Spiritual Awareness: A Nondual Perspective

By Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
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Spiritual awareness is a term often used in modern spiritual discussions, but its depth is frequently misunderstood. At its surface, it can seem like simply “being aware” of your thoughts, emotions, and surroundings. While this initial stage is important, spiritual awareness, especially from a nondual perspective, extends far beyond conventional notions of awareness.

It challenges even the deepest assumptions about self, consciousness, and the nature of reality itself.

Understanding spiritual awareness requires moving through layers of perception, beginning with witness awareness and culminating in the realization that even awareness is not ultimate reality. This journey is subtle, paradoxical, and often counterintuitive, as it dismantles the very foundation upon which we believe we exist.

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What is Spiritual Awareness?

At its core, spiritual awareness is the recognition that our sense of self is not fixed or absolute. In everyday life, we often identify with our beliefs, thoughts, emotions, memories, and physical sensations, believing these to define who we are. Spiritual awareness, however, begins when we observe these phenomena without attachment, seeing that they arise and pass without being inherently “us.”

However, as we progress through the awakening journey, many of us will realize nonduality. Nonduality, an experiential understanding found in traditions like Advaita Vedanta, Zen, and certain strands of mysticism, points to the inseparability of all existence. It challenges the very idea that there is an individual self or a separate awareness observing a separate world. In other words, spiritual awareness ultimately points beyond awareness itself.

Witness Awareness: The First Stage of Enlightenment

The first stage of enlightenment often involves the realization of witness awareness. In this stage, a subtle shift occurs: you begin to notice that thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and sensations are not inherently “you.” Instead, you observe them from a space of awareness that is seemingly distinct from the content of experience.

This witnessing mind provides more clarity and freedom. When you recognize that anger, fear, or desire arises within consciousness but is not your essence, you gain the ability to respond rather than react. Witness awareness allows for disidentification from the mind and its habitual patterns, creating a greater sense of spaciousness and okayness.

However, witness awareness still presupposes a duality. There is a subject, the witness, and an object, the thought, emotion, or physical object being observed. At this early stage of enlightenment, awareness functions as a lens, a frame through which experiences are filtered and understood. Full enlightenment involves the removal of all filters.

Beyond Spiritual Awareness: The Nondual Perspective

Nondual realization moves beyond even witness awareness. While witness awareness creates a sense of nonattachment from thoughts and emotions, nonduality dissolves the very framework of subject and object.

Consider the following paradox: to be aware of awareness itself, the mind must rely on memory or conceptualization. We recognize awareness by recalling that we were conscious a moment ago and labeling that consciousness as “awareness.” This act of labeling immediately reactivates mind or thought because you have to rely on thoughts or mental constructs for awareness to exist. It also reactivates duality because it distinguishes “awareness” from whatever is aware.

As spiritual awakening deepens, a subtle but profound insight arises: even awareness is not ultimate reality. Even the sense of “I am aware,” is conceptual. There is just a sensation and then a label is applied that says, "This is the sensation of being aware", or "This is the sense of I Am". Without the mental labels, everything, including the sense of “I am aware,” is part of the nondual whole. There is no independent observer, no separate consciousness, no isolated self, and "I Am" sense. Awareness itself is seen as empty—not a foundation for reality.

This deeper stage of enlightenment may be described as the dismantling of the “I Am” sense. Initially, the feeling of “I am aware” can provide comfort, a sense of stability, and a useful tool for deconstructing identification with the self-concept and its experiences. Yet in nondual understanding, this too is seen through. The apparent “I” and the “awareness” it experiences are both constructs arising within the boundless, undivided totality of everythingness.

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Common Misconceptions About Awareness in Spirituality

A frequent misunderstanding in spiritual circles is to elevate awareness itself as the ultimate base reality. While awareness is a crucial tool for disidentifying from thoughts and emotions, it is not separate from the totality of being. Even "pure" awareness relies on concepts, memory, and contrast to define itself. Therefore, assuming that awareness is the ultimate truth is itself a subtle form of dualistic thinking.

Nondual insight corrects this illusion by revealing that reality cannot be divided into knower and known. This illusion, which may also be referred to as ignorance in Buddhism, is seen through in the deepest stages of realization. Awareness, self, and objects are all manifestations of the same indivisible whole. Elevating a concept like awareness, consciousness, or even god above all else doesn't even make any sense. Everything is one—these distinctions are meaningless.

The Path of Disidentifying from Spiritual Awareness

The process of spiritual awakening can be seen as a progressive disidentification from layers of illusion:

Disidentification from certain aspects of the self: Witness awareness allows you to see that some aspects of the self are not inherently “you.” (e.g., Stream Entry)
Disidentification from the reactivity: Reactive responses are seen to arise from the content of our minds rather than the content of our external experiences.
Disidentification from awareness itself: Even the sense of being aware, the “I Am,” is recognized as illusory.
Disidentification from all knowing: It is seen that there is no real way things are. Nothing can be known. Everything is appearing as real but is ultimately unreal.

Each step reveals greater freedom and clarity, ultimately leading to a direct experience of nondual reality. Here, the question “Who am I?”—and other self-inquiries—lose conventional meaning, because there is no independent “I” to answer it and no "truth" to refer to.

The Evolution of Spiritual Awareness

Stage	Description	Experiential Shift
Ordinary Awareness	Identification with thoughts, emotions, and sensations.	The self feels fused with mental and bodily experience. My thoughts and emotions are "me".
Witness Awareness	Observing thoughts, emotions, and sensations as separate from "you".	"I am aware" is recognized. My thoughts and emotions are not "me". They are arising in "my" awareness.
Expanded Awareness	Disidentification expands beyond mind and body to broader concepts of self.	Less attachment to subtle concepts and external labels. Even mind-patterns and internal sensations are not me.
Awareness of Awareness	Reflecting on awareness itself as the container of experience.	Paradox arises: even awareness is observed and labeled, implying duality.
Deconstruction of Awareness	Recognition that awareness, like self, is not ultimate reality.	The "I am" sense dissolves; nondual interpenetration or embodiment is realized.

Practical Implications of Nondual Spiritual Awareness

The realization that even awareness is not separate from the whole has profound implications for daily life:

Freedom from suffering: When identification with thoughts, emotions, or even awareness dissolves, the habitual cycles of attachment and aversion lose their grip.
Acceptance and interconnectedness: Nondual insight naturally fosters a deep sense of acceptance, as the imagined requirements for others are recognized as conceptual rather than real.
Embodiment and equanimity: Without a separate self to defend, compare, or judge, life is embodied rather than witnessed from the removed perspective of awareness.

Spiritual awareness is therefore not mystical—it transforms perception, behavior, and relationships in tangible ways.

Final Thoughts on Spiritual Awareness

Spiritual awareness is often mistaken for the ultimate goal, but it is better understood as a gateway or tool. Witnessing the mind, body, and emotions opens the door to nondual realization, where the distinction between subject and object, self and world, even awareness itself, dissolves.

The journey of awakening ultimately shows that nothing is separate, including awareness. By letting go of attachment to being “aware,” one discovers the infinite, unbounded, embodied nature of reality that is beyond all concepts. This is the essence of nondual spiritual awareness: not a state to attain, but an understanding—that there is never an “I,” there is never a separate awareness, and everything arises within the seamless totality of existence.

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