Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
PETER FENNER: Yes. When we are resting in awareness, as we
can be Now, so in a way it's a subtle process because even right
Now talking to you and to our listeners, it's easy to talk about
awareness, what we're looking for resting in awareness as
something that hasn't yet happened, as something that may
happen in the future. But I'm talking about what's happening
Now, at the same time that we're talking to each other and sharing
ideas, and perspectives, questions and answers, at the same time
there's this no-thing, there's nothing, unstructured awareness,
content-less awareness that's arising, not even arising, it's not
even dissipating, it's beyond being and not being, we can't say it is,
or it isn't. This is the awareness that can never be lost, because it's
not a thing that can go out of existence, it's nondual, beyond
existing and non-existing. It's also something that we don't gain;
it's quite different from an experience like a specific experience
that can arise in meditation, like some powerful insight, or even a
spiritual realization. We're talking about pure simplicity of
awareness itself.
TRIP: You ask folks questions that help them determine if they're
resting in a structured or unstructured state, can you give us some
examples of some of the questions you might ask someone?
PETER FENNER: Yes. First of all we move in the general
direction of resting in awareness, which means we become less
preoccupied especially with our self, and that reduction in
preoccupation with our own existence with me, mine, what I have
and what I don't have, that can arise through looking for the I
through that type of self-inquiry. And I'm sure your other
presenters have skillfully led your listeners, revealed those forms
of inquiry that if I try to find who is experiencing this moment, I
can't find the experiencer, the experiencer can never be found.
And then that opens up centerless awareness, I can't find a me, a
perceiver inside looking out, similarly I can't find the thinker of
my thoughts.
So that's the way that we can open up into the processing of
awareness. And then we can ask what I call checking questions,
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