Looking Inward - Awareness

Looking out the window, it's just white. I can't even see the mountains today. It's been snowing constantly for a few days now I think, but still there's not heaps of snow on the ground - which is interesting!
It's cold, mostly below -10 degrees celsius.

When I first started reading a book called "Looking inward" from the Wat Buddha Dhamma monastery, I thought it was a tad exaggerated, probably because I'm not used to reading about buddhism (or religion in general for that matter). But then I read one chapter that really resonated with me, it was as if I read my own thoughts of late, and it made me wonder.. I guess the more time and energy we put on awareness and consciousness, the more we realise these things on our own - teachings that someone must have come up with at some point in the same manner. It's just interesting how separate beings can come to the same conclusion without having to talk to each other, especially regarding spirituality, and I guess that's what it's all about isn't it!

The chapter was called "Aware right at awareness". It's about well, exactly what it sounds like - awareness - being aware of that everything simply arises, persists until it inevitably disbands.

The author writes:

"Looking inward is special in so many ways. Whatever arises, simply stop still and look at it. Don't get excited by it. If any special intuitions arise when the mind is still, then if you'll become excited you'll get the mind worked up into a turmoil. If you become afraid that this or that will happen, that too will get you in a turmoil. So you have to stop and look, stop and know. The first thing is simply to look. The first thing is simply to know. And don't latch onto what you know - because whatever it is it's simply a phenomenon which arises and disbands, changing as part of its nature."

"If your mindfulness and discernment are constantly in charge, the truths of the arising and disbanding of mental and physical phenomena are always there for you to see, always there for you to know... All we have to do is stop and look, stop and know clearly in this way, and we'll be able to away with many kinds of suffering and stress."

Finding peace and stillness, that emptiness - that according to this book is inside all of us, is amazing. But I've also discovered that it's not all about drifting around in a huge nothingness.. Not really.