We Are Aware
So stop trying to be somebody.
I woke up this morning with the urge to share a feeling that has been brewing in me for much longer than it should have been. Hope it’s not too bitter. Just know that this is a story I give to my experience, and meaning I find in it. Both of which are subject to change.
For much of my waking life, I have been borderline obsessed with this concept of “being vs. doing”. I have explored many ways to see the mechanism for what is it, played with how each side affects the other, and attempted to somehow break free from it. Depending on which side I was exploring and which flavor of the month I was tasting, I’d find a new characteristic of the other side of it, only to get sucked back into the dualistic dilemma that it is.
What I didn’t realize then is that within each moment of clarity, I was leaving myself notes and breadcrumbs to find my way back to it.
Here is a story to illustrate this: over a decade ago, the feeling to address this concept in my life came on strong. So I decided to explore it through video (a creative outlet I had never tried before). I figured that using a new way of expression might allow some personal truth to emerge from it. I found a contest online called Film Your Issue that asked for a short-film/video addressing an issue from a list they wanted to shed light on (poverty, sickness, hate, animal welfare). I decided to tackle an issue that I believed was the underlining cause of all the issues listed: our perception.
So with a small digital camera, some bootleg video editing software, and no prior experience doing anything like this, I gave it my best shot.
IT WAS ROOOOOUGH.
What spawned from the process was a blissful state. I felt that I was able to express something that was at my core, and from that experience, I began to chase that bliss by switching majors to media production, diving into the world of broadcast, television, documentary and film, and ultimately identifying myself as a producer. I took pride in calling myself that, and everything it meant.
I even saw some success with it. I started doing freelance work, produced a few things that ran on television, film festivals, and even won a few awards. However, I unconsciously became more focused on who I was vs what I was doing. It turned into a pressure to keep doing the work to maintain the label I’d taken on.
The “I do” had become “I am”.
Then the housing market crashed, and the truth hit me harder than the recession did to the economy.
Work became scarce and I was overtaken with fear, so I did the adult thing and took an office job (something I swore I wouldn’t do) to try to overcome it. I got sucked into the new environment, yet kept trying to rationally identify with what was slowly becoming a past life. I stopped being creative, and became depressed from it.
I remember sitting in my cubicle in this fluorescent-lit purgatory when I got word that I was nominated for an Emmy (regional, but I still love being able to say that). I simultaneously experienced the joy of accomplishment that such an accolade would bring, and the horror of my situation: that nomination wasn’t really for me. It was for something I had done, and I wasn’t really doing that kind of work anymore. Even if I did win it, what the hell was I going to do with the damn thing? Put it on display in my cubicle for all to see?
I felt like a fraud. What I was doing was not who I thought I was or wanted to be. However, I was reminded of what brought me there to begin with: it was the curiosity to examine my perception of the the world and my place in it. I had just forgotten, and had let ego take the wheel. The clarity had come back, and with it the curiosity.
It had become time to fully re-visit the concept of “I am/I do” again. So shortly after, I quit my office job to explore the complexities again.
One would think that this was lesson learned. On the contrary, I’ve done this many times afterwards. I can look back at the years and life events that follow and find the same pattern repeating itself:
Choose to do something, identify with what’s being done, do more of it because the identity dictates it, choose to do something else, etc.
Or it can start with the choice of being first:
Choose to be someone, do the thing that the identity dictates , further identify, choose to be someone else, etc.
The problem is that this process can be an unconscious one. The “doing” changes ever so slightly, which slowly changes the “being” without notice, and back around again. We won’t realize anything has happened, even if it lays upon a bed of unhappiness and boredom. We think it’s just how things are. We label it as “my life”, and continue to write our narrative within it.
What gets forgotten is that it’s actually the labels and stories we choose that dictates what we learn and how we change. Events, thoughts, occurrences, and feelings are inherently empty of meaning. They exist outside of our core, and we weave them together into the tapestry that drapes over us as our chosen lives.
“I am” is not a thing to do, and “I do” is not a thing to be.
If we spend too much time identifying who we are or what we are doing with the content of our lives, we forget the essence of our existence: awareness.
Awareness exists in the space between the personalized sense of “I am” and “I do”. It’s not an object or a thing at all. It’s a process which takes what is observed (from internal and external sources), and by mere observance, gives it existence. It allows us to see things for what they truly are, which we then create the illusion of how we identify and relate to them.
I’m not saying that all things in the universe do not exist outside of our awareness of them. It’s more so that they don’t exist outside of the illusion of self that we have created. We, as people, actually exist within it, but we, as awareness, ARE it.
When a major external event occurs or the inevitable buildup of inner pressure reaches unbearable limits (like in my story), we are forced to examine who we are and what we are doing. We ultimately create a story of crisis in order to become who we already are. It brings us back to the state of awareness.
It’s either our awareness or our environment that becomes a catalyst for change and/or growth. We either consciously choose, or the choice gets unconsciously made for us.
We just need to stop trying to be somebody, and learn to just be.
As Eckhart Tolle puts it:
You say, “I want to know myself.” You are the I. You are the knowing. You are the consciousness through which everything is known and that cannot know itself. It is itself. There is nothing to know beyond that. And yet all knowing arises out of it. The “I” cannot make itself into an object of knowledge, of consciousness.
So you cannot become an object to yourself. That is the very reason the illusion of egoic identity arose because mentally you made yourself into an object. “That’s me,” you say, and then you begin to have a relationship with yourself and tell others and yourself your story.
Awareness is the lens in which all things pass through. The moment we stop self-seeking and start aligning with the process that we are, we can then begin to mindfully take it all in without judgment, process it, and let it back into the world in a more meaningful way. This allows us to be malleable, to change and flow through the external environment and internal events, and to take what we need to grow and further the process.
Maybe this is how the universe is able to observe itself. Maybe this is how we are part of it: by being it.
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