"Awareness is both pervasive and subtle. Paradoxically, it is at once everywhere and seemingly nowhere. It's everywhere because you can't experience anything outside of awareness, pretty much by definition. In every direction, everything you see, hear, and feel is happening in awareness. You can't step out of awareness to see what the world would be like from outside it. Yet, because it's so omnipresent, it's easy to take for granted and miss."
"Awareness can seem nowhere precisely because it's right under our noses-so close that we miss it. For this reason, teachers of nonduality use pointers, which are often in the form of metaphors. The metaphor I used in the previous post was a jar of marbles. What appears in awareness, the contents (thoughts, sensations, emotions, etc.), is like the marbles, and awareness itself is like the container in which they appear."
Awareness pervades all experience yet is often missed because it is the ever-present field in which sensations, thoughts, and emotions arise. Metaphors function as pointers to reveal awareness, for example imagining contents as marbles and awareness as the container. The thinking mind habitually fragments experience into separate objects, while the field of awareness is a single, unified whole. Noticing awareness enables flexible shifts in perception, reduces distress, and discloses an unconditional sense of OK-ness. Metaphors clarify aspects of awareness but remain models; they guide understanding without fully capturing the totality of awareness itself.
Read at Psychology Today
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