It has taken me many years to finally wake up and become somewhat aware. I’m now only starting to realize what it feels like to be aware of flowers, of people, of food, of rocks. It is a connection I never before realized was possible.
I’ve always been able to pay attention. Being aware is more like being conscious that I am paying attention. I am learning to be an engaged observer. Until now, I barely scratched the surface of what it means to be aware of anything, of everything. It is like being joined with everything, sharing the same time and space. And I know I’m doing it.
I have no idea just where this consciousness of mine resides. Certainly, it is not my brain. It has already been a couple of years since I discovered that awareness is experienced with my whole body. My brain plays an important role, but the kind of awareness I’m learning extends through my whole presence. All converging conditions seem to be aligned in a new way and I am able to be intimately aware with all of me.
Now I’m unsure what “all of me” actually includes. I am learning how I have this symbiotic relationship with all the life forms living within me, the bacteria and fungi in my gut, on my skin, in my whole body.
The individual cells of my human body, the bacteria at work throughout my body, the living organism on my skin are all engaged in energy and material exchanges that converge to make me function. I am all these life forms. My awareness rises from the activity of everything that functions and acts as one form.
I am a convergence of many forms that I once regarded as separate, but now I wonder if we are not all actually one. This causes me to ask: do we share the same consciousness? I have learned that many illusions have shaped the way I have lived my life Perhaps the illusion of a separate self is one of those illusions.
I further wonder if this experience is unique to humans like me. I wonder if the bacteria living within me, that are a living part of me, are also part of the consciousness I experience. Do we “all” share the same awareness? I really am not sure just where “my” body ends and “they” begin, so would the same ambiguity apply to awareness as well. Converging causes and conditions have formed everything. Perhaps a separate self just doesn’t make sense, or at least doesn’t matter.
What about the tree just outside my window and the rocks in my garden. Are they aware of what it means to be alive as a tree or be immersed in the soil as a patient rock.
I know that most people would say that a tree or rock could not be aware. But what a terrible mistake it would be if they were wrong. What if a tree were aware as a tree, a rock aware as a rock, and a human aware as a human.
As for me, I will continue to talk to the trees as I pass by and the rocks as I move them about. I’m convinced that in that moment we probably share the experience of what it means to be aware. We intimately share and merge who we are.