Chapter 9

There is no need to change your consciousness because everything is right in front of you. Once you stop seeking the truth the truth will find you. There is no duality because everything is the truth just the way it is right now at this very moment. The saying that "we can't see the forest for the trees" applies here. The truth lies before us but we don't recognize it because objects are getting in the way. These objects are the truth just as the trees are the forest. When you are able to realize, without thinking, that all beings exist as one and not as separate beings, you will experience total awareness. When you begin practicing pure awareness you will probably find it either to be momentary, lasting for only a few minutes at the most or you may kid yourself into believing you have been purely aware when you really haven't. You can be in pure awareness one moment and fall automatically back into duality the next moment, into me vs. them without realizing it. While in pure awareness, you should have a sense of everything without mental content; object and subject merge into universal consciousness excluding nothing, so there is no separation of anything. All problems fade away while love, joy, awe, and wonder arise naturally. And then you will most likely fall back into duality again. This is true because the mind keeps bringing you back like a bungee-cord hooked at one end to pure awareness and the other end to duality. As long as you are attached to the ego and "I", no matter how loosely, the mind will bring you back into duality. As long as there is a division between yourself and the rest of the world, duality will always "spring" back to you.