Who Am I?
One night, after having spent the entire day in the dark printing photographs, I dreamt that I was rowing a small boat on a vast ocean. The sky and the sea appeared almost the same shade of grey so that I saw no definite horizon line. It was like being inside a vast, featureless, infinite globe. In the paradoxical, figurative dream language, I was looking not backward the way one normally rows but looking out to sea, looking into infinity. Suddenly, I felt compelled to turn my head to see what was behind me.
There, not far away, but rapidly receding, was a headland, a tall, crumbling cliff with an old building standing on the edge of it. That structure was vast, enormous, and it was moldering away. The floor, walls, and roofs were in a state of collapse, and the building was still standing at all only due to a complex system of buttresses and supports that had been arranged all over it and which extended onto the eroding cliffs.
Still in the dream, I knew immediately that I was looking at ‘ego,’ a structure always in imminent danger of collapse, and that I was leaving ego behind. No more maintenance work—just let it go, and row away into the vastness. I awoke absolutely stupefied. The whole experience had been so graphic, so unmistakably both a message and a statement of my actual situation. I’d never had a dream like that before, and never again since.
Later that day, my wife, Catanya, returned home to find me sitting naked on the kitchen floor, eyes closed, laughing uncontrollably.
—- The Ten Thousand Things, Chapter 12
Robert,
I started composing a lengthy, multi-part question of the kind I imagine makes your heart sink. (Actually, I think I may have accidentally messaged a draft of it to you - if so, pay it no heed.) But I think it really all boils down to this. . .
You have described your dream where 'you' are rowing away from the crumbling house that is your ego. Awareness is, well, just aware, so who is the ‘you’ doing and willing the rowing?
Also, I just wanted to say thanks so much for your writing over the years and for taking the time to answer so many questions. Your patience seems to know no bounds, and is greatly appreciated!
---John Davis
Hi, John--
You are most welcome. I am happy to hear from you.
To begin with, I made no mention of “willing” in the dream, nor did I have any sense that I had willed myself to row. I found myself rowing. That is an important detail. I am in a similar posture right now. I am writing a reply to your question, but I cannot will the words I am typing to appear in my mind. They just appear without my having any sense of having caused them to appear or any knowledge of the source from which they emanate.
With that in mind, you said, “Awareness is, well, just aware.” That statement seems entirely sure of itself, but I wonder if you have ever asked yourself what the word “awareness” means. Before continuing to read my reply, take a minute to define for yourself what that word means to you.
I emphasize this because many non-dual spirituality fans assume that they know what “awareness” is: a kind of free-standing, changeless quality, a bit perhaps like a container or vessel in which perceptions, feelings, and thoughts arise and disappear again, leaving “awareness” just as it was before those perceptions, feelings, and thought appeared. I have heard this said countless times, usually with a kind of unquestioning credulity that takes it as a given, a hard fact--and not just a fact, but a most basic existential fact that defines what “I” am, which is, so the story goes, so-called “pure awareness.”
In a familiar analogy, events are the movie, and awareness is the screen that remains unchanged no matter what movie is projected onto it. But is this analogy accurate? Is it true that awareness remains unchanged no matter what occurs?
For me, awareness means noticing. If you are aware of something, you have noticed it. If something occurs and you do not notice it, you have no awareness of it. As far as I know, awareness--the faculty of being able to notice things--is biological: a quality of living nervous systems. Animals have it, but rocks don't. In my discussions with people about this matter, many have tried to dispute this. For them, awareness seems to be a quality that precedes and contains living entities--not a faculty of living nervous systems, but some grander quality that is present everywhere prior to nervous systems. I have yet to hear a reasonable argument to back that up. And I do not know how anyone can stand apart from one’s own biology—one’s own faculty of awareness—to be able to know that.
From a naturalistic perspective, awareness is a biological endowment that begins, for us human primates, in utero and continues, in one way or another, until the last breath. During one's lifetime, awareness changes constantly, modified by all kinds of factors, some organic and some experiential. When I say "organic," I mean that the state of the brain and the rest of the nervous system deeply influences awareness. Anyone who has experienced total anesthesia will know that.
In a disease such as Alzheimer’s, a demented human may have once been aware of all kinds of things, but that faculty has changed for the worse. Ronald Reagan had an aquarium in his office with a model of the White House submerged in it. When asked what that object was, he replied that he thought it had something to do with him, but could not recall—was not aware of—what.
In the face of this common ailment and others like it, how can it be said that awareness is unchanging? It can work in the other direction too. Awareness can expand. After years of visual awareness practice through photography, I notice all kinds of things I would have missed previously and that others would never see.
Since oneself is always the noticer--always right at the center of the world of perceptions, feelings, and thoughts--it can seem as if awareness never changes, but, in my view, that is probably an illusion. Is your present awareness really the same as your awareness as a child? If you think it is, I chalk that up to the tricks and distortions of memory, or the rather strange belief that the “real myself” never changes.
Yes, the mechanics are similar, relying as noticing does, on the brain and the rest of the nervous system, but if that nervous system has changed due to physical changes and various forms of conditioning, how could it possibly be the same noticing?
As I see it, no one knows what awareness “really is.” No one is in a position to know. No one knows what “myself” is either. One may have ideas and beliefs, but ideas and beliefs are not the same as knowing.
Those last words are urgent. As understanding deepens, the boundaries of not-knowing constantly expand, reducing the little one does know to a tiny area surrounded by vast mystery.
Your question was, “So who is the ‘you’ doing and willing the rowing?”
That’s part of the mystery.
Be well.
Hello dear Robert,
I resonate whole-heartedly with almost all of this. I did question the paragraph about Alzheimer’s and Ronald Regan's inability to recognize a model of the White House in his aquarium. It seems to me that he was still aware of the model and the aquarium, meaning that he was still perceiving them as shapes and colors, but he was simply no longer able to correctly remember and identify what the model represented. In other words, his memory was damaged, and his ability to put things into the conceptual categories that thought creates, but not his basic awareness. No?
I think the word awareness gets used in several different ways. Sometimes it is simply a synonym for consciousness (whatever that is). In that sense, it is the common factor in every different experience, like the screen that is present in every scene of the movie. Some traditions elevate that to a kind of primordial unchanging ever-present ground of being , as in Awareness with a capitol 'A', and then assume it was here before the material universe and the brain. I think this is the version to which you are objecting, yes? And I agree. While it's true that no brain ever appears outside of consciousness (or awareness, or experience), as far as I can see, that doesn't prove that the brain is not somehow generating consciousness and awareness.
Sometimes awareness is also used to mean the capacity that allows us to SEE thoughts AS thoughts, to "be aware" of when we are being triggered, or what we are feeling, to self-reflect in the best sense. In this sense, it can be cultivated and expanded, as you describe happening visually through photography, or as can happen through somatic work such as Feldenkrais, or through meditation or psychotherapy, etc. I don't know if awareness itself is expanding, but certainly more and more subtleties are being noticed in each of these examples that were not noticed before.
Sometimes I feel awareness is confused with attention, which in my lexicon refers to the FOCUS of awareness, as in paying attention to my left foot--like the lens of a camera or the beam of a flashlight.
Zen teacher (and psychoanalyst) Barry Magid, whom I know you like, gave a talk recently on the Heart Sutra and the meaning of the word emptiness in Buddhism. In Barry's view, Buddhism sees emptiness as non-essentialism, impermanence, and interconnectedness--not as some Empty Aware Ground that contains everything. I think this talk is right up your alley. It's about 30 min long. You can hear it here if you're interested:
https://ordinarymind.s3.amazonaws.com/public/file_assets/463/Barry_Magid_-_Dharma_Talk_-_2024-09-14.m4a?1726608077.
Much Love,
joan
I always enjoyed the image of the boat and rowing away from the concept of an ego left holding on to a decrepit shell of existence.
Recently my views on non-duality and spirituality have shifted. I see in myself and others that these concepts and beliefs are landing points that humans want to subscribe to and feel a sense of certainty. It seems to be a natural part of human existence to be curious and seek out existential and spiritual avenues.
However, without words and concepts life continues on. It is palpable through the aliveness we experience moment-to-moment. It does not need to be defined, explained, or justified. It simply is as it is. Spirituality, beliefs, and concepts can become an addiction which contributes to a sense of seeking and longing that results in unnecessary suffering and neuroticism. Claiming certainty to a thought or belief system is to fall into the trap of thoughts. Stating there is a self or no-self is a subscription to just another belief system.