A STATE OF AWARENESS:

[Pravin Kumar]

A State of Awareness:

Everything arises from silence, but not everything's heard from a state of awareness. Freedom from the known can occur, but only when it's understood how to truly listen in a state of awareness...

It matters little what you hear, but how you listen does matter in the sense if it heard from a state of awareness. Most of the time there's all kinds of noise around us and most of it is labeled from our impulses and opinions. Freedom from the known can happen, but only when it's learned how to truly listen, and you can only truly hear when you’re in a state of awareness. This state of awareness arises from silence, there's nothing to think about in this state. A bird chirping, a car horn beeping, a helicopter, rain, the ocean, all sounds can be heard and as with any sound, they can annoy you or the can anchor you in the present moment. There's so much noise that goes on in the head, but it has nothing to do with the sound being heard.

Everything arises from a state of silence, but not everything's heard from a state of awareness. As I was sitting on my front porch the other day, listening to leaf blowers in the distance, the neighbor preceded to play his music very loud to where my so called serenity was disturbed. I immediately took a deep breath and realized that although I was enjoying the sounds of the moment I wasn't in a state of awareness. If I was when the sound changed to my neighbors music, I wouldn't have been disturbed by it. One deep breath showed me this, and it allowed me to be in a state of awareness to the sounds that were there in the present moment instead of the mind noise of my impulses and opinions of how I thought it should be...

MICHAEL CUPO