{"id":894,"date":"2017-01-11T20:07:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T19:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awareness-now.org\/?p=894"},"modified":"2017-02-14T02:01:34","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T01:01:34","slug":"experiencing-reality-vs-knowing-about-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/?p=894","title":{"rendered":"Awareness and knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Knowledge is very useful. Look at technology, medicine, architecture, arts. There is no doubt knowledge is a powerful and versatile tool, for all of mankind.<\/p>\n<p>Yet&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Isn&#8217;t there\u00a0a huge gap between &#8216;knowing about&#8217; something and being Aware?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Knowledge is always an abstraction.<\/li>\n<li>Knowledge always deals with &#8220;objects&#8221;, big or small. Material or immaterial. Try and imagine having knowledge about something which is NOT an object? \u00a0This is a tricky question, because as soon as we know anything, we turn it into an object!<\/li>\n<li>Knowledge manifested in our brain. \u00a0(a computer knows nothing, but can store huge amounts of information electronically)<\/li>\n<li>When we say we know something, it means we are refering to a memory of something, captured in symbols, words, formulas, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So when someone says: <strong>I know what an oaktree<\/strong> is, they may\u00a0perhaps\u00a0<strong>remember<\/strong> it visually, know the various latin names for it, or remember the experience of smelling and touching this tree. Knowledge about something seems to be something that we can <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">have<\/span> or own. But what is it that we actually <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">have<\/span>? \u00a0What we have is an abstraction, a pointer to something, stored as a memory in our brain.<\/p>\n<p>So what then about <strong>being aware\u00a0of<\/strong> an oak tree?<\/p>\n<p>This is the full experience of the oak tree, through all senses. This experience is completely new in every moment, and there is nothing to have. We see the trunk, the leaves, the shadows, the light on the leaves, we smell it, hear it, touch it. When our thinking mind stays quiet, we may not even have a single thought or opinion about it. We just experience it, as fully as we can, probably every time discovering something new.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine that people would experience each other that way, be aware of each other that way. \u00a0It would not a Hindu experiencing a Muslim, or an American experiencing a Chinese person. It would not a superior person meeting an inferior person, or a tall person a short person, a colored person meeting a white person, and so on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>None of that would matter.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We would realize that anything we think we know about the other, is just an abstraction, a thought, a memory. And it does not really matter. It&#8217;s not real. It&#8217;s just in our head.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Awareness changes the world<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That is why awareness is key. Your experience of Life, Existence, would be entirely different. \u00a0Peace and happiness would come naturally to you. You actually don&#8217;t need any conclusions, thoughts or belief-systems for that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800080;\">@YOU: How do you experience the difference between knowing about, and being aware?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Knowledge is very useful. Look at technology, medicine, architecture, arts. There is no doubt knowledge is a powerful and versatile tool, for all of mankind. Yet&#8230; Isn&#8217;t there\u00a0a huge gap between &#8216;knowing about&#8217; something and being Aware? Knowledge is always an abstraction. Knowledge always deals with &#8220;objects&#8221;, big or small. Material or immaterial. Try and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awareness"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1568,"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions\/1568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awareness-now.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}