Awareness as Phenomenology, Essays

Phenomenology of Awareness as Vast Attunement

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Thu, Feb 23, 2012

Awareness is vast and luminous attunement. Within the awareness field a person can be attuned to their own mind...This attunement can be to their own thinking, feeling, memory, sensation and fantasy. This attunement through awareness is useful in the skillful utilization of our mind. But awareness as attunement goes beyond the mind, far beyond our mind. Through awareness and within awareness we can also be in attunement to the other. We can be attuned to others mind, subtly attuned to their thinking, thoughts, feelings, memories, fantasy and even sensations. The attunement through the awareness field is a powerful and usefull skillful means. More powerful then mind to mind, thought to thought, sensation to sensation, fantasy to fantasy. The unmediated knowningnessnof awareness is more powerful then mediated knowingness of mind alone. The most powerful attunement is awarenesss attunement to its own self, awareness attuning to awareness. Awareness attuning to it own self as awareness. And awareness attuning itself to the awareness of the other. From within awareness attuning to its own self awareness can attune to awareness within the other. Moreover, Awareness can be attuned to the different dimensions of awareness, the different dimensions of its own self....Awareness attuned to awareness as dharmakaya, awareness attuned to awareness as sambhogakaya and awareness attuned to itself as nirmanakaya. Dharmakaya is the vast openness or ground of awareness as pure potentiality. Sambhogakaya is the manifestation of luminous vortexual archetypical energies that in turn manifest as nirmanakaya, the world as universe, as flesh. Attunement to awareness in the most direct manner brings forth the experience of self arising awareness. And lack of attunement to awareness can leave us open to the abyss of the ground or groundlessness with consequent experiences of deprivation and an ultimate sense of annihilation. Some people are born with exquisite attunement...baby attunementbaby gnosis. Direct attunement is direct perception. Gnosis is non-conceptual knowingness . Such non conceptual knowningness can take place within babyhood Such attunement if not foreclosed leaves a person open to the primordial openness of awareness which is the great perfection or great completion. Many people as babies have direct perception and as the mind formulates and is formulated such gnosis becomes more limited for some but not for all. This sense of attunement is very multifaceted as was described earlier.

Some babies are attuned to awareness itself and this field awareness is sustained throughout life. They are gifted and bright...they are true bodhisattvas. Some babys attunement shifts from awareness itself to their emerging mind and some babys shift and focuses on the mind of the other, the others affects, sensations, memories, fantasy and thoughts. How we attune greatly organizes our personality. In attunement one can be both attuned to the field and through the mind the mind of the other. In being attuned to the field of awareness one can experience the field alone. This is a great skill. Or one can also gather information through the field. This is also a great skill. A difficulty is in the attunement to the field and mind of the other, the person can be focused on the information, the vast information that the field affords and offers. This skill is most useful throughout life and greatly increases the skill of survival. A dilemma is that continued throughout life the intense focus alone on the information that field provides and not focusing on the field itself alone within its intrinsic completeness a lost of stability of the depth and breath of field can take place, There can be a lost sense of field as innermost source. The informational aspect can be overly used. Many people focus only on the information that the field provides. There is a dilemma of only focusing on the information provided by the field...actually, this can be exhausting. Moreover, this focus is can come through the mind of empathythrough the capacity of identification of feeling what the other is feeling, and experiencing what the other is experiencing and most importantly internalizing what the other is experiencing. We can internalized the affective states of the other through empathy alone. Such attunement and empathy creates an internalization of others positive as well as negative affective states. Skillful means is necessary in becoming attuned to the awareness field and the information it provides. A person can become attuned to others negative affective states with consequent internalization. These internalized affective states of another becomes an affective burden and the internalized affect can organize the person from within. The person is becoming organized from within by the internalized affects of the other. Such internalization often results in a confusion of love and care within the receiver of the transmitted affective state. Affective states that we can not bear we transmit to empathic and receptive others.. This is very human. For the most part religion ethics and aspirations of human kindness confuse these two dimensions . Awareness as heart essence and mind as container of experience of otherness is deeply confused for many. The lack of empathy of many psychopathic individuals is far deeper then their surface empathy identification system. For psychopathic individuals, the very innerheart of awareness is closed and contained and so the entrance into humanness is foreclosed. Their empathy system can be utilized to increase the sense of sadism and

enjoyment of others pain and agony. Such use of the empathy system within a foreclosed inner heart essence increases the sadistic pleasure of annihilation and deprivation being imposed upon others. Thus empathy as an affective response both can be used in great goodness and can used in great evilness. For a person becoming skilled in awareness, the knowingness through the inner heart essence is completely direct and yet not affective bound. There can be affective reactions and affective relations, but the light of the experience of awareness has its own feeling tone that is not an affect as such. Love, pure love, is not an affect but is the very nature of awareness. It is not liking or disliking. The sense of the innate awareness attunement takes one beyond pain. As is often said in the great tantric text, bliss overcomes suffering. The bliss of attunement to primordial awareness overcomes suffering. In this manner, a person can love and actually not be captured by care in the sense of carrying the burden within ones self of others affective states. The phenomena of care also arises from the primitive pre-oedipal superego, wherein one carries the burdens that arises from a lack of parental loving care and compensates by providing care for the parental figures as a method of experiencing love. Love and care become confused. Also, the oedipal superego can form through the internalization of the extreme standards of excellence imposed from and by parental figures both externally and through modeling. One attempts to modulate and regulate parental moods through caring attitudes and caring activities. This, of course, does not preclude true love of the child and there is unification of these two states of love and care that create the confusion of the focus of love is bearing the affective burdens of other. Often the person feels that if they internalize the painfull affective states of the other they can transmute these negative states of the other in their own bodies. For most people this endeavor is impossible . The exception of course is the mothering of young infants and children. For a person becoming skilled in awareness, the knowingness through the inner heart essence is completely direct and yet not affective bound. There can be affective reactions and affective relations, but the light of the experience of awareness has its own feeling tone that is not an affect as such. Love, pure love, is not an affect but is the very nature of awareness. It is not liking or disliking. The sense of the innate awareness attunement takes one beyond pain. As is often said in the great tantric text, bliss overcomes suffering. The bliss of attunement to awareness overcomes suffering. In this manner, a person can love and actually not be captured by care in the sense of carrying the burden within ones self or others affective stateswhat ever that state might be.

As caring dominates situations, love itself can be diminished out of exhaustion and the inner heart essence itself closes and enters retreat.

The vase is closed and can open. The vase can be opened and closed. The vase can be opened and remain open.

Some with awareness focus within awareness itself and direct perception experiences itself as luminous spaciousness and the various kayas open in completeness, multidimensional completeness. Some with awareness and archetypal orientation are also sensitive to the archetypical energies of cultural groups. Although extremely useful and guiding and orienting, such focus can induce states of exhaustion and saturation. Timing as circumstance..awareness and phenomena, timeless awareness and phenomenaof timemanifesting of circumstance is the doorway for action.circumstance and the field are in onenesssynchronicity.