This is a copy and paste from a document called "Awakened Heart" (click link to download)
Enjoy!
Questioner: If there is only one awareness, how is it that only I can be aware of my physical pain and you cant be aware of my pain?
Nicholas: There are many (even infinite) points in awareness. Yet not one of these points are the center of awareness. Awareness doesn't have a center. 'Your' awareness is not the center, 'my' awareness is not the center. Awareness can only be separate if there are two different centers. There are only points of one awareness, no center to any point. Awareness cannot be contained. Especially in an idea about it.
Questioner: You mean no-self? There is no-self to awareness. I often hear people claim that there is no-self.
Nicholas: A self must have a center to exist as a self. Awareness is self-less. Compassion is selfless. The two are one of the same. There is nothing to claim in compassion. Compassion is a natural quality of awakening to what we are.
Questioner: This reminds me of something I once heard about awakening to the heart. Is this what you are speaking of? It seems to me that many claim awakening and they seem very awake but something seems missing.
Nicholas: Yes, there has been said to be a progress from the awakened mind into the awakened heart.
The awakened mind is awake to all the right words, it is awake to the knowledge. There is much freedom in the awakened mind, so most stop there, thinking that is it. A practice can seem to go on, but the awakened mind uses its knowledge to avoid touching the heart.
The heart is where the real work starts. It gets very challenging because it's no longer about just learning the knowledge. It's no longer about covering up the real work with the knowledge.
Once you face what you're are not and what you are not is seen, the protecting gets turned on. With this trigger activated, most will use the knowledge to avoid the feeling.
Opening up to the feeling, is the doorway to the heart. This is where true compassion is awakened as selfless. The awakened mind can be very compassionate, but it's not completely self-less. It not true compassion from the heart. The heart is selfless.
What we are truly is felt as a resonance that is known. It's not based on knowledge, only feeling. It is intuitive, instinctive, and heartfelt.
Questioner: So the feeling of something missing is accurate? I often have a difficult time knowing the difference from my mind and my intuition. But I think I am pretty good at telling if someone is coming from the awakened mind or the awakened heart.
Nicholas: We are feeling beings. Our true nature is a feeling nature. Deep down inside we all know what we are. It can be sensed. It can't be questioned. It can be sensed as a knowing without knowing how it knows because it's not based on knowledge of the mind. It is a mysterious knowing and seeing.
The fundamental clear seeing of what we are is truly seeing what everyone else is as well.
You not only know what you are but you see clearly who everyone else is too. You're either awake or not. There is no in-between. If you're awake, everyone else is seen to be that too.
Questioner: I get that everybody is already awake. But there are still ones that are awake to the mind and ones that are awake to the heart, right? I see the paradox of both being true. Everybody is awake, yet not everyone is awake.
Nicholas: Things can only look paradoxical to the mind. There is no paradox where clear seeing is seen. All paradoxes drop away because all ideas drop away. When two ideas that look opposite are both seen to be true, then there is a paradox.
However, when both ideas are dropped, there is no paradox, only truth. This is what is meant by "everything is true". When only truth remains.
Truth is simple, clear, and obvious. Paradoxes are complex, unclear, and confusing.
In the end, all ideas are dropped. Even the ideas of awakened mind and awakened heart. There are no ideas in truth. Truth speaks for itself, without saying a word.
Questioner: I heard that the point to life is to awaken. You say there is no in-between, you're awake or you're not. But how can one make that claim if they are awake?
Because you also say that if you are awake, you see everyone else as awake. So if the point is to awaken, one must be able to discern who is awake and who is not, right? If you don't know who is awake and who is not (since once awake, you see everyone as awake) then the point of awakening cannot awake others since everyone is seen to be awake.
Nicholas: If awakening is the point of life then life will see that through. Awakening others doesn't depend on an individual who is awake, since there are no individuals, there is only life. When you awaken there is nobody else to awake, everything is seen truly.
You no longer believe the thought stories in your mind, so you no longer believe the thought stories in anybody else's mind. You meet yourself and everybody else exactly as they are and what they are; life. Only life is seen.
From such a clear seeing, what life does or doesn't do is done or not done by life itself. There are no ideas of an individual that is out to awaken other individuals from their stories. There is only life simply moving.
Life simply moving doesn't move to change anything. Yet oddly enough, this undivided consciousness, this unchanging movement; changes everything and has the most impact on the whole of life.
It's not what someone says or does that changes things, it is the consciousness in which things are said and done that has tremendous awakening effects.
Therefore, even when something is not being said or done, the whole of consciousness is wholly changed.
This is why it is said "the greatest service one can do is to realize self". The greatest service is to be wholly conscious. When consciousness is wholly conscious, no separation is seen and therefore nothing is separated from that seeing. Your clear seeing, heals all distorted seeing; literally.
Every change that quantum leaped human consciousness was thanks to one human consciousness seeing itself as the one consciousness that humanity is.
One can literally change the world by doing nothing, just by being what they are. You can sit in your room and 'elevate' the consciousness of humanity just by being the one consciousness that you are. All lives are changed where the one life is seen. All lives are connected where the one life is being lived. Then what you do comes from a pure sense of what you are and changing the world through action may arise but it comes from an undivided consciousness.
If there is an urge in you or anybody to really be of service to all others, there will be a natural urge to want to awaken to what you really are, to fully awake. It is natural because the two are not separate.
Questioner: Well that seems a very powerful and rare awakening. What happened to the ordinary living of knowing what you are? Why does it have to be something extraordinary and life changing?
Nicholas: It is the only true power. True power is effortless, forceless. This power has no agenda, it is just naturally there when one clearly sees what they are.
However, it is not rare. From the perspective of the mind, it can seem too much. The mind cannot contain this, it doesn't feel worthy of it, it feels like too much expansiveness. It is impossible for the mind to even conceive of, but it is the most natural way of being.
In this natural way of being everything makes sense so an ordinary life is lived. It is ordinary in the sense that everything is naturally seen as it is, simply. There is nothing to figure out since it is the most ordinary seeing. All questions drop away since there is no questioner separate from life. It's all simply a mysterious miracle and everything makes sense as that, so no knowledge of what you are is needed. It is known as mysterious and unknowable.
All the nonduality knowledge can be set down because what speaks is not speaking from knowledge but from clear seeing.
A simple and obvious seeing, where the ordinary miracle is being seen from an extraordinary mysterious source of being. The most ordinary natural way of being. A being that can dance without pondering what the moon means, it simply enjoys the pleasure and beauty of the moon. It is grateful. Dancing in the moonlight, with the moonlight, as the moonlight.
