unconditioned awareness?

What isn’t unconditioned awareness? This contemplation reopens an inquiry that I feel needs to be explored periodically: What is the “nature” of unconditioned awareness? The subtitle of Peter’s book, Radiant Mind, is “Awakening Unconditioned Awareness”; so, clearly, this topic is central to our engagement with Radiant Mind. But what is unconditioned awareness? This is a question asked by many, probably most, newcomers to Radiant Mind. It is also a relevant question for those of us who have been engaged with Radiant Mind for some time. The reason for this is that our thinking mind has a deeply-ingrained habit of reifying everything – making “everything” into a thing. And it does this in subtle ways we are usually not even conscious of. So it’s important – perhaps even necessary – to revisit this inquiry from time to time. Here we will “cut to the chase” and remind ourselves that unconditioned awareness is not any possible object of consciousness that can arise in our mind stream. It is not a “thing” of any kind whatsoever, no matter how subtle or even causal. We can point to it by saying that it is the pure subject (pure awareness) of all objects of consciousness and, as such, is the true nature of our being, but perhaps even that is saying too much. The closest our thinking mind can come to “this” is by way of negation, by seeing clearly what it isn’t. No amount of effort by the rational mind will ever reveal what “this” is; it simply doesn’t exist in any way that can be found by the conditioned mind. But an “inquiry through negation” may bring the chattering, seeking mind to a temporary halt and leave us open to a nonconceptual realization of – an awakening to – “this”, which is already timelessly here. In other words, it may leave us open to awakening unconditioned awareness. And then we can support one another in community as we rest together knowingly as this aware presence. (Ron)