Abby Eagle's Journal

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How Awareness Revealed Itself To Me (23/8/2003)

I was at my Tuesday evening Tai Chi class. The classes are informal and held outside, under a shelter at a local school, which opens onto a playing field. There is grass, trees and stars. A highway that is built up about 2 metres higher than the school property, runs at an angle away from the school about 100m-300m away to the right.

There is a spot where I like to practice Tai Chi by myself. It is just on the edge of the shelter facing the field and night sky. The rest of the class were behind me practising their moves. I intended to begin the Yeng Cheng Fu form in which you place both hands face down in front of you at waist level, but instead I found myself standing with my arms at chest height in a posture for a standing Chi Kung. The feeling was unusual in that my Being just seemed to want to meditate and not do any actions.

I held the posture and Watched the movement of the trees and the traffic, and the sounds of the traffic, and the voices of the other Tai Chi practitioners. I should mention that for me the landscape is a metaphor for my mind, and that the movement of the clouds, trees and traffic represents the movement of the thoughts in my mind against my inner sky. When there are gaps in the sight and sounds of the external world my mind becomes very still.

On this occasion when my internal dialogue stopped it remained quiet for a period of five or so minutes. Intrigued, I tested the silence by restarting my internal dialogue then putting it away and watching the silence once again. During the periods of silence the internal dialogue was replaced by an Awareness.

The Awareness was not only of me but of everything that was there; the clouds, the trees, the grass, the traffic and so on. The Awareness was as much of the landscape being aware of me as I was being aware of the landscape. The Awareness was one. I now understand that the Awareness is everywhere and everything, and it is the mind which prevents us from experiencing it. Only by the mind becoming still was the Awareness able to present itself to me.

That night I witnessed the body going to sleep, watched it sleeping and watched it waking up. The Awareness is independent of the conscious mind and the body. No matter what happens to the body and mind, the Awareness will always be there. The Awareness does not die. Abby Eagle.

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