The conviction that I am awareness and not the body-mind entity is only liberation if it frees you from dependence on objects. Objects are anything appearing in awareness, the whole gamut of subjective experience: beliefs, opinions, judgments, fantasies, memories, fears, desires, etc. Self inquiry lumps them all into one category and calls them ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity. Some very intelligent individuals are ignorant that they are awareness and some not so intelligent individuals are aware that they are awareness. When an individual is ignorant of his or her identity, he or she takes ignorance to be knowledge and identifies with it. That I am awareness is knowledge because it cannot be negated. Only information can be negated when subsequent information shows that it is untrue.
Unfortunately, when I realize that I am awareness, I realize that my whole thought system does not agree. It developed when I did not understand who I was, so it has a completely different opinion. This situation is a little like being two people. One person says, "I am limited, inadequate and incomplete" and the other says"I am limitless awareness. I am capable of dealing with anything life has to offer. Far from being incomplete, I am fullness itself."
Because I am now convinced, for whatever reason, that I am limitless awareness, the first voice is not acceptable. After all, in a non-dual reality, the mind is also the self, so I would like my mind to be on the same page with me. If I know that I am awareness and my mind continues to spout ignorance—unless it knows it is ignorance—how enlightened am I? Ignorance and knowledge cannot exist simultaneously. At every moment the self ignorant ego identifies with beliefs, judgments, opinions, feelings and ideas that express its limited view of itself and the world, thereby continuing to reinforce its ignorance.
James Swartz
How to Attain Enlightenment
Knowledge Yoga
p242 Sentient Publications
2009
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