Krishnamurti on Awakening to Your Inner Being

If you sit on the bank of a river after a storm, you see the stream going by, carrying a great deal of debris. Similarly, you have to watch the movement of yourself, following every thought, every feeling, every intention, every motive. Just watch it.

That watching is also listening; it is being aware with your eyes, with your ears, with your insight, of all the values that human beings have created, and by which you are conditioned, and it is only this state of total awareness that will end all seeking. Most of us think that awareness is a mysterious something to be practiced, and that we should get together day after day to talk about awareness.

Now, you don’t come to awareness that way at all. But if you are aware of outward things, the curve of a road, the shape of a tree, the colour of another’s dress, the outline of the mountains against a blue sky, the delicacy of a flower, the pain on the face of a passer-by, the ignorance, the envy, the jealousy of others, the beauty of the earth, then, seeing all these outward things without condemnation, without choice, you can ride on the tide of inner awareness.

Then you will become aware of your own reactions, of your own pettiness, of your own jealousies. From the outward awareness you come to the inward, but if you are not aware of the outer you cannot possibly come to the inner.

When there is inward awareness of every activity of your mind and your body, when you are aware of your thoughts, of your feelings, both secret and open, conscious and unconscious, then out of this awareness there comes a clarity that is not induced, not put together by the mind. And without that clarity you may do what you will, you may search the heavens and the earth and the deeps, but you will never find out what is true.

~ J. Krishnamurti, Collected Works, Vol. XV,242,Choiceless Awareness