Awareness: What Is It?

What is awareness? We all know that we are alive and living but what is this thing called awareness? How is it that we come to know that we "are"? When we refer to ourselves as "I" do we mean those characteristics and traits which define our human existence? Is this "I" real or is it something which we have dreamed up?

There are so many questions that can be asked of one's self, but where to begin?

It is an established fact that we exist. We know this by having an awareness that "we are". We have likes and dislikes which help to define our nature but which certainly do not encompass it. We come to be born and in this birth we fear death, the destruction of those characteristics and traits which we have clothed ourselves with. Even though we take these things as being real, as being the "who or what we really are", we harbor a yearning to go beyond the superficial, beyond the illusion of life and living. Our parents may name us, schools of thought may train us and governments may reign us but we remain just as we are despite these shenanigans of outward appearances.

In the physical universe objects are admired, desired, created and destroyed. But we are not objects even though we attach ourselves to them. We are what the physical universe happens in.

Awareness is the understanding that we are what we see. Seeing is being but knowledge of our sight takes us even further into our nature. Awareness is watching the process of seeing unfold.