You Don’t Own Awareness In mindfulness practice there is very definite precision; every move, every minute detail is noticed. In the case of awareness practice, you have the general outline of what you are doing, which covers the details as well, naturally. In practicing awareness in everyday life, at a certain point the wandering mind itself, the daydreaming mind itself, turns itself into awareness and reminds you. If you are completely one with the idea of awareness as being intimate, it is a true practice, that is, as long as your relationship to the idea of awareness is a very simple one and as long as your awareness practice is connected with sitting practice. In a proper practice of awareness, the complete proper relationship is that awareness comes towards you rather than you going towards it. In other words, if awareness is not possessed or owned, then it happens. Whereas if you try to possess and own awareness, if you relate to it as “my awareness,” then it runs away from you. In order to understand this, you need to have the actual experience of it, rather than just reading the menu.
— From “Consciousness,” in Glimpses of Abhidharma, pages 80 to 81.