Understanding consciousness: Are you aware of being aware?

All day long, you are aware of your experience. In the morning you are aware of the textures of your bed, the light falling through the window. You are aware of having a shower, of eating breakfast, of travelling to work. You are aware of feeling tired or thirsty, of the constant stream of thoughts passing through the mind. You are aware of the face of someone you love. You are aware of a piece of music that stops you in your tracks. You are aware of the fluctuation of your emotions, the feeling of excitement, sorrow or loneliness. And even when you fall asleep, you are aware of your dreams, and when the dreams subside, you are aware of nothing. All day long, and indeed all through the night, you are aware of the constant stream of experience.But how often are you aware of being aware?There is an Indian fable about ten men who swam across a river. When they reached the far bank, they wanted to be sure that everyone had made it safely, and so they began to count. Each man, counting the others, arrived at nine, and concluded that one of their party had drowned. They were overcome with grief. A passer-by, seeing their distress, asked them what had happened. When they explained, he understood at once what had gone wrong. He told them he would tap each of them on the shoulder in turn, and as he did so, each man was to call out a number. One, two, three, and on through to ten. They were all there. Every man had forgotten to count himself, and in counting only the others had arrived at nine.This old story points to something we all do, so habitually that we rarely notice it. You are aware of the content of your experience, namely, thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, and yet you overlook the awareness with which all of this is known. You are so absorbed in what you are aware of that you overlook the simple fact of being aware itself. You, too, forget to count yourself.If you are never aware of being aware, if your attention is always absorbed in the content of experience and, as a result, you never pause to notice that which knows it, then the content of experience will be all you have. A difficult conversation replays itself for hours. A worry about the future colours the whole day. A moment of praise lifts you, and its absence deflates you. You are carried along by it all, one wave of thought or feeling giving way to the next, one circumstance replacing another, the whole of your inner and outer life in constant motion. It is as though you are a small boat on a large sea, with no anchor and no knowledge of the depths beneath, at the mercy of whatever the surface brings.And yet awareness itself is not tossed about on the waves of experience. Thoughts come and go, feelings rise and fall, the circumstances of your life shift and change, but the awareness with which it is all known remains exactly as it is. It is not excited by excitement, not saddened by sadness, not disturbed by disturbance, just as a screen is not burned by fire or drowned by water. Awareness simply witnesses it all.But awareness does not witness your experience from an aloof distance. Awareness is utterly intimate with each experience, just as a screen could be said to be one with the film that plays on it. And yet, just as the screen is not modified in any way by the drama in a film, there is a place in you that has never been touched or harmed by the content of your experience. A place where you are always free.When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, he said, “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Being aware of being aware is like that. It is a small shift in attention, a slight turning of your interest from what you are aware of toward awareness itself, and yet its implications for your life are vast. When you know yourself as awareness rather than the content of your experience, you find the stable ground in yourself. The suffering that seemed to define you passes through you. It does not stick. It is what you know, not what you are.Just beneath the surface of experience lies your essential nature, the simple fact of being aware. Even as you read these words, even as thoughts and reactions arise in response to them, there is something that knows all of this, something that is reading, noticing, aware.That is what you are, and what you are is always at peace.