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Okay, so today we're going to talk about a specific phase in my, uh, in my process.
Explores the foreground-background split phase after non-dual awakening, detailing the dance between awakened consciousness and personality.
Key Takeaways
- Non-dual awakening leads to a cyclical dance between awakened consciousness and ego personality.
- The awakened state is spontaneous and cannot be controlled by will or intention.
- True awakening is mind encountering itself, dissolving the sense of a separate self.
- The foreground-background split phase can last years and involves chasing the initial awakening experience.
- Awakening permanently shifts perception, though egoic identity may intermittently reassert itself.
Summary
- The video discusses a transitional phase called the foreground-background split following a significant non-dual awakening.
- After awakening, there is a cyclical alternation between awakened consciousness and the personality ego taking the forefront of experience.
- The awakened state is characterized by boundlessness, love, gratitude, joy, and bliss, while the personality represents the separate self.
- The presenter shares a personal experience of a 10-day continuous non-dual state followed by a return of the ego, initiating a 'chase' for that state.
- Non-duality arises spontaneously and cannot be forced or commanded by intention.
- Awakening is described as mind encountering itself, shattering identification with the body, name, and personal story.
- The ultimate realization is the dissolution of the personal self, replaced by a permanent shift in perception to 'I Am Everything'.
- The process involves cycles of expansion and contraction between non-dual awareness and egoic identity.
- The presenter emphasizes that the awakened state permanently alters perception, though egoic tendencies may temporarily return.
- The video clarifies that awakening is not about eradicating the personality but recognizing the interplay between foreground (ego) and background (awakened consciousness).
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to the Foreground-Background Split
- 02:48Awakened Consciousness vs Personality Ego
- 05:13Personal Experience of 10-Day Non-Dual State
- 07:33Conscious Awareness and Memory
- 09:52The End of Personal Story and True Awakening
- 12:44Cycles of Expansion and Contraction
- 19:26Permanent Shift in Perception
- 29:10Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
In the last couple videos or the last couple chapters of the book, I've talked a lot about some like supernormal or out-of-body experiences, and this chapter is not really about that at all. It's really about the—it's more like a transitionary phase,
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but it lasted so long. So, when I had that initial, uh, awakening that I described in some of the early, earlier chapters where this just incredible presence finally broke through or was realized after reading, uh, Ramana Maharshi,
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there was a period of about three years after that where that particular insight, that particular form of non-duality had to become stabilized, and there were certain challenges, uh, that came along with that.
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So, I call this the foreground-background split. So, after you have a very significant awakening, there's oftentimes going to be a dance between the awakened consciousness—we could call that the self or the awakened consciousness—that at times takes the forefront of
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your experience and the personality structure or the sense of self that also, uh, can be in the forefront of consciousness. So, there's an alternation.
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There's this dance. Sometimes you feel that you're everything, and the boundlessness is characterized or whatever special attributes of your form of awakening are emphasized. So, like it could be love.
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You could have a lot of love. You could feel a lot of gratitude. It could be extremely joyful or extremely blissful.
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Um, those things can vary, but let's all put that into the awakened consciousness, uh, category. So, you have this awakened consciousness now that is in the forefront of your experience.
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And it may be something that you can access through meditation, or it comes up through meditation, or it comes up spontaneously. It arises, emerges spontaneously.
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When that happens, your sense of a separate self, your sense of being a personality, the ego, takes the backseat.
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And you're in non-duality until whatever conditions fuel it begin to recede, and there's a switch, and your personality, your sense of self, comes back to the forefront. So, you literally have this experience and this ongoing process where some days or some weeks you're
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very expanded, you're very still, you're very clear, you're very non-dual. And then other days or other weeks you feel very separate. You feel very much like the person that you've always felt yourself to be.
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So, there's this dance between the awakened consciousness, what we call the awakened consciousness, and this, uh, personality.
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And the process of this—it goes through cycles. At least for me, very much so, went through cycles. So, what would happen is I would have, uh, weekend or something where for that whole weekend there was a lot of presence, there was a lot of
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clarity, a lot of non-duality, and then on Monday the sense of self would come back to the forefront, the personality would come back to the forefront.
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And it would feel like the weekend was just some distant memory; it wasn't something that was immediately accessible.
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So, there's this chasing that's also happening initially in the foreground-background split stage or phase.
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When the presence dawns, when the non-dual awakening happens, it gets reified as an experience after the intensity of it fades, after the immensity of it fades, and there's more of a return back to your baseline normal level of
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consciousness and of functioning. So, when I had the first 10 days of I Am Everything, at the end of it I called my best friend Ricardo and I told him, "Hey, this has to be the beginning of enlightenment. This
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is the most immaculate thing I've ever experienced. I mean, I've been almost continuously aware for 10 days.
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Uh, no sense of self and other. The whole universe is arising as me. I Am Everything is what I call it.
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And literally the next morning all the energetic shut off. So, there was this massive sense of bliss that was there for 10 days and just this, like, the crown chakra had cracked open.
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And then I just woke up the next day and it was gone. The sense of self had completely emerged and taken the seat in the forefront of consciousness. So, I was chasing now this experience or this boundlessness, this non-duality
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that I had been, you know, drenched in that was all that was for 10 days.
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So, now there's this chase. And so, I chased it for about a year, um, pretty much just waiting for it to come back. Just waiting for the presence to return and waiting for the non-duality to re-arise, and it
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did at times, but completely not in accordance with my will or with intention. It just happened on its own.
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Maybe I would listen to a lecture or a meditation would be particularly deep, and then the rest of that day or for two or three days the non-duality would be more pronounced, but it was always spontaneous. It wasn't something
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that happened at command or by intention at all. So, there's a lot of craving that's starting to happen. So, the problem here is that what awakens in that initial opening is recognition. So, you've always had awareness.
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You've always had consciousness, whatever, however you want to define that. Mind has always been there.
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If you weren't aware of something or if your mind wasn't present, uh, during an experience, then you wouldn't have any recollection of it. Just like in dreamless sleep, the mind is there, but there's no, uh, there's no consciousness.
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There's no conscious—there's no conscious awareness in dreamless sleep. So, there's no memory of that experience.
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And that applies to the rest of the entirety of our life that we live.
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The reason that we can remember specific events and things that have happened in the past is because there was conscious awareness there.
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The mark of awakening is that there's a visceral, direct recognition of mind. So, mind encounters itself. That's the difference. Then, the entirety of the spiritual path before this point, mind is pointed outward. It's pointed at objects. And it takes those objects as
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real. It takes thoughts to be real. It takes the mind stories, proliferating thoughts, feelings, emotions, all of that. Takes all of that 100% to be real.
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But it doesn't encounter itself. And at one point, when mind encounters itself, if that encountering is very intense, so intense that it shatters the structure of identification, it shatters the process within that says I am the
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body or I am Ryan or I am this. When the awakening is so strong that it breaks that, you no longer believe that you're a Ryan. You no longer believe that you're a body.
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You no longer believe that you are what you think. That has been destroyed. And it has been destroyed by the intensity of realization, the depth of the realization. What was different in those 10 days when I first experienced I Am
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Everything? What was different was that for the first time in my life the story was over.
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There was no Ryan chasing bliss anymore. There was no Ryan on the path to enlightenment anymore. There was no Ryan seeking peace anymore. There was no—there was no me experiencing fulfillment or seeking fulfillment. There was only bliss. There was only light.
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There was only fulfillment. There was only ecstasy. There was no person there. And this is the mark of non-dual awakening.
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That moment of mind meeting itself, of mind encountering itself, is so seismic that it reshapes and it reorients, reorients the entire process of perception. How you see yourself and how you see the world is radically altered. I would
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say permanently, radically altered. If the awakening is sufficiently deep and the insight is sufficiently understood, you will never see yourself as a person again. So, I Am Everything.
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I Am Everything is waking up from I am Ryan. When you wake up, you don't—you don't—when you wake up in this regard, you don't go back to sleep believing that you actually are Ryan.
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All those tendencies can return like they did for me. The t
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the stories that you tell yourself anymore. You can never really believe that you are the body after an experience and after an awakening like that.
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So, now that the awakening has been kick-started, it really has its own rhythm. So, I noticed that there is a striving that was happening.
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There was this craving for the non-duality to return, the I am everything to to have it back, and it would come on its own, of course. It would just the boundary would disappear and there would just be that that state, I am
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everything. And it would be there naturally for a couple days, few days, disappear. And it was actually a U.G. Krishnamurti talk called Give Up, which I think is one of the most crushing spiritual discourses I've ever heard, or
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at least at the time it was one of the most crushing things I've I'd ever heard. It was so crushing.
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He said, "All the effort that you're putting into meditation, into yoga, all the effort that you're putting into seeking some goal, which is a concept that has been placed before you, and a concept that you have accepted, which is true.
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All of that seeking and all of that wanting is actually taking you further away from yourself. It's taking you further away from the natural state.
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It's taking you further away from what actually is. And he explained that when there's a complete giving up, when that when that desire is no longer moving in the directions towards the techniques and towards the seeking and towards the teachers and all of this,
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when when all of that comes to its cessation, when all of that stops, the life force energy in the body awakens.
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And he described it in very visceral and I would even say atomic terms. For him, it was very different. It seemed that the entire physical organism underwent a transformation.
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But that really hit me when he said, "All the seeking that you're doing is actually taking you further away from yourself." And it just it just shattered me. It was like what Ramana had done to me the year before,
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but now it's it was U.G. And the it was the first 10-day stint of the non-dual effortless wakefulness, almost near continuous effortless wakefulness.
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Also lasting another 10 days, so this was the longest it had been since that last round after reading Ramana.
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The difference with this one was that I was no longer I noticed that I was no longer saying I am everything.
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That thought wasn't there. The sense that everything is me wasn't there. There was just this sense that the mind is expanded in every direction and um that the entire field of perception is is is all that it's there that's
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there. And there was this sense still that I wouldn't call it I wouldn't have called it an observer, but I definitely would have said that there was still this emptiness this empty background.
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But emptiness was like it was still a thing. It was still this formless thing. It wasn't thoroughly empty as I understand it at this point.
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But there was still this empty thing background. And there was also an insight that happened at that time that was very critical. Um I believe I had read an article from the Awakening to Reality blog even even back then. So this was
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this was probably 3 years ago. Yeah, 3 years ago. It was a section on phase six called presence is empty.
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And uh it was explained that that presence is is not actually a thing. Uh it's it's existence is is inferred.
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It's not presence is not a separate thing that like comes crashing into your reality. And that's what I experienced it as. I really experienced it as this thing that descends as if the wakefulness like comes from the sky or something.
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And that's really not the case. What's happening is that you could see the recognition of mind or the recognition of wakefulness, this natural state. You could see it as the sun.
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Imagine the sun in the sky. And when there's no clouds in the sky, that's this natural non-duality that that I'm describing that's effortless and it's just what is.
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And then clouds come and they obscure the the light the light of the sun and you and you can't see the sun anymore.
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And at that moment the non-duality is not immediately being perceived. You're you're now in distraction. You're now in dualism.
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You're now in the self and other dichotomy. So if you don't have a teacher, which I didn't at the time, to explain this you end up thinking that presence is an experience. You end up thinking that presence is an experience that that
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comes and goes when actually presence is the taste of experience. It's not something that descends from above and and enters you. It's just the mind in recognition.
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That's all that it is. So the simple noticing is it. Noticing this moment of noticing this moment of recognition.
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If you're noticing right now that clarity aspect of mind. That's it. So all the other stuff that comes with that is what gets mistaken for non-duality. So like the bliss that comes along with that, the boundlessness that comes along with that
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the ecstasy or the profound experience of love that that comes along with that. All of that gets lumped into what we call awakening.
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But those are actually like fruits of the tree that is noticing, of the tree that is the awakening itself. It's called awakening for a reason. You're actually awake.
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I didn't understand that until it happened. I made sense. I was like, "Oh, that's why they call this awakening." Like you literally wake up.
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It's actual recognition of mind that that happens. And that recognition is very simple. It's it's just recognition. It's just noticing.
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Initially there's the dualistic split that is there even though you are noticing. So it is you have the sense of being a noticer of you being here and everything being out there and you noticing it.
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But that's just a illusion that is eventually dispelled through the through the process of awakening actually.
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So this UG quote, I discover it and then a couple months later read that that presence is empty and that it's not something that like descends upon you.
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So that ended the chase. Cuz there was this chase that was oh, I got to get back to the I got to get back to the presence. Like when is it going to happen again?
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And it's it's it's absurd because I mean it's it's always happening. It's all it just it's what it's what is.
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But if there's no recognition and there's no noticing of that then it gets overlooked. Mind doesn't come or go. It's not this experience that that arises and passes like mystical experiences that that arise and pass.
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Um there's either recognition of of mind or or there isn't. Everything else that gets tacked onto that that gets added to that uh it can be a grave mistake if it's if it's mistaken for the actual recognition itself.
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So now that presence is understood as as empty, it wasn't wasn't thoroughly empty. It was still an empty thing like I've described before.
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But at least there's no more chasing. At least there's no more um trying to get back to what had happened before. It's like it's all it always is. It's always now.
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So after that there was still this there's still the foreground background split. It just changed. Now now there was no chasing, but now that I noticed that the foreground back the the dance, the oscillation was happening more rapidly,
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more frequently. So uh initially maybe it would I'd have like a non-dual weekend once every month or once every uh every 2 months it'd be really intense.
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But after the UG uh talk I was in Nepal at the time when I heard that and the presence was empty understanding.
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What was now happening was there would be these really big non-dual openings just like in the uh 10-day both of the 10-day phases that I described of 10-day experiences I described but now this was happening much more frequently and
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there was a like an abyss that would come up after every opening. So you're really expanded for a few days or for a weekend.
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And that perception of not necessarily being everything, but definitely non-duality. It wasn't having I am everything as a thought, as a conviction coming up anymore.
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But when the contraction phase of the cycle happened, so once the immensity of mind and of the experience would uh would fade, there was this really strong just like hopelessness that would come up.
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Feel hopeless. Uh just dark night type of dark night type of stuff, and it wasn't it wasn't anything resembling, you know, it wasn't as deep as like suicide or any anything like that, but it was very, very intense. It was like a
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nothingness that hurt. It was like a It's like a nothingness that just like would rip you apart.
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And at that time, all of my beliefs and all of the things that I really regarded as um meaningful and as true were actually emptied out.
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So, the belief that I had the the the solidity of beliefs and the investment that I had in beliefs was actually destroyed through these contractions and through the abyss through the abyss on the contraction uh phase of the cycle.
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So, I was no longer um having refuge or having faith that like things would work out or that the universe would provide or that um there's a greater intelligence or that there's a greater plan for me or or for
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everyone. I saw all of those as assumptions. But I don't know that. I don't know that. I don't know that. I don't really know that. I don't know if that's actually true.
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So all the things that I actually really held to be true, it became very clear that I didn't actually know if they were true or not.
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And this deconstruction that was happening naturally was actually very painful. Like all the things that I held dear, it was almost as if they were taken from me.
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So didn't have faith, didn't have hope, didn't have love, really. There was just this this presence, but I wouldn't call it non-dual, especially on the contraction cycle.
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So this sense of self has come back to the forefront, but it's not not the same self that was there before. It's like a dying self.
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It's like a self in the in the throes of death. Like there's not much left.
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It's not much left in this guy. He's facing He's facing annihilation. And um I wrote so many posts that um I I shared so many posts that were characteristic of this particular phase when when I was in it because it was so
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it was so intense and it makes really good poetry. It like makes for great poetry, for great writing, all the sadness and like the um the nothingness that that comes that comes from that. So awakening is kicked off
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and now the process is actually reducing you. It's literally it is literally assaulting your sense of self. It is destroying you.
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Very very intensely. And I remember I would go I went on to Clubhouse and I gave a talk one night and this person asked like, "Ryan, do you feel like you have ancestral karmas to clear and like things that you want to do and things
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that you want to accomplish and healing that that you that needs to be done and like, you know, something that you want to contribute to the world and give back?" And I was just like, "No.
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I don't. All of that is are just beliefs, constructs, ideas that I have accepted to be reality.
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And they are not actually reality at all. They're just ideas. People messaged me after that asking if I was suicidal. And the thing was I was not suicidal at all and I actually I 100% believed everything that I was saying and I still believe a
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lot of that, actually. See, the the reducing and the destroying it it's it it Once it's destroyed, it's gone.
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So, like it just doesn't hurt now. So, like beliefs, karma, uh I've never seen karma, for example. Never seen it.
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You never actually seen the particles and the structures that are that are what we call karma. Never I have never seen it.
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Cuz I'm not I'm not clairvoyant in that way. So, because I've never seen it, I take I take it on faith of the existence of a of the Buddha and other teachers that it actually exists. I don't actually know
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by my own personal experience if it exists or not. Non-duality, expansive states of consciousness, clear light of death, out-of-body experiences, interdimensional beings, profound love at the core of existence, all of that I can attest for saying that it's it
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exists at least as far as my personal experience is concerned. But karma, never seen it.
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So, that belief that I have in karma is still there. But I really see it as just a belief.
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Like I don't actually know. And it doesn't matter that it's that it's a belief to me. It's like that's fine.
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But the human construct and how we are designed is to be heavily invested in the things that we believe.
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And that if those beliefs are attacked, that um we people take that People tend to take that very personally.
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So, that's all done and blown out of the water completely. I don't know if anything is. In that day I was In that phase I was like I don't know if any I've no idea what's true.
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And it doesn't matter what's true cuz um all that all that matters is this this process.
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And at first I thought that the that the abyss was something that was wrong.
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I was like I was like, "Oh, this is like not good." And then I began to understand that the abyss the reducing, the destroying is the awakening process. It's It It actually is part of it. It's it's it.
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So, you think you're in the abyss and that you've been banished from the garden, but what's actually happening is like you're you're you're still in the garden. It just doesn't seem like it. You're You're in the You're in the
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you know, you're in the graveyard part of the mansion. But it's still the it's still the it's still the court It's still the court grounds. You're still You're still there.
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It just doesn't feel that way. But that abyss and these contraction cycles, the sense of being kicked out of the garden.
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And the stuff that comes up in those phases and in those cycles is exactly what it needs to be dealt with.
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So the hopelessness that was coming up at that time, I couldn't pinpoint it at first. I was like, "What it Where is this coming from?" And then eventually it was actually a conversation I had with with Tina Rasmussen. I asked her,
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"What's the difference between genuine insight cycle, like genuine dark night or knowledges of suffering, what's the difference between that and a and a personal problem, like like trauma? How how How do you tell the difference between miser as an insight knowledge, seeing the
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suffering of existence and feeling suffering, immense suffering? What's it How do you know the difference between that and something that's actually coming up from your organism, from your structure?
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How do you know the difference between a a genuine insight and trauma?" And she said, "That's a really good question.
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And it's extremely hard to tell the difference at times." And I was like, "Wow." And she said, she taught me that what's coming up in the what's coming up in these cycles is exactly what needs to be processed. The
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the awakening is actually providing in real time what it is that needs to be dealt with.
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But we may not read it that way. We might not understand that if it's not explained.
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Um and if that's not told to us. So when she told me that, I was like, "Oh, that's why this keeps coming up, this hopelessness. Like where is that coming from?" And then it made me realize like, "Oh, when was it when
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where did this hopelessness really begin? What was the first time I really really felt completely hopeless.
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And it led me back to the day that I was in the hospital room and I watched my dad die and all my dreams and hopes just turned to dust.
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So, then I understood that this process is extremely intelligent. I mean, wow. It's just the precision is amazing.
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So, I took that as a sign and fortunately, my friend was doing this uh coaching certification at the time and he was doing this new revised version of timeline therapy called mental emotional release and I got to experience like 18 hours of it.
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And you go through all these events in your life and you revisit them and you allow the subconscious to uh draw or extract the lessons from that particular experience.
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And you you do specific processes that are in timeline therapy to to release and to integrate that that trauma and that pain and often times the incidents that happen are related to former existences, so past lives.
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And a lot of that was a theme. One of the things that was a prominent thought at that time was and I couldn't escape it, it was just there for years, was that I am a failure. Like this cut this kept coming
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up and I couldn't couldn't get away from it. I am a failure. I am a failure.
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And when we were doing the process, initially it led back to um feeling that I had failed to save my father or that I failed to um tell him everything that I wanted to say or uh have the relationship that I want to
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have with him. So, we initially visited that and looked at that, but then it went back to former lives.
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And it was traced back to a life and this isn't the past life attainment, so I don't really know I can't tell whether this is a genuine past life memory or whether this is just how the subconscious or
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the greater mind is communicating or processing. I think I really don't know because it wasn't something that came out of samadhi. I was in altered state, uh basically hypnosis.
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So, we trace it back to this memory in a life. And this is literally like the 18th hour of of this whole thing over a period of like 3 days.
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And it traced back to a memory of a life where I took the death vow as a monastic. So, the death vow means you sit cross-legged and you vow to either realize enlightenment or die.
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And a lot of people actually die when they take that vow. I mean, they they literally sit until the death.
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So, their body just rots there whatever the it was it's it's famously called the death vow because the Buddha made it underneath the Bodhi tree when he was seeking enlightenment. He said something along the lines of my bones may my my bones may rot.
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Uh just he will not move under any conditions or any circumstances from that seat until he attains enlightenment.
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Uh he will die before he gets up. So, you take this vow and it's like your last, you know, you've been be a lifetime and they're still not an awakening that you are satisfied this and you think you can have you think you
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can do it. So you do it. Some people succeed and they awaken. Won't be with the founder of the Damakai tradition took the same vow.
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He succeeded realized the Damakai and he awakened. A lot of people take the vow and they die.
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So in this life that I was seeing I I took the vow and I didn't get enlightened so I sat there until I died.
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And one of the final thoughts on on the mind of that particular person of that particular incarnation was I have failed.
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I failed. And when we ran the timeline process to to clear that and to integrate that that lesson I saw so clearly that in that moment it seemed I had failed but because of the awakening that has happened in
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this particular life that it actually wasn't a failure. Uh it was a failure then but it was it was related causal it was a link all the way to the awakening that that has happened now even if it's not full enlightenment it
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was still still the dissolution of subject and object so still very profound. So I realized that it wasn't actually wasn't actually a failure at all.
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And when that had happened in that little trauma little uh I mean that major trauma and a imprint was was cleared there was this it was like this massive amount of energy just blasted along the timeline reaching all the way through
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uh into this into this present moment, into this present incarnation, and and it was instant non-duality. I picked up a grain of rice, and I looked at all, and I was laughing. I was laughing.
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I was laughing so hard, and I was like, "I didn't fail. It was all worth it." Five lives, or however many lives later, I don't know.
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And uh and that ended the abyss cycles. The, the cycles where this contraction with this big opening would happen, and this big contraction would happen.
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And on the contraction, there's all this hopelessness, and all this darkness, and and nothingness, and just like soul-wrenching stuff.
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All that ended after that day. And there was a solid, like, 2 months in that flavor of non-duality, uh which which again is very expanded, and, um, definitely a definitely an expansion.
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You would have called it an expansion back then. So, after that passed, um, the sense of like this sense of me would come back to the to the to the forefront, but it was just it just felt like there
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wasn't like like Ryan was there as a memory, but not not nearly as solid as he used to be.
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But there's still this sense of like I still he's still there. Like the like the person the personality is still there. There's still as as empty as the personality is still it's like a I called it a silhouette. It's like a silhouette of a
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person. That's what I called that particular uh part of the process. Like only a silhouette of a person is left.
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And I asked my I asked one of my mentors again you know, so how do I deal with this silhouette? Like it's not it's not it's not even near it's not nearly as solid as it used to be. But how do I
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what do I do about the silhouette? And and she explained to me that uh the silhouette in the Sufi teachings is this uh sense of of an observer.
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Or the sense of self that remains, whatever we we may define it. However we may define it.
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She called it the blue pearl. She so so she said the the blue pearl the remaining sense of self, the silhouette the personality is actually the ground.
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Is actually a manifestation of the ground of being, whatever you want to call it. I would never call it ground of being now. But but back then I would have.
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So ground of being and the sense of I that is still there those are actually one. They're not they're not separate.
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So you don't need to be concerned about reducing it further or trying to get further away from it or trying to eradicate it.
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Just let it just let everything just let everything be. And And that was very useful. At least that ended the the sense that I needed to chop it down or somehow burn the silhouette that was left.
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And the next major insight after that was a year later and that was Anatta.
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So, the complete and the final end of the subject object split. And the the end of the sense of a background witness. So, I have this I've set up to this point that this thing that comes to the foreground
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is like this empty thing. It's like empty consciousness thing, but it's not it's still it's still a thing.
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And then this personality thing that is also becoming emptied uh comes to the forefront.
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2 months of non-dual expansion and then silhouette of a person now at this point coming up to the forefront.
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And then a year later, so I read the the Bahiya Sutta and uh John Tan's commentary on it.
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And it explained very clearly that the background is actually just a thought. And that the knowingness or the clarity aspect of mind call it awareness or or clarity that is that is noticing that is perceiving is inseparable from the entire field of
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experience. It's inseparable from thought, it's inseparable from feeling, it's it's inseparable from emotion, it's inseparable from form.
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But it's not an observer. It's just another quality of the field of experience. It's the clarity aspect of what Buddhists call luminosity. So, the the field of experience. If we look at mind, we don't actually find anything there. You know, you can
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see thought, you could see or you could experience a thought, you could feel an emotion, you could have a memory, mental images. These things are are concrete.
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At least in the field of mind, there there's a thought right there. But the noticing itself, the the noticing, the sensation on the hands, the noticing that is inseparable from the thought itself and from the feelings themselves.
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That that noticing is never seen. That noticing is completely empty. John Tan explained that when in earlier phases, when we hear a sound, there's a sense that there's a listener here and that the sound is over there.
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But then a moment came where I heard a sound and it became clear that the sound was awareness. The sound actually is mind.
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There's not a mind here and and a sound over there. It's uh they're inseparable.
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And when that became very clear that there was actually no separate awareness that was like looking at things, and that that sense of there being a separate awareness looking at things is actually just a thought, it's just a
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sense, severed forever. It was finished. At least this foreground-background split that has lasted 4 years at this point, mind you.
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It went went It underwent all the transformations that I just explained. And then it ceased. It stopped.
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It at this point no longer arises. So, the foreground-background split concludes in the realization that there actually is no background.
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There's no inner or outer. There's no background observer, background witness that is separate from anything. There there is only everything. So, there's a quantum leap, there's a shift from I am everything to there is only everything.
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And now all of the experiences, all of the appearances, all that is thought feeling sensation form perception there's just that.
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In the seen, there is only the seen. In the heard, there is only the heard. In the cognized, there is only the cognized. These are the lines from the Bahiya Sutta, and they challenge so much of what we assume about awareness.
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Mind is the seen. Mind is the heard. Mind is the cognized. Uh it's all it's all it's all mind, but the mind itself is is empty. It is the true unknowable quality. So, Bodhidharma would call it no mind
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or emptiness. So, that is how the foreground-background split ended. It ended when it's becomes very clear that there actually is no background.
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It's just this. And mind is this. Awareness is this. Not something separate that watches.
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So, when that happened, the uh It's just so profoundly different. There was there was no longer Non-duality became has become natural because of that.
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Because if there's no background, and there's only a foreground, if there's only a foreground, it's automatically non-dual.
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So, this having to get into it or relax into it or um Yeah, there's no relaxing into it. It It just It just is.
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And that happened through through insight. So, concludes our our chapter on the foreground-background split.
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Everyone, I'll stop the recording now.
Topics:non-dualityawakeningforeground-background splitegoawakened consciousnessspiritual processmind encountering itselfI Am Everythingmeditationself-realization
