Vacillation describes the “I got it; I lost it” experience, or the sense of believing that one has discovered pure awareness and then lost it again.

But if we actually look at our direct experience, how could this possibly be?

If it is “pure” awareness, that which is not findable by the mind because it has no objective qualities, that-which-isn’t-an-it cannot be lost. It is what we, and everything else, are made of. Bodies, minds, Mars rovers, exploding universes, thoughts, perceptions–all apparently occur within it. It can only appear to be covered, like clouds cover the sun, or like a movie image covers the screen.

What happens to make someone believe that he or she “lost it”?

Something objective–some feeling, thought, or event grabs our attention more strongly than the silent ground-of-all that many people experience as nothing (no thing.) This ground of all is so pervasive, so always with us, so completely unloseable, that we simply overlook it. This is why the Sufi tradition says it’s closer than our jugular vein.

If you think you are vacillating between the truth and less-than-the-truth, look again.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2013
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