“All things arise in awareness and never exist apart from it. It is all one substance, all one light… We live, move, and have our being in that one ocean of light and never, ever move away from that.”
—John Wheeler

Imagine standing in a pitch-black room. You cannot see anything until you switch on a flashlight. A circular area in front of you suddenly is lit up, and everything outside that beam remains hidden in darkness.

Now look at your own visual field. Expand your attention to its farthest edges. It has a round shape, not unlike the flashlight’s illuminated area. If you place your hand in front of your face, you experience that sight because awareness is illuminating it. Even with your eyes open, you could not see your hand if you were unconscious. Move your hand behind your head and try to see it. You can wiggle your fingers to help your attention find it, but visually speaking it does not exist for now. It is visual oblivion back there.

This points to something hiding in plain sight: awareness itself. Awareness is the reason we can experience anything at all. It includes sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, and emotions. It is so obvious and so constant that we overlook it. In contemplative traditions, this aspect is often called “luminous,” and it forms the L in my CLEAR Awareness model, which stands for calm, luminous, expansive, allowing, and responsive.

Many........

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