Not Two -- Thought is Awareness

You don’t have to stop thinking to realize enlightenment. Thinking is an aspect of reality. It is form, just as a tree, a desk, or a body is form. Form is temporary and illusory. It comes and goes. As a physicist will verify, form is essentially 99% empty.

Thus, form is formlessness and formlessness is form. Thought is awareness and awareness is thought. Sound is silence and silence is sound. There is nothing wrong with holding, “form is formlessness and formlessness is form” as a view. As Buddha said, it is the “right view.” But don’t try to grasp the view intellectually only. Just look to where these words are pointing. Look in your direct experience. In reality, there are not two here. Enlightenment is merely pointing to reality itself. To deny thought would be to deny an aspect of reality, which means to deny reality itself. Besides, who would seek to deny thought but the thought-based self?

As you can see, denying thought (form) is denying awareness itself. Denying thought would be like denying that you have a house or denying that the tree you are about to walk into is really there. Although form may be temporary and illusory, and none other than emptiness itself, it is still apparently here. It’s quite beautiful really. Thinking is an amazing tool. Don’t try to deny or suppress it. Just notice that it is none other than emptiness.

Let’s start with emptiness.

Instead of trying to suppress or deny anything, simply notice what is. Notice the nature of reality. Start by simply noticing that you are not who you take yourself to be. If you are like most, you take yourself to be a person separate from the rest of life. But what is a “person?” A person is a thought-based, time-bound self arising from an empty, nonconceptual awareness. You cannot know your name or any other attribute about this self without referencing memory (thought), which is the past. So everything you think about yourself is a past concept, learned, memorized, and assumed to be true. Everything you think about where you want to go or what you want to become is nothing more than a set of thoughts called “future.” Past and future constitute time. But if you look closely, past and future do not exist except in thought. From where you are right now, you cannot touch anything called past or future except through thinking. Even “now” is a concept of the mind. Your entire sense of being a separate self consists of thoughts of past, present, and future. Unless you are enjoying the story of the separate self completely, you are probably experiencing some level of struggle, suffering, dissatisfaction, self-centeredness, and/or seeking for something else. People tend to come to the search for enlightenment because, on some deep level, their lives feel superficial, painful, incomplete. They are seeking wholeness, Oneness, enlightenment, but they don’t know where to look. To continue to look only in thought is the delusion. The story of past, present, and future streaming through your head is a story of you, a story of self-centeredness. Because it is all about you, it is massively incomplete and lacking. It gives the false impression that you are somehow separate from the rest of life. To continue to consult that thought-based story is to continue to wallow in your own self-centeredness--to stay stuck in delusion.

That story of you arises in an emptiness or nonconceptual awareness. Take a moment to simply verify in your direct experience that there is a timeless awareness here that is awake now. It is always awake and empty. It is here whether there are thoughts arising in it or whether you are asleep. It never leaves you because it is you. The “person”—that is, the thought-based, time-bound self you take yourself to be—arises within that emptiness. In fact, everything arises in that emptiness including every thought, emotion, experience, state, event, situation, tree, apple, and planet. This awareness is purely empty. It has no qualities. It has no beginning or end. It is not either good or bad, right or wrong, here or there. It is nondual. Your entire story, your body, and everything else that happens to "you" are merely objects appearing from and disappearing back into this timeless, nonconceptual emptiness or awareness.

Simply take little moments to stop and verify this nonconceptual awareness whenever possible. It takes no time to verify it. In fact, if you are trying to reach it in time, you are thinking. You are back in the thought-based, time-bound story of you. This nonconceptual awareness is not thought (hence, the term “nonconceptual”). This awareness is awake right now. It is always and already present. That awareness is prior to anything you think about yourself or life or even about the awareness itself. It is your fundamental nature. Taking little moments, as often as possible, to verify this awareness allows a permanent shift or seeing that you are not a set of thoughts or a time-bound story. You are not even the body or the mind. You are the emptiness in which everything arises and falls.

When that seeing takes place, you will know it. It is unmistakable. It is totally peaceful and still. There will be a clear seeing that who you are is not that thought-based, time-bound self. That seeing will see right through that self. This is why you often hear the pointer “no self” in non-duality teachings.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to suppress thought. Allow thought to arise. Simply notice that it arises in this nonconceptual awareness. This nonconceptual awareness self-liberates any self-centered thinking. By “self-liberate” I mean that it frees any hidden remnants of the ego that are lurking around even “after” you realize nonconceptual awareness. Let those thoughts arise. Let every thought, feeling, experience, and event happen. Face everything. Let everything come into the light of this awareness. That is how you see that form is formlessness and formlessness is form.

If you try to suppress thought, all sorts of weird things can happen. You can unconsciously but strongly identify with the idea that you are emptiness, which becomes just like any other fixed position (it causes separation). You can even make non-duality into a religion. When you find yourself defending emptiness or defending your conception of non-duality, or associating only with those that agree with you, you know you are stuck.

In denying thought, you deny parts of the world, parts of reality. You say there is nothing happening, which is true in the absolute sense. Meanwhile, the world of form is arising from emptiness. Nothing is appearing as everything. Don’t get stuck in the nothingness, which means don’t make nothing into an idea that you attach to and make a new self out of.

Even once emptiness is realized, views and thoughts will continue. You will have an interpretation of what is happening. You might call it enlightenment, awareness, God, Oneness, or something else. Let that interpretation arise. But don’t get attached to your interpretation. The energy of the dream self loves to attach to ideas. In fact, the dream self is attachment to form (thought, emotion, experiences). So it is very tempting to make a self out of a nondual realization. You believe “you” own it. This is just another story of self. Seeing it frees you from its grip. No one owns reality.

True liberation is being stuck in neither form nor formlessness. It is seeing that the emptiness that you truly are is appearing as every view. It includes every view. It learns from every view. It does not dismiss the content of thought. The belief that “all judgment is bad” is just another judgment. Don’t fall into the trap. There is nothing wrong with thought. The separate dream self comes into existence when there is attachment to a fixed position, no matter what it is. Thought itself is beautiful and useful. It is none other than the emptiness. Liberation is seeing that there are not two here and then living that fully, not being stuck in any apparent duality (including the duality of nothing v. everything, relative v. absolute, separation v. Oneness, thought v. awareness).