It is a lot of work to form and engage in stories…

This came up for me a few times tonight during Breema class.

While giving a Breema sequence to another student, there would just be a field of awakeness and form with no more or less identification with any segment of this field. There was no sense of a separate self as a particular and defined region of the field. Bodies move, sounds arise, words are spoken, and it is all happening as part of the field and on its own. There is doing, but no doer anywhere.

Then, there was the noticing of this and a startle: was “I” the body receiving or giving, or rather - what body is this awakeness functionally connected with? And then, a sorting it out, through thinking, realizing that this awakeness is functionally connected with this body giving a Breema sequence to that body.

In the absolute, there is just awake emptiness and form, as a seamless field, and whatever is happening in form is happening on its own, it is living its own life.

To also bring in the relative, we need to add stories to this… This awakeness is functionally connected with this particular body, and it has a name, age, a history, preferences, and so on. In a sense, we are making things up to allow this human self to function in the world. We are making things up to play the game. Sometimes, we don’t realize we are making it up, and take it as very real and solid. Other times, the play is awake to itself.