AWARENESS AND INTIMACY: TWO GATEWAYS TO PRESENCE

There are two approaches available to us in the midst of any experience. One is the approach of awareness, the other is the approach of intimacy. These are not techniques, not steps on a ladder, but attitudes — qualities of being — that reveal the truth of presence in different ways.

In essence, awareness and intimacy are two sides of the same coin. We might even call them presence and love. Awareness is the space within which everything arises; intimacy is the movement toward the heart of that which arises. One expands outward into vastness, the other moves inward into depth — and yet they both arrive at the same place: openness, presence, truth.

The Path of Awareness

Awareness, in this context, is not the narrowed attention that fixates on an object — not the awareness that focuses in and becomes identified with what it sees, whether that is a thought, a feeling, or a sensation. That kind of awareness is concentration, it’s directed, it’s narrow. What we speak of here is open awareness — unfocused, ungrasping, and relaxed.

When we find ourselves caught in a painful or difficult experience — one we reject, resist, or try to change — we often tighten around it. Even in not wanting the experience, we are holding on to it. The mind contracts. And in that contraction, we suffer. Because within that contraction lives the sense of "me" — the separate self who does not want this experience.

But when we become aware of the space within which the experience is unfolding, something shifts. By softening our grip and relaxing the acquisitive mind, we begin to fall back into a deeper awareness — not one that “does” something, but one that simply is. It is a letting be. A falling into openness. A surrender to the unknown.

Awareness, in this deeper sense, is not cold detachment. It’s not an aloof witness that floats above the messiness of life. Rather, it is a profound embrace — an unconditioned spaciousness that allows everything to be exactly as it is.

When we embody this kind of awareness in our everyday lives — not only in meditation but in the ordinary moments of contraction and reactivity — a spaciousness opens up from the inside. There is no longer a fight with what is. Presence emerges naturally, as the beingness that is simply here.

The Path of Intimacy

If awareness is the opening into spaciousness, intimacy is the movement toward the center of experience. While awareness expands beyond experience, intimacy penetrates into its heart.

When we are in pain or resistance, when we are caught in the tight knot of "I don't want this," that very rejection becomes a wall — a barrier that prevents true intimacy with our own experience.

To be intimate with life is to allow ourselves to enter the experience, gently and without judgment. It is an act of love — not a possessive or sentimental love, but a tender willingness to be with what is. This intimacy is a tantric movement: it meets the discomfort, the darkness, the sorrow, without story, without strategy. It rests in the rawness, the immediacy, the naked energy of the moment.

True intimacy means having no narrative about the experience. The moment we begin to say “this is too much,” “I shouldn’t feel this,” or “how can I get rid of it?” — we step out of intimacy and into control. The ego reasserts itself. But intimacy invites us into a kind of death — the death of the self-image that wants protection, that wants to manage life.

To enter the experience fully, with no filter, is to surrender the known for the unknown. It is to meet the experience with no agenda. And in doing so, we discover the same deep presence that awareness reveals. But now, the spaciousness seems to emerge from within — as though the space blossoms at the core of the experience itself.

Two Gateways, One Reality

Why speak of both awareness and intimacy?

Because so often in spiritual seeking, we crave one clear answer — one method, one formula, one practice that will bring us peace, freedom, or awakening. But there is no such formula. Awakening is not a destination; it is a relationship with your direct experience, a living dance with what is.

Sometimes, that dance calls for spacious awareness — a falling open into the vastness beyond experience. Sometimes, it calls for raw intimacy — a merging with the depths of experience. Both are valid, and both are sacred.

There is no one-size-fits-all. There is only this moment, and the invitation it offers.

Awareness and intimacy. Presence and love. Two expressions of the same truth — that freedom is not found in escape, but in meeting life fully, whether through spacious inclusion or heartfelt surrender.

Let it be a dance — and let it be real.

Final call for this weekend’s online retreat:

“Deepening into the I AM” : April 12th & 13th, 2025

This Weekend Retreat is an exploration of the ‘I Am’ at the core of our being, and how the recognition of this “I Am” is the foundation of inner peace and unshakable presence.

Thanks for reading.