Towards An Aware Humanity~

Towards An Aware Humanity
by Wayne Teasdale

The elements of awareness encompass conscious knowing, the ability to
read hearts, to be a healing, loving, compassionate presence, situated
in the Now. They also encompass practical wisdom in every situation,
the ability to enlarge perspective, to affirm others and promote
dialogue and mutual understanding.

Awareness, as an enhanced consciousness and heightened sensitivity to
others, allows us to take in more of reality than many can manage. But
while awareness can be overwhelming, in most cases, a person with
subtle awareness becomes a healing, loving, compassionate being. He or
she is always looking for ways to respond to others and to assuage
suffering. A person walking with awareness exudes a confidence that
inspires and attracts others who see. A presence flows through the
aware person, a grace and humility, a holiness and love. People who
are truly aware communicate the depth of their inner consciousness,
their nearness to God, or the Spirit, through their presence and their
actions.

Most important, this awareness is always situated in the Now, in the
integrity of the present moment with all its opportunities and
challenges. I once heard the Trappist writer and abbot Basil
Pennington talk about the life of the hermit. Near the end of his
talk, he suddenly blurted out, "God is Now. Everything else is sin!"
He was probably just trying to get our attention, but he said
something very significant: that everything important is happening
Now. God is Now. The Divine will embraces Now; to dwell on the past or
the future misses the point. We must cultivate our awareness of Now,
and the consciousness of this Now is the intersection, ultimately, of
the vertical and horizontal.

In his classic work The Power of Now, the writer and teacher Eckhart
Tolle emphasizes in great detail the utter reality of the Now. He has
clearly seen that to understand the Now is the key to spiritual
realization and enlightenment:

Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the
Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen
or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not? Nothing ever
happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen
in the future; it will happen in the Now. What you think of as the
past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you
remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace -- and you do so now.
The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the
future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think of the future, you
do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own.
Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the
light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the
light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is
"borrowed" from the Now.

Just as all reality is mediated through consciousness, all time exists
in the Now. This Now, however, exists only in consciousness, in the
vast, eternal awareness of the Divine itself.

Wisdom

Another element of awareness is wisdom. In its horizontal dimension,
wisdom means the knowledge of what is good, necessary, and
appropriate. It is, first and foremost, knowing the truth of every
situation one encounters. Solomon applied his celebrated wisdom to the
difficult case of the two women who claimed the same infant; the king
had to decide who was telling the truth. He ordered the baby to be cut
in half, knowing that the real mother would rather give up the child
than allow it to be harmed in any way.

When Jesus encountered the woman accused of adultery, the scribes and
Pharisees wanted to trap him. Mosaic law required that a woman caught
in the act of adultery be stoned to death, and they wanted him to
stone her. Jesus intuitively knew the wise course, what was truly just
and compassionate. "'Let the one among you who is guiltless be the
first to throw a stone at her,' he said. When they heard this they
went away one by one."

Both Christ and Solomon possessed the necessary perspective and wisdom
for understanding the situations in which they found themselves.
Solomon possessed a deep knowledge of human nature. Christ juxtaposed
Mosaic law with the crowd's private sins. He knew they were all guilty
and so was able to stir the shame of the tricksters.

In a similar way, Buddhists like Thich Nhat Hanh call for a larger
perspective when they suggest that we search for someone's motivation
in a confrontational situation. When we enlarge our perspective to
include understanding of the real motivations behind hateful or
annoying acts, we realize that deep down we hold compassion even for
those we think we despise. The spiritually aware person is profoundly
attuned to the presence of the Divine in each encounter with others.

Wisely aware people, such as those in the interfaith movement, build
bridges between communities. They promote dialogue, friendship, and
mutual understanding. They understand that these activities break down
the walls that have separated us for millennia. Always looking for
common ground, the wise seek opportunities for conversation across the
boundaries of difference. Although they remain conscious of
differences among the religions and cultures of the world, they look
for places of collaboration, building habits of cooperation.
Awareness, in this context, is the realization that what unites us is
more important, and in fact more substantial, than what divides us.
Preserving relationships among religions, nations, cultures,
communities, and families always serves the higher good.

Ongoing dialogue is vital in this process of preserving relationships.
In the exchange of knowledge, relationships increase the possibility
of awareness in the participants. As the Dalai Lama has so often
remarked, "True dialogue is possible only between friends," for
friends are naturally open to one another. This is why we must,
through cultivating awareness, find common ground.

DIVINE AWARENESS

The Divine is pure sensitivity, infinite consciousness, cosmic
awareness, and an unlimited heart that is wise beyond comprehension.
[The Divine Heart, Wayne Teasdale] The Divine also possesses infinite
intelligence -- not the cold, analytical type but essential
warmheartedness. God is total heart. Love is the Spirit's only
motivation. Nothing can exceed love in priority, the most
comprehensive reality. We have little understanding of this kind of
love; our experience of human love is so limited, both in time and
experience, compared to Divine Love, which knows no such limits; it is
boundless, creative, wise, holy, and humorous. It is always
responding, always giving to us according to our nature and capacity.

God is also unlimited Light in every direction, an insight found in
most of the spiritual traditions. Tibetan esotericism speaks of it as
the Clear Light of the Void, which we encounter at the end of our
lives. Christian tradition says, "God is Light in whom there is no
darkness." [1 John 1:5] This is not simply a metaphor. The scientist
Peter Russell, in his book From Science to God, sees a direct
connection between light and consciousness, identifying them with God.
The Divine is literally light too.

The Divine is also boundless stillness, the stillness we can touch in
meditation, when we slow down and allow quiet to invade our awareness.
"Stillness is the greatest revelation," as a powerful Taoist aphorism
goes. When we experience stillness, in any situation, we are also
encountering the Divine. Stillness is the stability and immutability
of the Divine. What truly is in itself has no need to change or to
become. Stillness is the Presence flowing from itself and into itself,
the reality of a self-subsisting identity that is complete, perfect,
and passionately wanting to share itself with all other beings. All
reality is within the infinite Divine, which is of the nature of
openness and expansion. We have only to be still, quiet, and listen,
and we will hear the Divine's symphony.

AN AWARE HUMANITY

The above attributes would take root universally in an aware humanity.
Such awareness would deepen and mature, sparking the social,
political, and economic transformation of the human family.
Enlightenment is the fullness of this awareness. This awareness on the
moral level, in the existential requirement of each moment, is pure
sensitivity. This depth of sensitivity embraces all; it regards
everyone and everything, including other sentient beings, as having a
precious value and dignity.

The center of awareness, of this sensitivity, this holy and active
empathy, is consciousness -- what Ken Wilber aptly calls "the eye of
Spirit":

When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present awareness, I am resting in
intrinsic Spirit; I am in fact nothing other than witnessing Spirit
itself. I do not become Spirit; I simply recognize the Spirit that I
always already am. When I rest in simple, clear, ever-present
awareness, I am the Witness of the World. I am the eye of Spirit. I
see the world as God sees it. I see the world as the Goddess sees it.
I see the world as Spirit sees it: every object an object of Beauty,
every thing and event a gesture of the Great Perfection, every process
a ripple in the pond of my own eternal Being, so much so that I do not
stand apart as a separate witness, but find the witness is one taste
with all that arises within it. The entire Kosmos arises in the eye of
Spirit, in the I of Spirit, in my own intrinsic awareness, this simple
ever-present state, and I am simply that." [Ken Wilber, The Eye of
Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad]

Wilber has experienced that awareness that floods from his inner
depths. He has discovered the Divine in the silence. It is to this
profoundly urgent awareness that each one of us is called and
destined. It is to this awareness that all monks or mystics are
dedicated. There really is no other place to go and no other place to
be. Ultimately, there is no escape from the eye of Spirit and the
great joy, burden, and vision of the real inviting us to itself.

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This article is excerpted from:

A Monk in the World
by Wayne Teasdale.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library, Novato,
California. ©2002. www.newworldlibrary.com
Shared with Love and Light, Rosalie xo