What we are is of course state independent, and that is a great pointer for practice.

Independent of what is happening in content of awareness - dullness, bliss, clarity, tension, relaxation, anger, joy, confusion - can I notice what I already and always am? Can I find myself as that which all this happens within, to and as?

Having this as a basic practice throughout the day makes it all into an adventure, no matter what is going on.

And it also helps us release identification with whatever within form we tend to identify with, all these things that come and go.

Having worked with tension/stress as a pointer to when I believe a story, it is easy to think that when there is tension/stress, I can’t notice what I really am. But that is of course not true. That tension and stress is also just happening within, as and to what I am, and I can notice that as it happens. (And still inquire into those beliefs of course, the two are not at all mutually exclusive.)

It is often said that the Ground awakening, as opposed to everything else, is not a state.

And as usual, it seems to be a truth with modifications.

It is not a state as it is only the void awakening to itself, and then to itself as awake void and form, allowing any forms to come and go as they do anyway. The only difference is that now, as the void is awake to itself, any thought is seen as just a thought, and there is an absence of identification with any stories, including the one of a separate self, of an I with an Other, and any other identities used to elaborate this sense of a separate self.

(There is an absence of identification with any stories, and so with any particular content, since the void is absence, and also since thoughts and everything else are recognized as nothing other than the void itself taking temporary forms.)

It is the Ground awakening to itself, allowing any state, any form, any change in content of awareness, to come and go on their own, living their own life on their own schedule, as they already and always do.

Said another way, it is the bottom dropping out, leaving all form suspended in space with no identification. The bottom - the sense of I with an Other, falls out, leaving form - the content of awareness, absent of identification. No change in states, only a change from identification to a an absence of identification and a realization that there was never any I with an Other there in the first place.

Yet, it also is a state, in a couple of different ways.

First, it is the state of void awake to itself, and all forms as nothing other than void itself. This is not a conventional state in the sense of a change in content of awareness (bliss, absorption, clarity, oneness, etc.), but it can certainly be called a state.

Then, it can also appear as a state as seen from within time. When there is a story of time, it happens at a particular (often well defined) point in time, and it may even go away in a particular point in time (and then it is called kensho instead of daikensho).

It is really the timeless now awakening to itself, always fresh, new and fluid in its form aspect, and from here time is recognized as only coming from a story overlaid on what is. Past, future and continuity is recognized as only appearing when what is is filtered through stories.

Yet, when this gets clouded over, a sense of a separate self, an identification with content of awareness, and with this a sense of the reality of time and space, reappears. And from here, the Ground awakening appears as having happened within time and space, so also as a state.

Here are a few of the gifts of states, of shifting contents of experience…

Over time, they invite us to recognize and realize impermanence… inherent in anything that comes is its going. Sadness, joy, oneness, bliss, suffering, a particular insight, different types of samadhi… they are all temporary visitors.

They also invite a noticing and differentiation of different areas of the terrain… in my own experience, I can see how different states has allowed me to discover and differentiate aspects of the terrain… the void (allowing identities to fall away), alive presence (soul level), endarkenment (feminine divine), luminous emptiness (masculine divine), the three centers (head, heart and belly, each one in the foreground at different times), oneness (a vague sense of an I one with God), suffering (being caught up on the inside of beliefs), and so on. Each of these are noticed, clarified and differentiated from the other ones by dipping into them through various states.

As Ken Wilber would point out, the states and what they reveal are interpreted through our psychograph… our lines of development and where they are at (their stages) and in particular through the conscious framework we operate from (cognitive line).

Some states offer their particular gifts. For instance, the state of unusual clarity and stability of attention invites us to inquire with more differentiation into what is… including the mechanisms of samsara.

Finally (?), they also offer glimpses of what is ahead on the path, and what we thought was behind us but wasn’t…! For instance, void temporarily wakes up to itself, and is then covered up by a sense of a separate self, which offer a new context to the path and our life… it offers a glimpse of how it is when all identifications are vaporized, and a direction for our continued practice. And dipping into being caught up in particular beliefs, and their accompanying drama and suffering, shows us that more work is required, we were not quite done with that one.

States are visitors which come on their own time, whether invited or not… and they can also be explored in a more systematic way through for instance the Big Mind process (filtered in a limited way through the head center).