How Do I Get From My Ordinary Awareness to “I Am That”?

What we usually call “awareness” the sense that I am here, experiencing this — is like looking at your face in a mirror. It moves when you move. It seems to smile when you smile. But try to touch it, and your hand hits glass.

What you’re experiencing is a reflection of awareness, something that seems like the real thing but is actually just a surface version. It’s filtered through your mind, your memories, your identity.

The real “you” is not the reflection. It’s the one being reflected.

2. The Reflection Is Still an Object

Everything you can observe: your thoughts, emotions, memories, even your sense of being “aware” is appearing to something. And anything that is seen, felt, or known is not the one doing the seeing.

Even silence, or the feeling of “pure presence,” is still something you're noticing.

So the question is: what is noticing all of this?

That’s not a question to be answered with words. It’s a pointer. Stay with the noticing, and eventually you'll come upon something that can’t be seen because you are it.

3. You Don’t Become This. You Already Are

You can’t become your real self. You can stop pretending you’re something else.

You already are what you’re looking for. You don’t need to fix yourself or change your thoughts or become more spiritual. You just need to stop identifying with what you’re not.

You’re not the reflection. You’re not the mirror. You’re not even the sense of looking.

You’re the light that allows all of it to appear and yet you’re untouched by any of it.

4. Thought Will Take You to the Edge Yet No Further

You can get close using reason, logic, or philosophy. You can say, “I’m not the body,” “I’m not my thoughts,” “I’m the one aware of them.” These are helpful stepping stones.

But the final turn, where you stop trying to grasp it and simply be, can’t be made with thought.

It’s the moment you stop trying to see your face in the mirror and realize: you were never in the mirror.

5. What Changes When You Know This?

This realisation doesn’t pay your mortgage or fix your back pain. But it shows you that even in the middle of difficulty, you are free.

You are not what comes and goes.
You are not what begins and ends.
You are the stillness in which all of it moves.

And once that’s seen, truly seen, it changes your relationship with everything.

You stop clinging. You stop resisting. You stop searching.

FAQs

Q: I still feel like “me.” Is that a problem?
No. That feeling is just a habit. A shape the mind takes. Notice who is aware of that feeling. That awareness has no shape, no past, no story.

Q: Isn’t this just philosophy or mental gymnastics?
Not if it’s lived. The ideas are only there to dissolve confusion. Once they’ve done their job, you don’t need them anymore. You don’t live in the map. You live in the terrain.

Q: How do I know when I’ve “seen it”?
You stop asking that question. There’s a quietness. Not dramatic. Just ordinary and still yet completely free of needing anything more.

Take the Inner Turn

Start with this: right now, you’re aware.

Now ask: what is it that is aware?

Don’t answer. Just notice. Let the question deepen into silence. Let the mind rest. What remains, before any words arise, is you.

You’re not in the mirror. You were never in the mirror. You were always here.