When people apparently treat us, in one way or another harshly, it can be hard not to fall into the narrow identification of believing to be a separate person under attack. Our body becomes emotional, and our mind fills with defensiveness. Memories of being a child being told off may occur, reminding us of old traumatic moments. We may compound the unpleasant experience with feelings of shame that tries to hide these unpleasant feelings but only serve to close us down. At these times, we have to deal with our basic instinct to survive.

The three main activities of the separate Self are avoidance, excessiveness, and suppression. These lead to behaviours that seek a source of life-affirming qualities somewhere other than the present moment, which is where it truly is. They arise because the separate Self is illusory, defined as a separate mind and body, and equates happiness with bodily sensations and specific thoughts.

Understanding Oneness is about opening the possibility of a new way of living based on trust and love rather than fear. It naturally invites us to take a roots and branches look at the strategies and habits of a mind and body driven by the need for survival, devoid of any broader context of existence other than physical survival. We can call these a collection of behaviours and habits, as the Sufi teacher Idries Shah did, “The Commanding Self”.

Once we have awakened to the realisation that we are not the experiences of thinking, perceiving and sensing that we commonly refer to as the body and the mind and that we are the experience of the Awareness that is watching these experiences, which, through rational investigation of the latter, we find that we have no evidence of its limitation leading us to experience the fearless presence of oneness of Self and environment, we have arrived at that version of ourselves that is true.

There is a sense of I.

There is a world out there.

There is a body and a mind.

When we confuse the world, body, or mind for ourselves, we get into trouble.

Common Causes Of Bodily Contractions In The Torso Area

• Previous embodied Trauma being triggered by primitive pattern recognition of present events

• Physical illness

• Hunger

• Sexual desire

• A need for social contact

• Loss or disruption to a relationship

• Intellectual Disorientation

• Neurological conditions such as Autism

The mind, which is the seat of separateness, wants to escape the present when the experience of bodily contractions occurs.

Thoughts of being a person appear alongside the classification of the contraction as an emotion, such as fear in the chest. This very labelling of experience is separateness.

The images, sights, smells, sounds, and touch of another person. We may become attached to these so much for the wholeness we feel they give us. They represent the wholeness we have lost from the painful feelings of arising out of believing the self we are to be but a fractured separate object itself.

Only awareness can be aware of awareness. The mind is not involved, though; through the force of conceptualising habit, it will continue to try to conceptualise awareness by defining it and labelling it or objectifying it in some way. The experience of “I’ness” is the experience of the aware reality. The experience of “me’ness” is the experience of the conceptualising mind imposing its labels onto this aware reality.

As we awaken to our true identity as universal awareness, we realise the reality of our human mind and body, and it becomes even more real to us. We see we are operating in this shape we call a human being. This shape has ways of acting according to its make-up, including its relations to others and the environment. Whilst we are not attached to this shape for our happiness, we are acutely aware of its miraculous nature. It immediately becomes a temple for us.

It is the remarkable experience of many that the basis of resolving psychological suffering and taking actions that create value in life is to be discovered standing right inside them all the time. For these people, it is as though, metaphorically, their best friend of all eternity, most beloved partner, and protective parent has been discovered.

The Real you is not defined by;  

how much money or possessions you own, 

having an intimate relationship,

having lots of friends,

the number of likes on social media, 

True freedom exists in recognising that we exist not as a body or a mind (and, therefore, not to identify ourselves with feelings and thoughts). We are the undefinable experience of existing or being. As we experience this, beyond simply intellectually understanding it, and we live from this place, we are free of any psychological suffering that arises instantly when we identify ourselves as a limited object.

As soon as we notice we are in separation, often through the internal focus on sensations that the mind tells us are unpleasant and self-critical and judgmental thinking, we are free of it.

As we dissolve all sense of separation in our minds and sink back into the experience of oneness, we become fully present in the only time that exists - this present moment. As the exhausting veil of our separateness drops, we find the experience of this present moment is pregnant with beauty and love.

A simple diagram to act as a reminder.

Being aware of being aware is an instantaneous experience that occurs in the absence of objects and time and is a constant natural experience we all have. Still, it is mainly shrouded as we are aware of and focused on objective experiences.