Awake: It's Your Turn

“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.” ―Voltaire

The key is to observe the thought and identify the sense that this thought is about “me.”

Perhaps it could be said that attention moves toward a thought so quickly that it has no time to fully form.

The self we are investigating is not a mere thought or belief. It’s a sense, a frame of reference, and a feeling-assumption. It’s also a complex web of impressions and beliefs.

If you find yourself in that pure looking-seeing-being but landing nowhere specific and there are no thoughts, you are doing pure self-inquiry. Just keep at it. Stay in the gap.

I choose to be completely receptive to thoughts. They have all of my attention right now. I welcome them. You make the awareness of thoughts as thoughts, the most interesting thing to you in this moment.

The key is thoughtless looking-seeing-being. Neither rejecting thoughts nor getting entangled in their content. A pure movement of innocent curiosity. It might feel dynamic or it might feel quite still. Either is fine. Just keep that looking going.

One definition of empirical is, “verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or logic.”

This step is quite simple. Now that you have a sense that the thought you have become aware of is about “me,” look for that me. That’s it.