Awareness as frozen awareness?

[park]

Dear all,

I have been lurking the forum for a little while. Thanks to all the contributors. Let me join the party with a question:

Yesterday, while typing on the computer I sort of forgot myself while retaining awareness. “I” then watched my body continue to type as if nothing changed but “I” was clearly not typing, but was only aware of it (and the surroundings). So, this awareness was as a screen on which everything happens and seemed as if before time/space or as if they happened on/in it. So, time did pass (hands typing) even while it did not (from the perspective of this "frozen awareness"). Someone here said this awareness "was before everything and through everything" or something like this. This sounds about right. Maybe best to say I felt as if suddenly finding myself looking at a 2D movie of "the world".

Let me note that it happened two or three times, but lasted only a couple of seconds. Then the mind got news of it, said “whoa, that’s cool” and it ended. I don’t know if it was a brain-glitch, something of the deja-vue sort maybe, but it might also be this awareness you keep speaking of.

Thanks for the responses.

[Marc]

I just checked out this forum.

Your question is a difficult one because you didn't ask a question

Awareness is an inherent aspect of conscious mind. We always retain it, it's just that we get lost in the details of ego. Time does not pass, processes continue in the changes of form in the world manifest, and we can measure the change of form through a stopwatch, but it is arbitrary to our perception. Time is a mental construct we use to help us survive, make schedules, observe phenomena, and so forth. But everything happens in the present moment. At no other time, does anything occur. Nothing happens in the past, because it is gone. Nothing happens in the future, because it is yet to be.

Nothing happens at any other time. everything happens as a result of processes in the now in the world of the manifest.

To illustrate the illusion of time, the changes in astronomical phenomena seem negligible in comparison to changes in the state of a superconducting computer, but those processes continue nevertheless, macroscopically, and microscopically.

When you quoted awareness is before everything and through everything, consider time is an illusion created by the processes of thought of past and future. there is no past or future, there is only now. Perhaps that is what was meant by that person, I don't know. Perhaps he was speaking of enlightenment when all things are known that can be known due to an unclouded mind.

Perhaps what you observed is that you are attuned to universal consciousness and something was typing through your body because you were aware enough to just let it happen. Several spiritual teachers I have met have discussed the phenomena of speaking to their students and not remembering what they said or what they were doing precisely.

[enigma]

In case the person who spoke of awareness being 'before' was me (ha!) I would have meant 'prior to', which doesn't allude to a temporal quality but rather a foundational quality. (That which is the source of thought is prior to thought.)

[lightmystic]

Hey park,

Beautiful description. This "witnessing" of Life is the beginning of the recognition of the distinction between our mind and our awareness. We tend, as awareness (i.e. the thing that perceives) to identify with our thoughts, with personhood, etc.). What you have described is the starting to recognize that the action, thoughts, etc. go on automatically within the awareness. They are like bodily functions, and the awareness and everything within the awareness are all one cosmic body. (Note that the analogy isn't perfect, though, because even a cosmic body would have edges, and this awareness has no edges).

Does that make sense?

Apr 24, 2010 18:22:31 GMT -5 park said:

Dear all,

I have been lurking the forum for a little while. Thanks to all the contributors. Let me join the party with a question:

Yesterday, while typing on the computer I sort of forgot myself while retaining awareness. “I” then watched my body continue to type as if nothing changed but “I” was clearly not typing, but was only aware of it (and the surroundings). So, this awareness was as a screen on which everything happens and seemed as if before time/space or as if they happened on/in it. So, time did pass (hands typing) even while it did not (from the perspective of this "frozen awareness"). Someone here said this awareness "was before everything and through everything" or something like this. This sounds about right. Maybe best to say I felt as if suddenly finding myself looking at a 2D movie of "the world".

Let me note that it happened two or three times, but lasted only a couple of seconds. Then the mind got news of it, said “whoa, that’s cool” and it ended. I don’t know if it was a brain-glitch, something of the deja-vue sort maybe, but it might also be this awareness you keep speaking of.

Thanks for the responses.