The notion of having lost the experience of awareness is due to
the mis-identification of yourself with the comings and goings of
experiences. In other words, if you feel there is an increase or
decrease of awareness, you have identified yourself with
experiences, with one of the waves on the ocean, rather than the
non-dual pure knowing of all waves. Since it is non-dual, it means
that you are not a particular experience that comes and goes, you
are the awareness that is manifesting and not other than all the
waves. Never has there been any separation or duality and as such
you are everything arising moment to moment, and not just a
particular experience in a particular moment whereby 'I' 'merged'
with reality. Being ignorant of this you have mistaken a limited
expression of awareness as the totality pure awareness, the nature
of mind, which has no intrinsic form but has the capacity of
limitless expressions, which dependently originates with no
beginning and end. You have taken awareness to be an object, a
state, that can be 'experienced' or 'not experienced' and there is
always this sense of a separate self that is 'not experiencing' or
'experiencing' that state.
In the pure timeless, unmoving awareness, there isn't such a
thing as coming and going of awareness. The sun (of pure awareness)
in the sky (space of being) shines brightly no matter what appears.
The sun rays and the sun are one and the same, there is no duality
between awareness and manifestations. It always IS regardless of
what manifests and is not separate from what manifests. Awareness
never comes and goes, it simply shines on and on, taking on
whatever form that dependently originates. Thoughts come and go,
bodies come and go, what is your original face before you were
born? Still this knowing.
From the perspective of the sun, there is no rising and setting,
there is just an endless outpouring of sunshine: but if we shift
our attention and identification to the changing content and
mistake it as something that has a beginning and end, there appears
to be a rising and setting of a particular experience. You mistake
a particular experience as 'Awareness' and objectify it as an
ultimate state and when this experience ends, you think you lost
awareness (notice the duality: 'me' and 'awareness' or 'me' and
'experience'). This is not actually the case but is an illusion due
to fixation or identification to a particular "wave" or experience.
In reality Awareness did not 'end', it simply manifests in another
form due to dependent origination. There is no end, there is simply
an ever-evolving process/dynamic flow of being/becoming. Apparent
obscurations are in reality also simply the expression of this
knowing. Actually the analogy of the sun is imperfect since it may
give the idea that there is an unchanging sun shining on changing
phenomena. In actual experience awareness is a non-dual knowing
without subject/object division. The phenomena itself is
self-luminous, there is no unchanging center.
It is not wrong to say that an experience is Awareness, but it
is wrong to reify it as an ultimate state since all states and
experiences are equally the energy and manifestation of awareness
without subject/object division.
This cognizant emptiness which is not other than the dream-like
display of appearances shines without beginning or end.
The pure knowing co-emerges with appearances but is unborn and
unceasing.
As Guru Padmasambhava taught, this pure knowing which is not an
observer and is not separate from the flow of observation is not
permanent/unchanging (it is eternal but changing), yet it is not
something manufactured or created.
An analogy is that Awareness is like a flow and continuum that
never ceases like river flowing ceaselessly. Being like the flow of
water it is lacking in any substantial permanent essence. The waves
or flow is also not suddenly created or manufactured nor does it
cease at any point in time. The waves/flow just dependently
originate without beginning or end.
So what we must see, realise, experience, is this ever-present
timeless awareness with no coming, going, beginning, or end, yet
without reifying it as a metaphysical essence separate from all
other phenomena. The flow of phenomena that dependently originates
without beginning or end is it -- the luminous empty cognizance.
When you realised that this luminous empty cognizance was never
separate from everything we experience, then you see that our basic
identity as everything arising moment to moment without duality
goes on without beginning or end.
Just to clarify: All ignorance are the result of attempts to
separate to separate the inseparable, objectify the
unobjectifiable.
The moment we talk about awareness or about anything, we treat
it as an object separate from ourselves that can be experienced or
not experienced, that can come and go.
You cannot be aware/unaware of something called 'awareness' because
that would imply it is an object and there is someone separate from
that that could experience/not experience awareness. That separate
self and the awareness separate from myself is a total conceptual
fabrication.
This illusion of separation is the source of all seeking and
suffering.
By that separation we have missed the directness and non-duality
of reality. It already always is without subject-object division,
it is the true nature of being/reality. In reality there is no
experiencer experiencing awareness... only pure aliveness that
knows itself. Realising this, one realises that I am not an object
(apart from me) -- and the so called 'awareness' or 'non dual
experience' is not what I experience, it is what one is, or rather
what simply IS. It comes with a tacit realisation that you are not
merely a lifeless corpse, body or a machine. I am alive. I am Life.
I AM. This I AM is never doubtable because it is more real than
real -- it is so real you can never deny your own being, nothing
can be more real than the pure presence of Being. At any moment
even if doubting arises, I AM that clear knowing/presence in which
doubting is arising in. This I AMness is Self-Knowing, it is known
only by BEING it. When the practitioner realises beyond a shadow of
doubt that this is who he is (rather than interpreted as something
'he' experiences), then this is no longer a mere transient
experience but a permanent Realisation of the nature of one's
being. To realise this it is important to use methods like
contemplating on the koan, "Who am I"? However this is only a
partial, not complete realisation, and many more stages of
realisations must unfold to clarify the non-dual, anatta, empty
nature of Awareness. One must also give rise to the realisation
beyond a shadow of doubt that a pure sound, a ringing of a bell, is
itself pure non-dual awareness and is no more I AM than I AM.
Everything shines as nondual awareness. One realises that I am not
a separate person experiencing things, I am that Beingness and
Knowing that is simultaneously everything. However to distinguish
that pure presence as a metaphysical entity apart from everything
is to fall into error. You are the sensate universe itself, and
that is what you are. So at the level of I AM realisation one
realises that the pure sense of presence is what one already is and
isn't something one experiences, similarly at the level of non dual
and Anatta realisation it is realised that nondual awareness is
what everything Already Is and isn't a stage that can be entered or
left. In other words, non-duality and anatta is not something or a
particular state to be experienced, rather it is what Everything
(Already) Is. In seeing always just scenery, no seer. In hearing
just sound, no hearer.
The progress of insight may be summarized in short: I AM, then I
AM Everything, then just Everything Is. Whatever that is
experienced, if mistaken to be separate or something that comes and
goes, is evidence that insight has not arisen.
p.s. There never was a problem with the waves on the ocean, and
in fact Awareness is always only Manifestations.... there is no
separate Witness or Self that stands apart from manifestations. All
experiences are only awareness knowing itself as the form. The
problem is we objectify ourselves as separate from that experience,
and make it into a special state that 'WE' as separate persons
experienced and then 'lost' it, and then prefer it to some other
states. There is no purest state. All states and experiences are
the same non-dual reality. We do not experience things, we are all
experiences seamlessly, and the words 'experiences', 'awareness',
'manifestation' are synonymous. Awareness cannot be objectified
(that would imply someone separate from 'awareness'), however its
presence is undeniable and it simply knows itself as everything.
There is no 'IT' that can be pinpointed, it is just the magical
display of appearances interdependent with whatever the conditions
are.
We never know anything as a separate experiencer, such an
experiencer cannot be found. Reality is simply everything being
itself, i.e. not 'I' knowing the bamboo, but rather, we enter
into the mode of being where the bamboo is the bamboo itself, and
from there to look at the pine tree and the bamboo. Everything
becomes manifest in their suchness.
It should be emphasized that this must occur as an insight that
reality is already non-dual, it is not the case of of a separate
self unifying with reality -- the separate self cannot be found to
begin with, there is always only non-dual-being-reality, or the
scenery sees itself, the sound hears itself.
Notions like 'I once merged with awareness but then lost it' is
false since there never was an 'I' that can merge or disappear into
awareness, non-dual awareness simply already is and is
self-knowing.
So we can never lose awareness, because it is not an object
separate from ourselves, it is simply beingness being everything.
However we are always fabricating a false sense of duality, a false
sense of separation, that can only disappear through deep insight
occuring as a result of practice and investigation.