In response to a question from a friend about the nature of reality. She asks, ‘If we are the space in which things happen, then events are real. Can you elaborate on this?’
Indeed, they appear to be real. Pick up a hot frying pan with your bare hand; it sure seems real enough! But, if you accept the definition of reality as that which does not change, that which is immutable and indestructible, that’s very different from events, thoughts, memories, expectations, forms of all kinds, which are transient and in constant flux. Even the universe and its laws will, at some point, cease to exist. The only aspect of consciousness that doesn’t change is what bears witness to the change: awareness. Awareness, or pure consciousness, is our true identity. You are here because awareness is here, not the other way around. True meditation is an investigation of this fact.
Be still and stay with the sense, ‘I am’…learn to just be. As Nisargadatta says, ‘Stay with the sense ‘I am’, but do not give it to the mind because the mind will turn it into a person. You are not a person. You are consciousness in the form of a person.’
