Namaskar. You know divinity is all around and within you. In every person that you meet, in every flower, in every tree, in every plant and every animal, the divine being is everywhere. It is only due to distraction and misperception that that is not seen. When you remind yourself that that divinity is everywhere, you awaken in the moment.
So to actually experience awareness and awaken-ness, it is not simply noticing your aware consciousness, but it's coming to the feel of what is awareness. When you are only aware of yourself, then your awareness is not complete. If you're only aware of your own mind, or your own body, or your own sense of self, that is not a complete awareness.
Awareness is when you come into awareness of everything around you, of every living being. When you open up your mind, expand your senses, expand your sense of self that you can feel the consciousness of every living being around you. Even the rocks have consciousness; the earth itself. Consciousness is everywhere. There is nothing outside of consciousness.
So that divine consciousness is even there in your furniture, in your rug. It's very sleepy in those forms but it's there. It's there in the animals, in the plants that surround you. You live in nature. You live right next to nature. It's just outside your window. And every live thing has consciousness. As do inanimate objects—but the consciousness is a little harder to connect with, it's very sleepy. Tamo guna has a very strong influence there. But where sattva guna is present, where life is present, the awareness of consciousness is much easier. You can feel the life, the vitality of each being being themselves. The tree being itself. The broccoli in the garden being itself. The cat being itself. Maya being herself.
And the people around you, the people you come in contact with, you say hello to, the people you meet in the Safeway—they're all expressions of the infinite Brahma. They're all expressions of the one divine awareness, the one divine consciousness embodying all around you and within you.
So you are really never alone. You only feel alone because your mind and your heart shuts down and you don't feel the vibrant life around you, the presence of divinity all around you. When you get disconnected from that and you feel God is some abstraction in a high heaven and you are here all by yourself, then you feel alone. Then you feel separate. The cause of all human suffering comes down to that separation. The sense of I and Thou, the sense that I am apart from everything else, in that separation you're alone. And out of that loneliness comes fear, sorrow, and mental pain.
But when you open your heart and your mind and allow it to expand in remembrance of consciousness, in remembrance of awareness, in remembrance of the divine all around you, then you find that you are surrounded by divinity. You can't take a breath of air without being connected to the divine. That shower of grace of divine love is just pouring through you and everything around you. You are not separate. You are not isolated. You are not alone. You're connected. You're part of a whole, part of an ecosystem of life—one whole of being expressing in the garden of life as all the multiple forms of creation, all the multiple forms that surround you in your day to day existence.
And when you open your mind and expand it and you open your heart and expand it, then you can actually feel the vibrancy all around you. And the trick is, this is not just for a short time in meditation. This is something to practice throughout your day, this remembrance of the God presence of your interwoven, inter-connectedness with all of life.
How vibrant life is around you. That divine being is everywhere taking untold amounts of forms that you come in contact with, gracing you in endless ways throughout your day. So knowing this, how can you open up, let go of your misconception, your misunderstanding about your own nature? Expand your awareness, and stay as much as you can in that place with whatever you are doing.
So every time you begin a new action, every time you start something, take a breath and remember. Remember being, remember the vitality of life. Allow yourself to expand your mind, expand your awareness, expand your love, your heart, and be with life all around you—all its miraculous forms, both painful and pleasurable, both joyous and struggling. This is the gift of life!
Life consists of birth, existence, and dissipation, death. This is the nature of the unfolding of life. Live fully, love fully in every moment. You don't have to feel dead. You don't have to feel alone. That's conditioned mind, a conditioned approach, a conditioned mentality, a false belief. In ignorance you sit in the wealth of life all around you, and the divine presence everywhere and go, ‘I'm alone. I'm separate. I'm isolated.’ That is a state of ignorance, avidya.
And vidya, the path of truth, is to recognize every moment your connectedness. It's a feeling, a direct experience. When you put your mind out there, can you feel it? Can you feel your connection to the trees, the rain, the animals, the plants? You are a part of something amazing. And connection to each other, to all life, to all the people, all the situations that you are in. This amazing connecting you have in life. Just let your mind go out and feel.
Then suddenly you're in a vast field of being, of love, of life, of interaction, of vitality. That's all it takes, remembering and feeling. Letting your mind and feelings expand, not just, 'I remember God is everywhere.' That's kind of useless. I remember, 'Ah! God is remembering in my form. God is appearing in the endless forms and configurations of life, in the interwoven interconnected ecosystem of life of which I'm interwoven with.’ With that feeling and that empathy to every living being you become whole. You become truly connected. This practice, done throughout your day, will make a great, great difference. The silence of meditation gives you the time to harmonize in the deep level with the silence of being. But this practice of remembrance allows you throughout the day to establish yourself in the wholeness of being, to appreciate the love that's everywhere, and to recognize your connectedness with all of life.