Enlightenment
The Big Now is Boundless Full Consciousness of NOW already open and present at this moment. It is the present existence itself, yet it is overlooked because the attention and focus are placed on external or internal objects and are being veiled by past conditioning. When you start to relax into what is already here right Now fully and totally, you become more familiar with your inherent Boundlessness, which is Freedom, Happiness, and Bliss.
What is the Now?
Everyone is aware that something is happening; everybody has a certain point of view or perception. Or perhaps, on a lower level, a certain idea or a certain understanding. But all of you, all of you beautiful souls, have a certain perception and point of view. So, let’s imagine that there are ten people in the room or a hundred people, and they’re all sitting in the same room, but everyone has a different perception, a different point of view, and a different experience. So, what is the Now?
Every single living being has a point of reference, an individual perception. There are billions of people on this earth, and an uncountable number of animals, insects, birds, and mammals. So, let’s imagine that the whole universe is like a big ball, and there is an uncountable amount of souls in this big ball of the universe with unique perceptions and views. Some of them are looking from this point, others are looking from that point, and millions, billions, trillions, and quadrillions of souls all have different points of view, within the same universe, within the same one ball.
So, what is the Now? What is Consciousness, the Self, God? Is it individual? Apparently, no. Is it somebody up there looking down on everybody? No. Because that would be just another point of view looking down at everybody. You can look from beneath and above everybody, and it’s still a point of view.
Therefore, consciousness permeates the whole universe and all individual points of view. Consciousness is looking through the entire universe, and through every single point of view, even from your cat’s eyes, the mosquito senses, and the sun itself. From every point of view, Consciousness is aware. It’s looking. You can imagine how the cat sees the world, but you can’t look through its experience if you are not the cat itself.
Therefore, the only way back to Consciousness is to realize that everything that appears is within your awareness. All of this is inside you, but that’s not for your mind to understand. All this experience, no matter how many millions of possible variations of affairs, is all happening inside you. And who is this you? Of course, it’s not your two eyes. When you close your eyes, you’re still aware.
So, this experience appears inside you no matter what form it takes, 3d, 4d, 5d, or 12d. By saying inside you, I don’t mean inside your skin, or inside your head, or even inside your heart, because within the awareness of this experience, everything is included, even this furniture, computer, these walls, this building, it’s all included within your awareness. It’s not in your chakras, head, heart, third eye, or anywhere else. It’s all in your awareness. All of it. Every single thing. All the things you don’t like, even all the fears and everything else, because these are experiences. Good experiences appear in your awareness, and bad experiences appear in your awareness.
Therefore freedom, or liberation, does not come from changing bad experiences into good experiences. It does not come from trying to control and manipulate the environment, the outer environment, or the inner environment. Your inner environment is your thoughts, emotions, feelings, energies, sensations, perceptions, and senses. Liberation is realizing where everything is happening, which is in your awareness.
There is this apparent journey back to awareness because the mind quickly takes over your awareness. One moment you’re aware, and the next moment, you’re following your thoughts, what pops into your head. One moment you’re in awareness, and the next moment you’re in an amazing feeling inside your heart, and you lose awareness. You flow into the heart, into this loving sense that is so beautiful that you want to stay there. And you become energy or part of it.
So, there’s an apparent journey back to awareness and consciousness. When awareness becomes boundless, it equals Consciousness. When awareness becomes unlimited, absolute, and boundless, it equals Consciousness. It equals the Self, God, or any other name that you want to give it. So, instead of naming things, we should realize that we are aware, that everyone is aware right now. The distraction of your awareness that grabs your focus and further entertains your mind are just distractions, entanglements, attachments, and desires. That is called bondage, entanglement, or conditioning. Because if your focus is entangled with objects, spaces, emotions, thoughts, or energies, it’s conditioned focus. It’s not free. It is subject to the conditions of these thoughts, feelings, energies, or spaces. Even beautiful emotions, like love, are conditioned unless this love is absolutely boundless, and then it’s the freedom type of love.
There is nothing wrong with your focus, as long as it’s not entangled with what is within your focus. Your focus and attention are not the problems; the entanglement is the problem. Entanglement means merging with the object, energy, thoughts, or emotions. Entanglement means mixture. It’s mixed up with what your focus and attention perceive. When mixed up with what it perceives, it’s conditioned, narrow, limited, and closed to a certain extent.
The real Now is everything, unentangled, unconditioned, boundless, open, aware. That is Consciousness itself. It is, we may say, very bright or radiant, but not to be focused on, not to be entangled with, not to be limited by. Everything is inside you, and this “you” is awareness itself, which is aware of this experience. You need to relax your focus; you need to relax entanglement with your experience. You can soften your attention. The first and most important step is to slow down because if you’re fast, it’s much more difficult to disentangle from experience.
So slow down your experience. Slow down your inner experience, thoughts, emotions, and energies. You can recognize a certain crudity, a certain grip, a certain stickiness and gripping, or grasping onto something, a particular feeling, a particular way, a particular sense. Grasping of particularity. Here is a shortcut – if you focus on nothing and nowhere, that immediately releases the grip. When you focus on nothing and nowhere, your grip releases, and you become familiar with this ungraspable space, openness, no position, no center, no point of perception. Just become familiar, at least for a bit. When you focus on nothing and nowhere, it’s open. One second, open, and then you say, oh, I feel a bit safer in a little bit smaller space. So, you might go back to your cozy environment, which is familiar. That’s okay; it’s how it usually goes, and that’s fine. But when you build up a bit more courage, you can try again to focus on nothing and nowhere, and in one second, you’re open, that’s it. And what is it, this openness? It is everything, absolutely everything. You’re not even focusing on it; it already is. If you focus on everything, you have a limited view. Relax, release, and let go. Better to focus on nothing than to try to focus on everything.
​
So, when you focus on nothing and nowhere, it seems that it is emptiness, space, and openness. It appears to be so at first because you were filled with all kinds of content, and now you are releasing it. But, that nothing and nowhere when you don’t focus, it’s a vast awareness, brightness. I call it the lightless brightness. It’s even beyond the light and the dark, beyond duality, it’s lightless brightness. And that is the Source. And that is so intensely bright and light that it’s like 1000 suns that you will discover as you stay more and more in this awareness, nowhere in it, nothing. It only appears at first to be empty, empty of content, but later on, you discover more and more that it’s the source of everything. It’s a place from where everything came into creation, all degrees of manifestations, densities, and dimensions. Even various spaces have certain sizes within the boundless consciousness.
So, the way is to withdraw your attention completely and allow it to relax, drop onto nothing, and nowhere. That is the fastest way to come back to consciousness, to withdraw from all content and experiences. That is the meaning of renunciation; it’s not to become a monk, priest, or nun. That would be an external experience. The real renunciation is to renounce from all content, external and internal. It’s to renounce the universal experiences. That is the real meaning of renunciation. And then people invented being monks, priests, and nuns. That is symbolic. Renunciation to withdraw from content, to recognize that all content is within your awareness, already, now, here, and that is so. It is renouncing from the content now to become the absolute Now.
The best form of devotion is devotion to your awareness. It is to become so devoted to your boundless awareness that you surrender yourself and your content to your boundless awareness. That is the most divine love. And that is what certain saints meant when they said, “I Am the Way.” They meant that this awareness is the way, this boundlessness is the way. And then they said, “you can surrender to me”; by that, they meant to be boundless awareness, right here, right now. Of course, it is not the appearing form of Jesus, Buddha, Ramana, or anyone else. It’s not to the form. It is to this boundlessness that is here and now and accessible to all of you. So, you can renounce and devote yourself to that. It requires no faith. You don’t need to believe in anything. It requires even no trust because awareness is already here. You can only trust objects, forms, energies, appearances, and feelings. These are intermediary steps of renunciation. And every moment, you can check yourself and see that there is a certain entanglement with what is within your experience. But luckily, there is awareness, even of that entanglement, grasping, or gripping, and that awareness itself is the freedom.
Knowing this, you know the highest truth because everything else is experiential; it’s experienced in various forms and diversities. And this truth is so simple, but this entanglement is quite tricky because there is a big habit built up of many decades of living in form, and there is even a certain entanglement with an even bigger past, with deeper spaces, extensions of energies into the past: even past lives, extension into your soul. The entanglement goes all across the universe because the whole universe is experiential. You have to become free from the universe because the universe is within your awareness. Even when you go to heaven, you still need to be free from heaven because heaven is a pleasant environment. But the real heaven is not even within; it is the awareness of the heaven, which is the real absolute heaven, freedom, happiness, and bliss.
If you can choose where you would like to go, make a wise choice to go to your awareness itself, and be there, stay there, and disentangle anything that distracts you from residing entirely, absolutely in the boundless awareness itself, which is Consciousness, God, Self. It’s not that complicated. Everyone can do it with good practice, a little bit of help, and some Grace; all of you can do that. That's what we’re here for.
Developing neutrality is another way, neutrality to your experience because it’s all happening as it is right now. It is the “isness” of the happening of Now. Even if it’s unwanted isness, it is still happening as it is. The freedom is not to change that; freedom is to transcend that, to see what is happening. All is happening in awareness itself. And bit by bit, you become free. The degree of your realization is the degree of letting go of holding on to experience. You are closer to your awareness than you can see, feel, perceive, or know. You’re much closer than that. You’re closer than seeing, feeling, knowing, or perceiving. You are closer than the experience itself. It’s all happening inside awareness. And wherever you are now in this recognition, it’s okay. It’s good as it is right now.
You don’t need to push yourself. Relax from pushing, as that will give you more freedom. If something is resistant, relax the resistance, and you will be much closer. If you enjoy the current energies and experiences, well, relax even from that. Recognize that awareness is aware of them, too. Of course, you can allow the pleasant experience to continue, but be beyond experience. Allow it, but be beyond it.
The best tool is to know the truth of awareness that it’s right here, and then it’s only a matter of time. It’s only a matter of time because you know that, and you can always check it. You will see that you are aware of whatever happens right here. Thus, it’s only a matter of time until all these attachments will be exhausted, until all the forms of the food of the mind will be starved, and until all the ways that things get sticky will become disentangled. It’s just a matter of time.
You are already enlightened; awareness is just a matter of time until you come out of your experiences and be free again. As time is relative, it may take a couple of months, years, or a couple of lifetimes. That is the degree of your laziness, distractions, and entanglement with your experiences, attachments, and desires, but it’s all subject to time. Awareness is not subject to time, but experience is subject to time. Time is also perceived in awareness: today’s so slow, tomorrow is exciting, and the day goes so fast. And you say, oh, where did the time go? So, even the time itself is within awareness. You can see how time flows. You can see how your life flows. But if you are within yourself, then even the life flowing by, it’s a beautiful thing happening, just happening.
But this residing in the Self, in Consciousness, in Awareness, is so direct and so alive and so immediate that everything gets penetrated so intensely, deeply, alivelessly. Aliveness is so intense that every moment is like an eternity. Every moment is so here, so now, experienced fully, absolutely, every little bit is so here! Even your idea about the future is so here. Even your regrets about the past are so intensely here; everything is here now. That is alive! And the closer you observe what is here, the more you see that it is alive, everything, now, intensely, very much here.