There is a point on the path where awareness can feel like the answer. It feels open, vast, untouched, free of the turbulence of experience. It can even feel final.
But sometimes that very move into awareness becomes the sticking point. What seemed like liberation starts to carry a subtle tension. Something in it feels slightly off, slightly held, slightly removed from the immediacy of life.
The awareness trap is subtle because it does not usually look like avoidance. It can look spiritual. It can look mature. It can look like clarity. And yet there can still be a position in it, a place from which experience is being known rather than fully lived.
What follows is a careful exploration of that position: what it is, why it can feel so convincing, why moving beyond it may feel disorienting or even frightening, and how to investigate it directly without turning the inquiry into more thought.
A Viewer Question About Stabilizing Non-Dual Awakening
I got a really good viewer question from Seth of Life. He wrote:
“I believe you are describing stabilizing non-dual awakening.” This was in response to the video Emptiness: Not What the Mind Thinks It Is.
Then he says, “I’ve not had non-dual realization, only first awakening. I, however, cannot seem to loosen the position of being in awareness. Not sure where to go from here.”
I’ve talked about this a few different times in different ways. If you want another angle on it, there is also a video called The Awareness Trap. That may be a helpful resource.
But first, it is actually very good that you see this. You see that fixation with awareness itself, with being aware, with awareness as such. You sense that something about it feels off, or that it has become a sticking place. That is important, because not everybody sees this.
It can be very tricky because there is something about what I’ll call pulling back into awareness, or reifying awareness, or reifying awareness as a ground of experience, that feels final. Not because you are doing it on purpose, and not because you are consciously choosing to do it. It is experiential. It is really a stage of realization. But it can feel complete in a way that makes it hard to question.
There is also something about it that feels untouchable. So part of us may not want to take the next step. That is not always obvious to the practitioner, because it can seem detached from shadow work or trauma work. But often that is exactly what is stirring deep inside.
Why the Position of Awareness Can Feel So Stable
When you fully reassociate, and by reassociate I mean wake up to realize the non-dual nature of everything, you begin to sense that there is nowhere left to hide.
Everything becomes full-on. There is no awareness to hide back in, even though you may not feel like you are hiding. There is no awareness to reify. There is no background state. There is no watcher state. It all collapses into pure luminous experience.
That sounds great, and sometimes it is. But it is not always equanimous and blissful the first time you experience it. Sometimes it is the opposite.
It can feel very scary, because what you sense is that your inner world is about to go away. The stance of awareness, that vast formless awareness that feels free of everything, seems to be disappearing.
What is not recognized early on is that this experience of awareness is itself an inner-world experience. It does not feel that way, but that is essentially what remains. What remains is that first movement of dissociation that happens very young, before we have any idea what is happening.
So the experience of awareness as its own substratum is an illusion.
When Awareness Collapses Into Direct Experience
When that collapses into the luminous immediacy of sensation, sound, movement, all of it, there is a simultaneous intensity and directness. Whether that feels beautiful or terrifying can depend a lot on the moment.
If the conditions are ripe for total surrender, it can feel amazing. If there is fear, anxiety, or some movement that is still trying to hold back, it can feel terrifying, because there is no more holding back.
There is nowhere to run. There is no self to hide in. There is no background awareness. There is just full-on experience.
And so you become everything. You become the full-on experience itself, and there is no room for “you” in that experience.
That can be deeply uncomfortable at first. But people do adjust to it. Usually they adjust quite well, and often quite quickly. Still, the first time it happens there can be a massive recoil. I have seen that many times, even in people who are very deeply realized. This is not only about early glimpses. It can happen after awakening, after deeper work, after shadow work, and after very deep insight.
That is the background for the answer I want to give.
The First Practical Inquiry: What Are You Actually Pointing To?
More precisely, how do you work with this?
You described it as a position of being in awareness. So first, look at that in a very simple and practical way.
When you say “awareness,” look directly into your experience and ask: what am I actually pointing to?
If the mind answers, “It’s awareness. It’s formless awareness. That’s what I’m pointing to,” then clearly that is a thought. That is definitely a thought.
So what are you actually pointing to?
Look closely.
You may find that what is being pointed to is a more vague, imagined experience, maybe blackness or transparency. You may even have a mental image that has become a kind of moniker for this experience. I am not saying the experience is just a mental image. I am saying that a mental image can become a placeholder for it. That is one of the ways reification happens. We reify through placeholders, even subtle ones, even non-conceptual thoughts.
So really look at the texture of that feeling of awareness.
Also look at the feeling of wanting to hold onto it. This is especially worth pointing out when someone feels resistant to this message. Notice the resistance itself. Where there is smoke, there is fire. Something is there. So why can’t you let go of that?
The Protective Function of “Being in Awareness”
It is a position, but it does not feel like a position, because it feels like what you have always used to protect yourself. It feels like what you have always used to pull back and assess experience, assess the moment, or create space from what is happening.
Now it appears in a much purer form. It does not require thinking, but it is still the substratum for thought, conceptuality, and even non-conceptuality.
So notice that carefully.
What is it you are actually referring to when you talk about awareness?
Do not answer conceptually.
Then ask: where is that?
Where is that actually?
If the mind says, “It’s nowhere,” or “It’s everywhere,” or “It’s everything and nothing,” or gives you some polished non-dual answer you have heard before, notice again that those are thoughts. Those are just thoughts.
Where is it?
Really look with precision.
This is one of those pointers that can be very powerful, but it can also be overlooked if you do not slow down and really examine the experience directly.
If this pulls you into analysis, into thinking about dharma principles, into philosophy or frameworks, then that is not the move I am talking about here.
Really look.
Does Awareness Actually Stand on Its Own?
Take the awareness-experience itself in the most raw form and ask: where precisely is this being experienced?
Then notice something even more subtle: where could you even look for it?
And what is the looking itself?
What is this looking for awareness?
That is it.
In one sense, the looking is the awareness. So awareness is never going to find itself as an object. But the looking is still valuable.
The question is not whether awareness can become an object. The question is whether awareness actually stands on its own.
Where would that be?
What is the actual experience being pointed to by all this terminology: awareness, formless awareness, background awareness, and so on?
What is that language actually pointing to in direct experience?
This is a valuable practice. It is subtle and slippery, but if you can stay out of conceptualizing and retain some genuine curiosity, it can be fruitful.
Again, become curious about where you are looking, what you are looking in, and what it would even mean to find awareness.
Be patient. Look with precision. Do not look conceptually.
You may feel frustration when doing this. You may feel as if, for some reason, you cannot actually do it, even though the mind insists you should be able to. That is fine. Stay with the directness of the inquiry.
The Second Practical Inquiry: Start With the Sense Fields
That first inquiry may be enough. It may be exactly what resonates, or it may help you discover your own subtle variation of it.
But there is another approach.
Notice the sense fields. Notice the clarity of the sense fields, beginning with sound.
As the Buddha points out in the Bahiya Sutta, in the heard there is only the heard. In the seen there is only the seen.
So notice what is in the sound field. Just the pure sound.
Then ask: from here, where do you go to experience awareness of the sound?
That is the question.
From the direct experience of sound, where do you go to experience awareness of it?
Look with precision.
Then do the same with sensation.
From Pure Sound to Non-Dual Directness
When sound or sensation begin to clarify, you can also do this with the visual field. That tends to be trickier. The visual field more easily pulls the mind into analysis, thought, and perceptual interpretation. So be aware of that.
But the basic approach is simple.
Start with sound. Tune into what is heard. Maybe use music if that helps you drop into the sound field more fully. Maybe it is easier in nature, near a waterfall or in the forest. Or maybe it is just the ambient sound around you right now.
Eventually it will not matter. You will stop making such a strong distinction between “natural” and “unnatural.” The sound of cars, the sound of water, the sound of whatever is happening around you: it is all sound. It is all non-dual.
So begin with sound.
Tune in.
Just what is heard there.
And then ask: where are you going to move attention in order to find the awareness of the sound?
That is the inquiry.
Let me know how that goes.