Adyashanti points to awareness itself as the dimension prior to the pairs of opposites — male and female, good and bad, mine and yours. He frames spirituality as resting attention in that simplicity, rather than rearranging the contents of experience.
Transcript
To move beyond the pairs of opposites, beyond all pairs of opposites within oneself is is the heart and soul of spirituality. That's what it's all about. To discover your nature, you your nature which is beyond the pairs of opposites. So who you really are when you're not describing yourself through any uh terminology really because all terminology are opposites. So simply turning all of your attention into resting your attention in the simplicity of awareness. Awareness itself is not bound to the pairs of opposites. It's not a female or a male awareness. It's not it doesn't belong to me. It doesn't belong to you. It's not a good awareness or a bad awareness or a right awareness or a wrong awareness. Awareness itself or consciousness itself lies beyond or before the pairs of opposites. beyond and before all appearances. So the fundamental practice or the fundamental activity is to bring your attention to awareness itself which is a tricky thing because of course the more you look for awareness the more you can't find it because of course you're looking for awareness with awareness right it's like a dog chasing its tail so since you can only look for awareness using awareness it's hard to find it. So you don't really look for awareness as much as you do as you ease back and relax the conceptualizing mind. Actually relax the tendency to look for awareness. Relax the tendency to conceptualize it. Relax the tendency to think about it. It's just sort of you just easing back. Easing back. Easing back. letting go of the conceptual mind, just easing back. And when you ease back in this way, you can't help but to ease back into awareness because it's the only thing to ease back into. You see, if you're doing it correctly, right? If you're doing it incorrectly, you'll ease back into more and more subtle patterns of thinking. The more subtle patterns of thinking won't help at all. And easing back into awareness is easing back into the awareness of thinking, the awareness of feeling, the awareness of the seeking and it's just easing back. It's the fundamental reality. Therefore, it is already wholly available because it is the fundamental reality. It's wholly available and wholly accessible at any point along the way. That's the beautiful thing about the fund one's fundamental nature is that it is accessible at any point along the way. At any point along the spectrum of your what we could say your human development, your fundamental nature is always accessible because it's always fully present, fully developed if I can put it that way. And so that's why when one realizes that fund that fundamental nature, it's it's almost always a realization which is intuitive and spontaneous and almost and immediate because you're realizing something that is wholly accessible, wholly available, wholly complete. Does that make sense? It's it's not something that one is developing. It's not something that's you're piecing together. You're realizing something that's com has been complete from the very beginning. Who you've really been from the very beginning beyond the pairs of opposites. So when we're doing spirituality correctly in the most in this simple simple simple simple simple way and that is the most difficult thing for a human being I found is to stay simple to stay extraordinarily simple some some may say onepointed but to me onepointed gives the impression almost that one is striving or or directing something in a in a sort of a very narrow way. It is onepointed, but it's I I like to think of it as it's more simple because it's it's not something that one is necessarily struggling with. But it's difficult for a human being to be simple, right? To be very simple. Like it's it's hard for a human being to do one thing, anything. pick anything. It's hard for a human being to do one thing without being doing two or three other things in their head at the same time. So most human beings are being horrendously complex all [laughter] the time. So you see what I mean? What I mean by simple is something very simple. And it's difficult. It can be difficult at times because of the simplicity to rest back into the n into your own inherent awareness. Self-illuminating awareness. Self-illuminating means awareness aware of itself. It's a it's an intelligent awareness. It cognizes or knows itself. To rest back into that is a very simple thing.