Opening To Awareness

...by relinquishing our need and desire to control, explain, and believe the way that our minds talk to us about what was and what is, we find a capacity to open to a new state of consciousness.  At first, it's experienced as a state of stillness, the foretaste of awakened consciousness, where a presence begins to reveal itself.  If you allow yourself to relax into this stillness, this silence, you start to witness this presence arise.  It may seem like a subtle thing at first, but what's actually happening is that you're beginning to access a whole new state of consciousness - one that is quite immense. By giving your attention to it, by becoming aware of this inner presence and stillness, even in the midst of activity, you make yourself more and more available to the dawning of this vast expanse where you can awaken out of the belief and experience of separation.  You realize yourself to be a deep well of awareness - an inner expanse that's always there.  You just have to open to it. -- (Quotation from Adyashanti)