Spiritual Portal

I'm just drifting here and thinking about awareness and how others here have come to understand it. It feels like there are different gradients with awareness. Like, attachment to the senses. Or the opposite.

Sometimes we witness events unfold around us, and we become aware of the emotions happening within us. But we are not necessarily those emotions, as bad as our longing to identify our awareness of said emotions to this notion of our existence might be.

Other times... It seems we aren't always aware, and our inner world is influenced by the outer one. Sometimes we can't help it, and perhaps this is the point of having a material body, an Ego and learning in a 3D plane of duality. A chance to play with awareness and experience reality in the desired manner.

As spiritual aspirants it seems the majority choose to cultivate their inner world and attempt to peel the layers of identity, moving through the gradients of awareness until we can experience raw awareness. Is this the same as being an observer? I don't know.

I am beginning to wonder if we are even awareness at all? It is true that we witness. It is also true that our identity has been construed by the experiences- the action or inaction towards what we witness. Maybe it's just my understanding is lacking. But this is a desire to know God.

How do you think about these concepts?