We are Nothing – But the Light is All

“From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things,
and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Presence-awareness does not come and go. If you are saying, “I can sometimes rest in awareness, for a little while, but then...,” you are not talking about awareness, you’re talking about your mind. You are noticing what the mind is doing – where you’re putting your attention, what you’re thinking about, and what you’re resting in. It’s fine, but it’s not what’s being pointed to.

Presence-awareness is just what is. This. It’s “within or behind” all that you are thinking about, noticing, and resting in. It doesn’t come and go. It has never stopped since the moment you and the world appeared. Can you turn on a light that’s already on?

You can rest in a peaceful, empty mind. That’s fine. You can cultivate that with practice. But you can’t cultivate presence-awareness. It just is. You have no power over it. It is not a tool, and it has nothing to do with what is going on in the mind. You don’t move the mind to get to it. It’s already shining here – from behind, from within.

And it is all. This light of presence-awareness, which is here always, is all. It shines upon things, of which the individual self is one. But it itself is not a thing.

Can you rest in it?

It is what you are. Is it necessary to rest in yourself, or are you simply that?