The Real Obstacle to Conscious Awareness

A MAIN TENET of the fourth way system is that specific obstacles keep consciousness ‘asleep’. These obstacles are delineated as imagination, identification, inner-considering, lying, unnecessary talk, and the external expression of unpleasant or negative emotions. Eastern (non-dual) teachings explain a similar idea in terms of ‘obfuscations’ that cloud the natural state of awareness and keep it ignorant of itself.

In both approaches, the purpose of spiritual practice is to overcome these obstacles and dissipate these obfuscations so that consciousness/awareness will remember, recognize, and realize itself. One analogy used to describe these different practices is that of peeling away the layers of obstacles and obfuscations—removing their veil—until pure consciousness is revealed at its simple core, aware.

In actuality, however, the obstacles and obfuscations are not the issue because they never ‘hinder’ awareness. Yes, they exist as a veil, but not as objects or hurdles or impediments. Rather, they are the result of consciousness being unaware (‘ignorant’) of itself and so being constantly distracted by all manner of internal and external phenomena such as thoughts, feelings, sensations, people, events, health, money, sex, career, reputation, power, fear, and boredom, to name only a few—all of which consciousness experiences as a sense of identity, either through or in relation to. In eastern teachings, this is called ‘attachment’ because consciousness habitually attaches its awareness to things rather than recognize itself as awareness. The fourth way calls it ‘identification’ to imply how our sense of ‘identity’ forms as a result of attachment.

When we are in a state of attachment and identification, one thing or another is always distracting consciousness from the realization of itself as pure awareness. In this condition of being distracted, consciousness fails to recognize that it is the awareness behind seeing, behind indulgences, behind resistance, behind fear, and so on. It is this forgetting, this ignorance, that becomes the obstacle or obfuscation which can take many forms as consciousness, unaware of itself, lapses repeatedly into a psychological sense of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘mine’. This sense of identity in turn becomes the hub of our existence and the central cause of our inner conflicts, deeper turmoil, and suffering.

Even when a person encounters ideas about spiritual awakening or enlightenment, there can be a tendency to adopt such ideas from the perspective of their conflict, turmoil, and suffering—in the hopes of alleviating these and arriving at a happier life free of suffering. What many people don’t realize at first is that they are trying to solve the problem from the problem itself. Or more accurately, they are trying to solve the problem from the result of the problem, not from the source causing it. Recognizing this difference marks a significant shift.

We can struggle with our deficiencies and problems and suffering for decades and never make lasting progress because we are struggling with the result of something else. A better approach is to examine spiritual obstacles, not from the perspective of the obstacles themselves, and not from an attempt to analyze or overcome or resolve them, but from the perspective of consciousness itself. In other words, by focusing our attention on the source and ‘solving’ what appears to be the problem from there.

This means that each time we encounter an ‘obstacle’ or ‘obfuscation’ in ourselves, we can simply let it be while simultaneously and knowingly turning our attention away from it and focusing instead on the silent dimension of consciousness that is making the obstacle visible to us in the first place. By doing so, we gently start suffusing consciousness with more and more awareness as the realization of itself. To use another analogy, this is akin to the sun turning its rays away from things on the earth, redirecting those rays back to itself, and in doing so realizing itself as the source of its own light. This is, in fact, the essence of enlightenment and awakening, and navigating this metaphysical realm as conscious awareness is what all the great teachings point to and lead to.

The first step in redirecting awareness from phenomena to the source of consciousness always starts with realizing that we are right here right now, and realizing that we are realizing it. Not thinking about it, but realizing it. This simple recognition—this consciousness of awareness—is beyond the mind and beyond all the obstacles the mind thought it had to struggle with, and when it happens the nature of spiritual evolution starts to change. It ceases to be a search inside our mental maze and starts to be a journey into the deeper and deeper and deeper awareness of consciousness itself.