How things are currently for me, at the boundary of awakeness noticing itself and a sense of an I with an Other…

There is no, or very little, sense of inside and outside, which is how it has been since the initial awakening.

All is noticed as awakeness, although a few things appear a little more dense as long as I don’t look closer. Mainly, these are the sensations that serve as an anchor for beliefs and a sense of an I with an Other. (A few smaller sensation regions in the neck/head area.)

There is a sense of center and periphery, which is a clear indication of an identification with a sense of an I with an Other.

So… No inside and outside. All as awakeness. All as a field of awakeness and its content, which is no other than awakeness itself.

And also some parts that appear denser, such as the sensations in the neck/head area serving as anchors for beliefs and a sense of an I with an Other. A sense of center, located in/around this human self, and periphery.

I also get caught up in beliefs now and then. I go into them to experience how it is, to notice them, identify them and inquire into them, see them as just thoughts, allow the whole experience of it, and notice how it is when identification is released out of it.

This boundary zone is quite fertile, an overlap of how it is when there is a sense of I with an Other, when awakeness noticed itself, and the shifts between the two.

And it is all awakeness, noticing itself or not, getting caught up in and identified with its own content or not.

I am appreciating more and more the play at the edge of a sense of separate self, and shifting into the field, absent of an I and Other.

As where any two ecosystems meet, it has three zones.

There is the sense of a separate self, and anything that goes with that, including the drama. I get to explore that, experience it, live it. There is a great deal of juiciness here. And I also get to explore it through various practices, such as labeling of the sense fields, journeying, the Big Mind process, The Work, Process Work, and more. (Any of these can be used when there is a sense of separate self, at the edge, or even when awakeness is noticing itself more fully, and each one offers  a different flavor to it.)

There is the edge itself, where I get to explore the mechanisms of samsara more in detail. I have a foot in both world, which allows me to live the dynamics of samsara, yet within the context (intuition, glimpses or direct awareness) of headlessness or Big mind, or awakeness noticing itself and all of its content as itself.

Then there are the shifts into awakeness noticing itself, which includes exploring the dynamics of the shift itself. Noticing how an exclusive or enhanced identification with certain sensations (for me in the throat/mouth/neck area) is released. How these sensations now are just content of awareness as anything else, an object rather than an (imagined) subject. How the field of awakeness and its content notices itself as a field. How the sense of a separate I, a center and periphery, and so on comes just from a thought, and that those thoughts may still be there but are now seen as just a thought, not filtering perception anymore (the sense of inside and outside went a long time ago).

In some ways, it is so enjoyable that there is no desire to move on. Exploring these three are more than sufficiently rewarding and interesting. But most likely, after a while, when the mechanisms of samsara has been seen through enough, the hooks for a sense of a separate self falls away on its own time. Leaving just awakeness to itself, in its great aloneness and infinite diversity.

(Thanks to Tom for suggesting fractals as another example)

In ecosystems, and most other systems, the edges are often the most rich and fertile.

We have the land ecosystem, and then the ocean ecosystem, and at the edge between the two there are representatives for both, and for the edge as well. Instead of characteristics from only one system, there are three: one, the other, and whatever emerges uniquely in the intersection of the two.

And so it is with awakening as well.

We have one system which is the awakened one. Another, which is the deluded one (taking oneself as a separate self). And at the edge of the two, there are characteristics of one, the other, and the uniqueness of the edge.

We get to explore a rich landscape, spanning all three ecosystems.

(In systems language, the awakened and deluded situations are attractor states, habitual states the system falls into… but in in this ecosystem analogy, it fits better to think of them as different landscapes or systems.)