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Whatever Awareness Is, It’s Not a Word

Writer's picture: S. A. FergusonS. A. Ferguson

I think I like asking questions I can’t answer and then writing about them. It’s a good mind stretch, so perhaps do some mind stretching of your own with me in the spirit of play. One of those questions I’d like ask is: What is awareness?

 

A dry-erase board with a concept map of awareness.
One of my attempts to map awareness. It sort of works. The purple star covers a special series spoiler. The rest of the concepts are too general, but do represent possible series topics.

It’s one of those questions that appears so simple at first, and yet it opens to a vastness that I cannot define using words. Upon further examination, it can seem incomprehensible altogether.

 

A definition from Merriam-Webster seems to provide a solid and easy summary, stating that awareness is “the quality or state of being aware; knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists” [1]. I was surprised to find that the first known usage of this word was in 1839. Really? Western tradition took that long to come up with a word for this massive concept? If there was a similar word used prior to this one, please let me know.

 

Many traditions across time on this planet have asked what awareness is, producing a variety of other interpretations that came way before 1839. For me, some of the most potent responses comes from the Indian and Tibetan traditions, which have rich legacies stretching back well before the Western “Enlightenment”. From India, there’s the Sanskrit word vidya, which can be translated as “knowledge” [2]. From Tibet, there’s the word rigpa, which translates as “awareness” or “knowing”. The Dzogchen teachings of Tibet delineate rigpa as “innate, primordially pure, non-dual awareness”, which is an individual’s true nature [3].

 

Great, so what does all that actually mean? None of the definitions, particularly not the tradition that produced Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, refines the meaning of awareness in ways that elucidate where it arises from, why or how it persists, or what its capabilities and boundaries are, if any. The Tibetan and Indian philosophies branch out into volumes upon volumes of teachings and commentary that address these questions. Western psychology has made noble attempts. The scope of these interpretations can’t be explored in one blog post, even if you wanted me to try.

 

While the Tibetan and Indian concepts ring most true to me, I’m still learning myself and formulating my own conceptions. I think the only reason they hold some semblance of recognition for me is because I’ve not only studied them, but practiced with them. In practice, I have experiences.

 

This is where words falter. Where words falter, experiences can bring a sense and a knowing. Those experiences can’t adequately be translated into words, which represent concepts. The most authentic conceptions, and the knowing that goes with them, I’ve developed around the idea of awareness have come from my direct experience. Any attempt to put that knowing back into words will not give you the full sense needed to understand the depths behind those words.  

 

Nevertheless, I attempt to use words to elucidate my conceptions. Through the composition of fiction, I can use words to direct my readers toward an experience of the concepts running through my own head. Stories provide experiences. Writing those words brings me my share of experiences, and so I imagine that my readers have their own. I feel things when I write. While writing, I have cried, laughed, and had heart palpitations. My daily mood can be altered in ways I don’t like if I don’t take the time to rest from writing scenes fit with adventure, quiet tension, passion, and heartbreak. Since I’m also a reader, too, I imagine there are other readers out there who have felt this too.

 

We readers know that the gesture of words, especially through fiction, can prompt not only a mental exercise, but a somatic experience. Try calling it solely mental when you read a story about a person being chased through the woods a night with growls behind them. If the story is written with gestures that show you enough detail and keep a realistic pacing, your heart will be racing along with the character in no time. That’s a somatic response.

 

You might call it primal drive. You might call it empathy. You might call it imagination. You might call it a transpersonal or universal feeling. Whatever it is, it’s an experience. That experience brings awareness--of self, of another, of the wider universe.

 

Like great writers, great knowledge-holders of awareness have had their own experiences of it and can help guide you toward your own experiences. This is not to say that you can’t have your own experiences independently. However, I have found that it can be easier with trusted guidance from a teacher (or teachers) who demonstrate their knowledge by way of experience. There are great writers who I trust to give me an experience of their stories as well.

 

So what is awareness? Let’s continue to ask this for ourselves in as few words as possible or in the many words of a story. Let’s seek experiences of it and what it means to us through reading, through writing, and through any moment when we come into the present.


 

Footnotes:

  1. “Awareness.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/awareness. Accessed January 18, 2024.

  2. Kinsley, David. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas. Berkley: University of Chicago Press, 1997. pp. 281 and 287.

  3. Wangyal, Tenzin. Healing with Form, Energy, and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen. Boulder: Snow Lion, 2002. pp. 142-143.


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