LENS
Normal Awareness vs. Meditative Awareness: Shifting the Lens of Perception to Pure Awareness
Have you ever looked at a mountain and truly seen it? Not just recognized it as a mountain, but observed its intricate details, the ridges, the way the trees shape its slopes, the subtle shifts of color as the light changes?
Most of the time, we move through life with what can be called normal awareness. A state of mind cluttered with thoughts, judgments, and expectations. We don’t just see a mountain; we compare it to other mountains, think about when we last visited one, or wonder if we should take a picture of it. Our perception is colored by our memories, emotions, and conditioning.
But there is another way to see, a way that brings clarity, presence, and depth. This is meditative awareness.
The Fog of Normal Awareness
Normal awareness is filled with mental noise. It is driven by habit and reaction. When we walk down the street, we might be thinking about what we need to do later, worrying about an email we haven’t answered, or judging the way someone looks. We are rarely fully present.
This fragmented way of experiencing the world creates stress and disconnects us from reality as it is. We see everything through a filter, one shaped by our past experiences, biases, and fleeting emotions.
The Clarity of Meditative Awareness
Meditative awareness, on the other hand, is a state of presence. It is the ability to experience reality without interference from thoughts and labels. It is seeing the mountain without comparing it to anything. It is drinking tea and fully tasting it, feeling the warmth, the texture, the aroma, without distraction.
This shift does not mean emptying the mind or suppressing thoughts. Rather, it means recognizing thoughts for what they are, passing phenomena, like clouds in the sky. The sky is always there, undisturbed by the movement of clouds.
Practicing the Shift
How do we cultivate meditative awareness?
Pause and Observe
Take a moment to truly see what is in front of you, without rushing to label or judge it. Whether it’s a tree, a person, or a simple moment of silence, let it be as it is.
Notice Your Thoughts
Instead of being carried away by them, observe them like passing clouds. Recognize that you are not your thoughts; you are the awareness that watches them.
Engage Fully
Whatever you are doing, eating, walking, listening, do it completely. Feel the sensations, hear the sounds, and let yourself be absorbed in the present moment.
As we develop this awareness, life becomes richer. We see with fresh eyes. We listen more deeply. The ordinary becomes extraordinary.
And the mountain? It is no longer just a mountain. It is alive, dynamic, and endlessly fascinating.
Meditative awareness, also called steady awareness, introduces us to looking at the nature of awareness itself.
Once we become familiar with steady awareness, we still often move between this state and normal awareness. Despite the difference between them, both exist within a dualistic construct: There is something watching and something being watched, the experience of awareness recognizing itself.
Beyond Duality: Pure Awareness
When this duality dissolves, we drop into what is often called pure awareness or non-dual awareness. Non-duality is the essential quality of awareness itself, yet when we speak of these three types, normal, meditative, and pure, we describe a gradual unfolding, a shift from a mind cluttered with thoughts to one increasingly liberated from habitual reactivity and preconceptions.
These states are not rigid categories but fluid experiences, and our recognition of pure awareness comes in varying depths and clarity. We may have glimpses, brief moments of unfiltered perception where there is no observer and no observed, just the seamless flow of reality.
I had known something of pure awareness before, but part of my intention on this life journey is to deepen my relationship with it. I had always hoped to step outside of my normal life, not just to quiet the mind, but to dissolve the very boundaries between myself and the world, to see without a seer, to experience without an experiencer, and to simply be.