieve in order to find Happiness.

If you have any mistrust about Awareness providing for your Happiness, write this down too. Some of you may not have any mistrust. Or by now you may feel, “No, I no longer believe that is true. I believe the changelessness of the clarity of this Spaciousness can, at the very least, provide me with a fundamental sense of OK-ness.”

If you already believe that, then you will notice that, no matter what appears inside your Awareness, there are no mistrusting beliefs as to whether Awareness is able to provide your sense of, “I am beyond, I am free, I am happy, I am able to choose how I feel, I am rested, I am at ease, I am more than OK.”

In this case, you will have no mistrusting beliefs to write down. So instead, simply write down the ideas you have about how you believe you are going to achieve Enlightenment, or Happiness, or well-being or OK-ness, and the beliefs you have about: “It has to look like this,” or “I have to do that,” and such.

Write down these perceptions, these false assumptions. Write down whatever still remains of your tendency to seek for Happiness in the appearance of things—even though you have now realized, through previous lessons, that things only consist of you, so all you are searching for is more of yourself. And that can be found by resting as you already are—perfect.

Place your trust in Awareness, and as you write these things down, you will notice that something starts to shift. Just notice that shifting.

As you start writing down the things you are still seeking, notice that an ease comes upon you. That ease comes from noticing the silliness of chasing things, when you can have the absolute freedom of: “I am aware.”

Again (and this is very important), this does not mean you are to suppress your desires for certain things, even if those things are materialistic in nature. Desiring materialistic things is absolutely a part of the joy of the Creator expressing itself.

However, when it comes to seeking thoughts, such as, “If only I could change this—then I would be OK, then I would be happy, then I would be safe…” write those down. Those are the types of thoughts to write down.

You will start to see how silly those thoughts are because you will notice that there is an Awareness and a Spaciousness and an Ease that is already present and available to you as you write down all the reasons you are not yet happy; as you write down what that Happiness will look like when you find it; as you write down what you need to go through before you can actually establish it.

As you write down those cute and silly and sweet and logical reasons, you will notice they are actually not that “logical,” because what you are seeking for in these things is what is already looking at these things.

What is looking is looking for what is looking. So look back into the looking and be free.

Listen to this lesson a couple more times before your next lesson opens up, or before you choose to move on to the next lesson.

Continue to practice any of the Resting as Awareness meditations from the previous lessons. Do a couple of these meditations.

And as always, most importantly, keep inserting those 2-to-5 second moments—at least 12 times per day (ideally 25 or so times per day)—of recognizing the Clarity and the Freedom; the Spaciousness and the Emptiness of: “I am already OK right here as I-I, as Awareness.”

And I will see you in the next lesson. Have fun!

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