On Guard

Be aware. We hear it as a warning. Watch your surroundings, mind the road, keep your wits about you. It’s the posture of the sentry: scanning the perimeter, braced for whatever might come. To be aware, in ordinary consciousness, is to be on guard.

So we move through our days slightly tensed. Alert to the next slight, the next thing that might go wrong. Even our quiet moments have a lookout posted, one eye open, ready.

But notice what guarding requires. Something to protect, and someone to protect it. Stand watch and you’ve already drawn the lines: a vulnerable me in here, a threatening world out there, and a wall between them needing constant patrol. The vigilance feels like awareness. It is only fear, given something to do.

There is another kind of awareness. It asks the opposite.

Not awareness of something. We’re endlessly aware of things, that’s the sentry’s whole job, cataloging objects, threats, tasks. This is awareness without an object. Not watching for anything. Simply being, and finding that being and awareness were never two.

Consider how strange that is to the guarding mind. It can’t imagine awareness that isn’t aware of something, the way it can’t imagine standing watch over nothing. But drop the watch and what remains isn’t blankness. It’s presence. Spacious and unguarded. Already at rest.

This is not vigilance relaxed. It is vigilance seen through. The moment we notice the one standing guard, attention slips behind the sentry into what was quietly aware the whole time. It kept no watch. It never had to.

As A Course in Miracles puts it, “Let me be still and listen to the truth.”

So, be aware. Not on guard. Simply here.

Join me in Thursday’s class where we’ll explore this shift from guarded watching to restful presence, and the deep peace that waits beneath. I look forward to seeing you then.