This week I've been feeling a shift in my practice. An awareness of awareness at an almost machine like level. When the spine is straight, energy flows naturally, the belly fills with oxygen like a reservoir and vitality thaws and then runs hot. It is the technology of the soul. It is the mechanism of liberation.
I understand it. I see it. Why is it so hard to make it permanent? Why can't I just be free. Free of suffering financial anxiety, loneliness, self-hatred. Why is that part still so hard?
Because I don't believe in it. I don't believe it's possible. Or because I feel I would have to give up something for that belief. To be truly free, I would have to renounce things. I would have to renounce the belief that lasting happiness is found in money, success, fame.
Another reason that it's hard is because that level of pure awareness takes commitment. I feel it because I've been practising for an hour in the morning and evening. To keep it up, I would have to maintain that level of practice and commitment.
What I want is effortless liberation, but to get there I have to expend the effort of commitment. Endure productive discomfort, make commitment the driving force in my life, not desire.
Without that commitment, awareness has no foundation. Motivation is always going to be fluctuating, and so will happiness.
The foundation to happiness and liberation is awareness, the profound, pervasive presence of awareness. And awareness I can feel. An awareness that has an energy and force and power of it's own. An awareness that is committed to me, and that I can only perceive when I am committed to it.
