Practicing Awareness
Talks with Babaji
Please comment on maintaining the practice of awareness.
Being aware of every event as a witness and not getting involved in it. If you are hungry you eat. But your action will be without awareness because that’s the way the mind is set. When you are aware of that thought and action, then you are in the present. Keeping the mind in the present or being aware is the same thing.
Keeping the mind in the present doesn’t guarantee samadhi does it?
Yes. It is only in words “I am aware,” but it should be experienced ’I am’, which is indicating your true Self should be in the present.
What do you mean?
To be aware of thoughts and actions.
About the example of food and hunger.
Thought comes first, then action.
How to keep awareness of the present in that example?
I am feeling hungry. I am eating. You keep your awareness in eating. It is not done mechanically. We do things mechanically. Our minds are so trained in doing things that we are not aware of it. An example is bicycle riding. We don’t even think we are bicycle riding. Bicycle gets lost in our mind. Riding gets lost. The only thing the mind remembers is where I should go.
Lots of things I do that way, out of boredom, wasting my time thinking about them.
It is boring; that’s why it’s a yoga practice.
Suppose when I’m sitting in the present moment and my mind goes to my house where I forgot to do something.
The memory of the past always comes. Even in those thoughts one should remain present. Awareness of the thoughts.
What about doing japa while doing those things?
That is awareness in the divine presence.
Japa also becomes mechanical.
Yes, it becomes mechanical, but there is background awareness which is still good.
How is keeping the mind in the present applied to meditation?
1) Keeping the mind in the present is one kind of meditation. The mind goes out but you are always with it. 2) To concentrate on one object and merging in that is the other method.