Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P.
Embodiment or embodied awareness is a way of understanding the body. The body is not simply the external body, the body is the lived body. Both the 10th century Kashmir philosopher Abhinavagupta and the contemporary French phenomenologist Merleau Ponty have a similar view of the lived body, or better ‘lived’ embodiment. A person may have a most beautiful external objective body but minimally lived in. Embodiment allows us to understand and conceive of the body as a way of living, experiencing and of perceiving through the medium of our embodiment. The body is the medium of the field. A person perceives not simply through eyes and ears alone, but through the whole body. Our body is an instrument of perception. Our body is an instrument of knowingness. The embodiment of awareness is the lived embodying of primordial awareness that liberates our being in the world. The embodiment of awakened awareness pulsates in resonance with and within Being itself.
Embodiment of Being-ness
The knowingness of luminous spacious awareness embodied is an existential and foundational experience. The felt sense of embodied awareness is the felt sense of the embodiment of Being. The felt sense of this embodiment is experienced as the realm of subtle energies; the realm of radiance; and the realm of the resonance of non-duality through the expanse and extension within dualistic appearance. Awareness embodied transforms our way of being in the body. Our body becomes the medium of awareness, knowing awareness as Being in one self, and Being in others. This embodying of awareness of awareness itself brings forth the deeply felt sense of Being of our own being. Embodied Being-ness is the experiencing of pure presence, pure spaciousness, pure luminosity, pure openness, and the pure pulsation of energy. Embodied awareness brings a sense of protective porousness and fullness of expansion.
Awareness perceives through embodiment. Awareness pulsates within the spontaneous movements of Being in Being `s self-manifestation within us. This embodied awareness transforms the experiential human body into the body of energy and light. This embodiment of light and energy brings forth the body of light, embodiment as luminous flesh.
Kundalini Metaphor
The kundalini is not simply a mental construction, but the unfolding of embodiment of primordial awareness manifesting as radiance, manifesting as spaciousness and manifesting as energy. The kundalini brings forth the embodiment of light, the embodiment of luminous knowingness; a knowingness that infuses perception, infuses the senses, infuses thinking, infuses feeling, and infuses seeing, smelling and touching. A person is both touched by, and is touching embodied Being-ness within themselves and the world. A person experiences the lived body as infusing the physical body, the body as object. Transformation and realization take place within embodiment. Embodiment dissolves dissociation and experiential fragmentation. The embodiment of luminous awareness infuses the instinctive and integrates the instinctive into the field of self-illumination.
Transformation as an Embodiment Process
Awareness has resonance and is resonance. The resonance of awareness is luminous energy and this vital-ness supports us in life, supports us in illness, and supports us in demanding and saturating circumstances. This resonance of awareness is a relational experience that goes beyond our interpersonal mind. Our mind can be integrated within our field of awareness. When a person is in awareness of awareness, the experience of the field of Being is completely present and completely pervasive. In this awareness field, we may experience the singularity of a person; the singularity of an event or the singularity of a thing as the manifestation of the field of Being. We more easily experience the Being-ness of beings through our own embodied being. It does take one to know one.
There is a spontaneity of experience that reflects our experience of the spontaneity of self-arising awareness. The fusion of the field of Being within our embodied personal awareness brings forth the bliss of samadhi which is actually the bliss of the world as Being itself. This bliss is the field of bliss that overcomes suffering. Here the word samadhi means ongoing experience of absorption in the field of pervasive awareness. Samadhi is not an altered state, or trance state. Here samadhi is the natural experience of the being-ness of our own being as Being itself.
There is the experience of being touched by grace or being touched by the radiance, the energy and presence of Being itself. Being which is not a being but Being manifests Being in all the beings. The surging of Being manifests the movement of the ontological ocean and the ontological waves which are connotative of the experience of the unfolding of primordial self -arising awareness in ‘us as us.’ Rather than an abstract cognition of Being, this deeply bodily felt sense of Being is initially a secret unfolding of presence, and then becomes openly
Being itself, as us and as the world surrounding and embodying us. The touch of embodied awareness is the touch of Being manifesting through a being to another being as the field of Being itself.
Vital-ness as Forms of Experience
Vitality permeates the field of awareness as the field of Being. Vitality permeates experience. The subtle inner intensity of the field of awareness creates vital forms of experiencing. This dynamic felt sense of the field is not a cognition, and not an affective reaction such as liking or disliking or either aversion or compulsion. The field of awareness or the awareness field itself is the unfolding experience of vitality and forms of vital-ness.
Within the awareness field as the field, there is a sense of being informed, a felt sense that is not an emotion or an affective reaction. There is within the field as the field, a sense of knowing that is not conceptually based but is direct and unmediated knowingness.
Awareness manifests vital forms of experiencing. This is the power of the field of embodied awareness. In truth as Merleau Ponty describes, the body is the medium of the field. Embodiment is the medium of the field of awareness, the field of Being in ‘us as us.’ Awareness is Being’s knowingness.
These vital forms become the realm of the perceptible, the realm of experience. These vital spheres of experiencing take on many forms and most directly permeates our experience when we are in the field of awareness.
Vitality as Manifestation
Vitality is the manifestation of Being-ness, the manifestation of Being manifesting Being-ness within beings. Vital forms manifest the Being-ness of Being. These vital experiences are within the boundary of a being as psyche, and a being as soma. These vital experiences are within and permeate the boundary of ontological and ontic reality. This is the intertwining of psyche and the somatic actualities of embodied awareness. This is the intertwining of mind and awareness continuum, the intertwining of soma psyche continuum.
We experience our sense of inner most awareness as the light of vital-ness. Vital-ness is often experienced as the movement of light, the movement of energy, and the movement of the vibrational dimension as subtle embodiment. We experience different and various spheres of experience that are forms of aliveness, vital-ness and luminous energetic vibration.
Self- Arising Forms of Vital-ness
There are self -arising forms of personal experience which are expressions of vital-ness such as: the sense of well-being or sense of wholeness or sense of fullness or sense of unboundedness or the felt sense of flowing-ness. These fields of experience are not motivations, or drives or cognitions or emotional discharges. Vitality is a sense of force or power which is the power beyond words and letters, and arises out of the field of primordial awareness in its self- manifestation, as our own experience.
Necessary Distinction between Mind and Awareness
To understand these forms of vital-ness we make the distinction between mind and awareness. The mind is the functions of thinking, feeling, sensation, fantasy and memory. The mind knows forms of beings and things. Mind knows difference. Awareness knows Being. Awareness is direct non conceptual knowingness of Being within beings and things.
Awareness is spaciousness, awareness is illumination and awareness is energy. Awareness is both stillness and movement. Awareness experiences its own self as Being. Awareness knows Being. Awareness is Being as Knowingness and knowingness as Being within us as our own being.
This difference between mind and awareness is emphasized in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism understanding of Dzogchen. This same distinction between mind and awareness is made in contemporary Continental philosophy and Phenomenology. This distinction between mind and awareness is made most explicitly by the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau Ponty. This same distinction is made in other eastern philosophical traditions such as Hindu Kashmir Shaivism as expressed by Swami Muktananda and in Daoist Qi Gong traditions as expressed by Dr. Yan Xin. This same distinction is made in Gestalt Psychotherapy by Erving and Miriam Polster, as well as in the psychoanalytic understanding of transitional awareness as expressed by Donald Winnicott.
Vitality, as the psychoanalyst Daniel Stern suggests, is more form then content. Vitality is not an emotion or affect or mental cognition as such. Vitality is not a thought, or phantasy or memory. Vitality is not the mind as such. Vitality arises from the nature of awareness and prefigures the mind. Vital forms are of the nature of awareness and manifest through and within mind. Vital forms are of the nature of awareness that manifest through and within mind and the mind’s embodiment.
Vitality is not a particular sensation, nor an emotional affect, nor imaginal fantasy. Vital form is the quality of primordial awareness itself infusing sensation, infusing emotional affects and infusing the imaginal and infusing actions. Vitality is a qualia of the awareness field. This dynamic form of vitality is a most fundamental felt sense of experience. Fundamental to this understanding is the foundational manifestation of primordial awareness manifesting in ‘us as us.’ Vitality is more primordial then mind itself. Vitality is inherent in awareness. Vitality is the vital-ness of primordial movement and manifestation. In Heideggerian language vitality is phusis embodied. Vitality is the self-manifestation of primordial awareness. Vitality is the self-arising of primordial awareness as ‘us within us’.
Awareness is this field of knowingness characterized by spaciousness, by luminous radiance and by ceaseless energy and movement. Awareness is both stillness and movement. Vibrational energy is the experience of the manifestation of awareness. Vital forms are sublime vibrations, pulsations, undulations. This intense level of embodiment is the vitality of Being manifesting beings as embodied Being-ness.
Multidimensionality of Awareness Field
This vitality of the field of awareness is multidimensional just as is the field of awareness itself is multidimensional. These vital forms are expressions and manifestations of our most ordinary human experience and circumstance. The bliss of the field is the bliss of the ordinary. In the language of Dzogchen this is the Nirmanakaya dimension, the realm of ordinary human world, the life world to use Husserl’s language. This is the vitality of luminous resonance. This luminous resonance is the resonance within, and between the lucidity of human awareness and the lucidity within all phenomena.
There is the archetypal dimension of the awareness field or to use Dzogchen language there is Sambogakaya realm. This archetypal dimension is the realm of primordial energies, vortices of light and energy and the cosmological configurations that manifest human experience and circumstances. The archetypal dimension manifests vital and primal forms of experiencing. The archetypal is often expressed and personified as symbolic and mythological forms of Deities and Dakinis, the gods and goddesses. The archetypal energies and archetypal configurations are experienced as the felt sense of luminous energy or as in depth luminous presences.
Archetypal Mythologies
The archetypal dimension in eastern philosophical Vedic cosmologies, western alchemical esoteric traditions and in contemporary western continuum of archetypal psychology (Jungian-Hillman-Tarnas) is articulated in light of the cosmological configurations and energetic forces of planetary systems, which in turn are experienced as a manifestation of the primordial elements. The archetypal realm is always expressed in some form of mythology and mythological metaphor reflecting culture and time. There is no one expression and no one meaning and no one metaphor.
The archetypal astrologer Peter Bauer describes this archetypal dimension as manifesting the sense of existential atmosphere. Mood as field. Fields as moods. Fields present the felt sense of luminous archetypal energetic configurations. One has a felt sense of attunement to the tones and vibrational expression of vital-ness and aliveness. The archetypal dimension of awareness is the luminous vibrational dimension of primordial awareness, primordial potentiality coming into perception, coming into appearance, coming into actuality. The archetypal realm is the intermediate area between the pure potentiality and ordinary human life, between the Dharmakaya and Nirmanakaya realms of experience.
The foundational realm of Dharmakaya is pure and absolute potentiality, pure no thingness creating everything and anything. This is the foundational realm of ground awareness, primordial awareness. This is primordial awareness as Dharmakaya. The Dharmakaya is the pure non- duality of self-manifestation as ground awareness unfolding the elemental-ness of the archetypal dimension as light, energy and vortices. The pure non- duality of ground awareness is unceasingly manifesting duality. The un-manifest is ceaselessly manifesting endless manifestations of Being manifesting as beings.
Oneness is now becoming difference. Oneness is becoming phenomena, oneness is becoming appearances. This non- conceptual knowingness as awareness opens for all of us, the direct experience of the ontological actuality of non-duality being experienced within duality; and duality being experienced within non-duality. This experience of non-duality within duality, and duality within non-duality is the natural self-liberation of mystic humanism.
This is the drama of self-liberation through life circumstances. In this context the word karma is not reflective of causal determinate language but rather simply a phenomenological description of events unfolding. Within duality of circumstance, luminous non- duality is experienced. And within the experience of luminous non- duality, luminous duality is simultaneously experienced.
Beyond The Eastern Monastic Archetype
This ontological experience and path of self -liberation that is being described here in this paper goes beyond the ancient eastern monastic archetype of non-duality being beyond duality. The consequent monastic meditative task is dissolving duality in order to experience non- duality. This historically pervasive monastic view believes the Real is only beyond appearance. This is not the view of the phenomenological non- dual Dzogchen tradition. Neither is this the view of non-dual Kashmir Shaivism.
Liberation through Appearance!
In this view of phenomenological Dzogchen, neither non-duality nor duality are foreclosed or split off from each other. Reality is both oneness and difference. Reality, as non- duality and as duality, is experienced simultaneously. Duality is the direct manifestation of non- duality.
This open view is amazing and this view is obvious. This view frees us from the dissociative inquiry of many forms of eastern monastic spirituality. This view frees us from the distorted view of either duality or non-duality.
A Dzogchen story that elaborates this experiences takes place in the late 19th century. A luminous Dakini appeared to the great Dzogchen master Dudjom Lingpa and says “You and I are indivisible”. There is a “you” and there is an “I” and there is indivisibleness. The Dakini is declaring that we can experience duality within non-duality. And we can experience within non-duality, duality. We can experience duality and non-duality simultaneously. We can experience oneness and difference simultaneously. Dudjom Lingpa would continuously teach that appearance is nothing other than ground awareness. Appearance is nothing other than the manifestation of Being itself.
This view frees us from what psychoanalysis would describe as a borderline like splitting of reality. This use of the word borderline is not used incidentally or accidentally. This splitting of Reality and the splitting of the sense of Reality as either dual or non-dual is not simply a philosophical conjecture but this experience reflects a split within the collective eastern monastic consciousness, a split within collective monastic psyche that is passed on from generation after generation after generation.
Dissociation becomes perceived as sacredness. This foundational dissociative splitting of appearance and Reality creates an “as if “approach to life and to human experience.
Nothing is actual and everyone and every experience is a dreamy illusionary fantasy. Today this fragmented view is no longer an empowering or embodying view of human existing-ness. This view does not empower embodied contemplation and embodied contemplative activity. This view does not support the embodiment of the oneness of Reality and Appearance.
Dudjom Rinpoche
Dudjom Rinpoche the great 20th century contemporary Nyingma Dzogchen master of the Dudjom lineage in his wonderful commentary on the feminine archetypal dimension, as elaborated in the text Khandro Thugthig, describes how self-liberation unfolds in experiencing the Being-ness of phenomena. The Being-ness of phenomena is the Dharmata to use the Sanskrit wording. In contemporary language this statement is saying liberation unfolds as we experience the Being-ness of phenomena, experiencing phenomena as Being itself.
In Continental philosophy, the phenomenologist philosopher Martin Heidegger expressed a similar understanding when he describes that Being itself is not a being, but Being ceaselessly manifests Being in all beings as Being.
This contemporary form of embodied contemplation described in this paper goes beyond those eastern forms of contemplation that are locked within the eastern monastic archetype of dissociation and the relentless splitting and disavowal of the actuality of phenomena and actuality of human experience. A favorite descriptive word of these dissociative forms of Buddhism is deluded-ness. Deluded-ness implies the “as if” quality of human experience, deluded-ness implies human experience is fantasy, is dream. This unhappy understanding invalidates human relational experience and the sense of loving bonded-ness that emerges. This view of deluded-ness challenges relational attachments. This monastic view is liberation through dissociation.
The Power of Invocation
There is this innate power of invocation. The source of this power of invocation is within our own embodied awareness field. The historical roots of this understanding are both ancient and shamanistic.
This view of timeless awareness manifesting in time is expressed in the non-dual tantric traditions of the Dzogchen Nyingma Vajrayana and the non-dual tradition of Hindu Kashmir Shaivism. This view of timeless awareness manifesting in time is expressed in Continental phenomenology of Heidegger and Merleau Ponty. Timeless awareness manifesting in time is also described in contemporary forms of archetypal psychology and archetypal psychoanalysis. These various non-dual/dual traditions expressed the power to invoke the archetypal dimension and bring forth the archetypal dimension within ordinary experience.
The field of our embodied awareness is the field of Being itself manifesting within us and through us. This embodied awareness field is the field of vitality. There is the implicit power of our invocation of the primordial forms of vitality within our own human awareness as source. Vitality permeates these vital forms of the experience of awareness. These are fields of experience that are intrinsic to the sense of our well-being and aliveness.
The subtle inner intensity of the awareness field of Being brings forth vital forms of experiencing. Within our embodied awareness there is the unfolding of the dynamic field of the experience of manifestation. The field of awareness is the innermost source of vitality and the source of the infinite forms of archetypal vitality and realities. These forms of feeling are not emotional nor affective reactions. The feeling of the forms of vitality are fields of forms of vital-ness within awareness itself. These fields of forms of vitality can be experienced and invoked. The implicit can become explicit, the virtual becomes actual. Just as human awareness is multidimensional so too is human agency multidimensional.
A person can invoke the field of awareness from within their own embodiment of awareness and from within their own immediate circumstances. A person can invoke within, and through their own awareness field, and bring forth the power of the luminous archetypal dimension into their own embodiment. Our own human innate awareness is multidimensional and infinite in horizon. A person, within their own embodiment of luminous awareness, can invoke the experience of the different dimensions of awareness from within their own innate field of awareness, which is multidimensional and infinite in its horizon.
These various dimensions of primordial awareness are implicit within our own embodied awareness as the very Being-ness of our own being. Awareness is Being’s knowingness.
This power of invocation begins to manifest in time as a person enters into the field of awareness of awareness, and establishes themselves within the awareness field. Moreover, when a person is able to sustain and maintain their experience of ongoing continuity of the embodiment of the awareness field, the power of invocation and power of manifestation becomes self-apparent. Within this context of living within the field of embodied awareness, there naturally arises the experience of the power of invocation. The person can invoke the archetypal field to embody the archetypal configurations within themselves and within their immediate circumstances.
These luminous archetypal forms are vital forms of energy and creative luminous movement. The person can invoke these vital forms of experiential aliveness and resonance within what Dzogchen calls the Nirmanakaya dimension of their existence, the existence of ordinary phenomena. Through the light of our own awareness we can experience the lucidity within ordinary human phenomena, the luminous energy within ordinary human phenomena, and the radiance within all human phenomena. This experience of luminous openness arises naturally and spontaneously.
There are two dimensions of this invocative action. The action of access and the action of invocation.
The Action of Access
In the first movement, a person must become aware of their own awareness, and they must enter into the state of awareness of awareness. The means a person must shift from being in their mind alone and by suspension of mind (epoche) relocates their sense of self into the state of awareness. Once a person in no longer located in the mind alone, the person can then become aware of their mind and the functions of their mind. This is knowing of mind and functions of mind is a form of mindfulness.
Then the next foundational movement takes place when the person takes the action of making of a second reduction or pause like suspension. In this second pause like reduction, the person’s awareness no longer focuses on their mind or the functions of their mind alone, but from within their innermost awareness they focus on awareness itself. This is an amazing moment! The person’s awareness directly gazes into their own awareness as awareness. Once the person is aware of their own awareness, the field quality of awareness opens and reveals itself to the person as their own self-experience. The ongoing sense of self is now the embodied field of awareness. The different realms of our own awareness field reveal themselves to us. This is the drama of self-revelation.
The most immediate dimension of this self-revelation is the appearance and experience of ordinary life known in Dzogchen Vajrayana language as Nirmanakaya. The energy and light inherent in all phenomena begin to manifest and reveal itself within appearance and experience. The radiance of appearance shines through! Inner Presence is experienced and in time becomes a continuous sense of unfolding vital Presence. The sense of presence is, and has the pervasive quality of vital-ness, of spaciousness, of trans-lucidity, compassionate resonance and the stability of depth and breath. In becoming aware of awareness, the process of embodying the nature of awareness unfolds through time and circumstance.
The second unfolding of our multidimensional awareness is the opening of the luminous vortices of the archetypal realm known in Dzogchen Vajrayana as Sambogakaya. This translucent experience is often symbolically and mythological expressed as the realm of the deities and dakinis, the gods and the goddesses. These archetypal presences are personifications and symbolizations of the archetypal luminous cosmological energies and light. So a person experiences the archetypal presences as luminous experience, within the sense of the person’s embodiment and circumstances. The archetypal presences will have the particular and singular experience of the symbolic actuality that the archetypal metaphors and narratives signify, symbolize and manifest.
The most foundational dimension opens for us which is the pure unbounded pure potentiality known as ground awareness, or the Dharmakaya or primordial awareness. This is the virtual dimension of human existence. This is the un-manifest dimension of Being. The Nirmanakaya and Sambogakaya dimensions are experienced as manifested experience of vital forms. The manifested dimensions are indivisible with the un-manifest dimension of absolute pure potentiality of no thingness. The presence of pure potentiality is experienced as vast openness with an infinite horizon both in depth and breath. This Dharmakaya experience is experienced as a continuous sense of timeless awareness manifesting within time and circumstances. The presence of pure potentiality is pure indeterminateness and limitlessness. All phenomena are experienced as trans-lucidity, as radiance, as spaciousness and as luminous openness.
The Manifestation of Immanence
From within the embodied awareness field, the power of invocation can be activated and person can bring forth the archetypal dimension within their own embodiment and within their own immediate circumstances. The archetypal qualities can manifest within our own mind, and within our embodied awareness field, as well as within the immediate circumstance of our life. To be able to invoke and bring forth these archetypal dimensions within our own personhood, the person must be able to access these dimensions within their own being and so this experience is of the self -manifestation of immanence. This is the drama of self-manifestation.
Experientially the person must be able to enter into realm of timeless awareness and simultaneously be in time, be in the present moment. Thus the innermost realms of the archetypal powers become manifest and directly experienced and directly known. Human awareness has this vast temporal range from the moment of present time to the vast-ness of timeless awareness.
Our human awareness is completely capable of experiencing time within timelessness and timelessness within time. Timeless awareness is our fourth time. Human awareness has the range of past time, present moment of time, and future time. From this space of timeless awareness we can experience the past, the present and the future. The great master of Dzogchen Yang Thang Rinpoche would describe compassion as the capacity to extend the light of awareness into a person’s past, into the present moment of the person and into the future possibility of the person.
This understanding of the 4th time as timeless awareness is of essence in Dzogchen and this understanding of timeless awareness as the fourth time is also of essence in the Heideggerian phenomenology of time and timelessness. In Heideggerian phenomenology, the person may experience the sense of timelessness in time, and the sense of time unfolding within timelessness. This human experience of experiencing time within timeless awareness and experiencing timeless awareness in time, is the source of self-liberation both in Dzogchen and in Heideggerian phenomenology. The sense of timeless awareness in time is also a source of the power of invocation.
The archetypal energies are completely vital and this cosmological vitality is pervasive and unceasingly unfolding as our self within the world. This capacity to access the archetypal dimension of existence opens the unfolding of symbolic realms of luminous energy and radiant light and ceaseless vitality. This vitality is available both to the sick and the healthy, the weak and the strong, both young and aged. The vitality of the archetypal realm is an amazing sea of wealth. It is actually and wonderfully available at the moment of death. This vitality is the vitality of primordial awareness manifesting everything and anything. This capacity of human beings to self-manifest as the field of Being is the power of invocation.
This self-manifestation is the very nature of human existence. Human existence is grounded in this cosmology of Being. Human existence is a cosmological existence.
The Action of the Invocation of the Field of Being
Essential to the unfolding of this experience of the power of invocation is our innate capacity to open into existential timeless awareness, and the sustaining of experiencing timeless awareness in time, and time within timeless awareness. This simultaneous holding of timeless awareness and time brings forth the power of invocation. Through our skill in invocation or ‘calling forth’, there is the natural unfolding of vital-ness within the person and within their circumstances. The experiencing of timeless awareness within time opens the power of invocation and capacity to bring forth the vital energy of the awareness field into time and space, into our embodiment and into our living circumstances.
This drama of invocation brings forth the empowerment of extension, brings forth the power of amplification, brings forth the power of pacification and brings forth the power of magnetization of vital forms within the field of Being of beings. The drama of invocation brings forth the archetypal realm of existence into the realm of our ordinary life world of appearance.
The Power of Extension
The power of extension is the dynamic power to extend our awareness field of luminous spaciousness, our field of radiant energy and light into the present moment of a situation, the past time of a situation and the future time of a situation. A person can extend their own awareness into awareness of a person and the person’s existential context. A person can extend their awareness into the present moment of a person, into the past time of the person and into future time of the person.
Timeless Awareness and Invocation
Timeless awareness is source of invocation. A person can also amplify the intensity of the field of awareness within themselves and their circumstances as well as in another person and within the person’s circumstances. A person can bring forth the intensification of archetypal energy of light and vital-ness. A person can pacify the intensification of the archetypal field within their own self and circumstance. A person can pacify and tone down the cosmological intensity of the archetypal manifestation within others and their circumstances.
A person can magnetize the archetypal realms of energy and light and vital-ness and bring forth the luminous vital configuration within and into themselves and circumstance. A person can magnetize the energetic luminous archetypal forms and bring the luminous vital configurations into circumstance and situation. A person can go deeper or further into this field of Being and extend into the archetypal dimension and bring forth the vital-ness and luminosity of the energetic symbolic configurations.
A person can embody the archetypal dimension within themselves becoming the archetypal configuration and archetypal vital energies. This capacity is fully inherent within us. This capacity is a gift of awareness. You do not need institutional theocratic permission or theocratic authorization for that which is immanently given as your own innermost nature. It may be necessary to have someone point out this dramatic capacity to us and within us. It is true that two awareness are better than one.
Invocation through the Symbolic Realm
Many traditions use sacred text to invoke the field of awareness. Through language and imagery and the intention of the text there is the invocation and bringing forth that what the text is describing, elaborating and signifying. The symbolic power arises from within us and not through the text alone. Beyond the words and letters of the text, a person enters the symbolic archetypal dimension of knowingness and brings forth within this knowingness that which is symbolized. A person has within their own embodiment the symbolic power of the archetypal dimension. In this in- vocational drama, a person functions within timeless awareness and time simultaneously.
This symbolic dimension of human awareness is the Sambogakaya realm of archetypal knowingness. The words and symbolization within the text reflect the experience of the archetypal vital forms and vital presences within the symbolic realm of our own existing-ness. The person experiences the natures of the archetypal configurations that are intrinsic and innate within their own embodiment and within their own circumstances.
Innateness of Power of Invocation
This power is innate within embodied awareness. This power is not a power that patriarchal institution bestows on you. You do not need to receive a paper certificate for this empowerment. You do not have to receive institutional confirmation to bring forth this power within yourself. This power is within ‘you as you’. This power is not a function of a social recognition and authoritarian attribution. Priesthoods of infinite and various varieties and cultures like to usurp the authority of the power of invocation and pretend to bestow this power on others. They declare ownership of that which is beyond ownership. They pretend to be source of that which is already given at our birth. As Bodhidharma said in the 6th century, “There is a transmission that is beyond words and letters and does not belong to any tradition. This is the power of human awareness and that is the Buddha.”
This power of awareness is the great expanse of unbound spacious resonance. The very nature of human awareness is resonance. The nature of mind is information. The nature of awareness is invocation through resonance. Human mind is interpersonal experience and emotional relatedness. The mind is easily dissociated from the embodied field of awareness.
Mind is easily dissociated from the support and great expanse of the inner heart of awareness. Our mind must be integrated into the heart essence of our inner most awareness field. This integration of mind within awareness empowers the invocation of primordial awareness.
Resonance and Attunement
Awareness is resonance. Resonance is attunement to ordinary reality. Resonance is attunement to the field of Being as beings and beings as the field of Being. Resonance is the attunement to the archetypal field of Being within a being and within a being’s attunement to the archetypal field of Being.
Awareness is also in resonance to the primordial ground of Being manifesting everything and anything. The primordial ground is absolute potentiality, pure no-thingness manifesting everything and anything. Resonance to the Dharmakaya, resonance to the ground of Being brings forth the power of the ground, through and within the person who has direct resonance to this ground of Being. There are many metaphors for this ground of Being, such metaphors are God, Buddha, Shiva, Christos and the ground of Being ,and Being to name a few.
Resonance and attunement to the primordial awareness field manifests the power of the field in time and place. The knower of the field is both in contemporary time, and completely in resonance with the timeless ground; and so the timeless ground resonates to and within the knower into the time of present moment-ness. All this is humanness. All this is human awareness becoming aware of awareness itself.
The knower can be in resonance with the archetypal dimension, (Sambogakaya) and so the knower in time is able through this resonance with the archetypal dimension, to bring forth the archetypal dimension within their own embodiment, and within their own contemporary circumstance. A person brings forth within their own embodied awareness the archetypal power and configurations of luminous vitality that unfold into the transformation of self and circumstantial events.
The Nirmanakaya dimension of ordinary life world is a world of embodied resonance. This resonance is of awareness is not the mind alone. When the field of awareness permeates both mind and the personal context of individuals and groups then there is the upsurge of the experience of non-duality within duality. There is the self-liberation of experiencing of duality within non duality. Self-liberation is the unfolding experience through the very circumstances of our life of duality being experienced within non- duality. Within the non-duality of the indivisibleness of all phenomena, duality is experienced simultaneously. The simultaneous experience of non- duality within duality, and duality within the experience of non-duality is the unfolding course of self -liberation. Self -liberation through life circumstances!
Relational Events as Empowerments
It is true that awakened awareness awakens awakened awareness. It is also true that we awaken awareness in each other through the medium of our own awareness. In this way there is a generational field experience of transmission from one person to another person.
This transmission is both through words and letters and yet beyond words and letters. This transmission does not belong to any tradition. This transmission is very nature of human awareness. This is the natural realm of mystic humanism.
This natural transmission brings forth the inherent embodiment of the vital-ness of awareness as energy and of radiance. This relational event of personal transmission takes place in every historical epoch, every time and every place.
This power of awakening awareness is transmitted through mothers and fathers, through brothers and sisters, through great teachers, through friends, through lovers, through companions, through strangers, through practitioners of awareness, through enemies, and of course through pets and animals.
This hermeneutical unfolding of transmission is within generations, within traditions and within personal lineages. Transmission through lineage is ultimately completely personal and takes place through the personal generativity of one person to another person, from one person to group of persons. This transmission happens through timeless awareness manifesting in time.
This relational and personal transmission of awakened knowingness is most natural. This natural transmission of awakened knowingness is the nature of the unfolding of awareness through generations. Transmission naturally takes place through these living relational structures which strengthen and sustain the continuity of transmission from one person to another person.
Of course what is forever funny is how theocratic structures take possession and ownership of this natural transmission of vital forms. This humorous event happens over and over again. This is the great and never ending ongoing spiritual comedia. This omnipotence of ownership happens whatever the theocratic tradition.
Desire as Source of Invocation
Invocation is not a simplistic function of mentalis tic intention. Invocation is not simply a good thought or good wish like wishing “wishing happy birth day or good luck.” The bringing forth of power of invocation arises within a person as the person is moved spontaneously by the self-arising field of awareness. The self-arising of the awareness field of light, of spaciousness, of vital presence is experienced as the non-conceptual desire to bring forth into time the field of luminous awareness for one’s self and others. This self -arising of the fullness of the awareness field is in the spontaneous movement of the great compassion.
This self-arising inner movement of the inner heart essence is bodhichitta, the great compassion. The power of invocation is the manifestation of the great compassion self-arising and self-manifesting within us as a spontaneous surge. Kashmir Shaivism uses the language of Spanda, self -arising movement of innermost awareness.
This unfolding desire arises out of surplus. Desire arises out of the fullness of luminous experience and self-manifestation for oneself and others. This spanda of self-manifestation takes place in time and in relational circumstance. This self- manifestation is an event of opening of the field of Being. The power of invocation arises out this direct self-manifestation of the great compassion. The self-arising of awareness is the great compassion. The self-manifestation of primordial ground awareness is the great compassion. Desire as manifestation, is the great compassion of the great perfection. Mental intention or mentalis tic strategy alone will accomplish nothing. Mind alone is bound. The power of desire is the power of the self- arising of primordial awareness as timeless awareness rising in to time and in space. This unfolding is both a personal and cosmological moment for our self and the self of others. This self-arising is a generous relational event in time and space for the benefit of another.
Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.PP. The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and the Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies