417. An Endless Project

The range of our awareness is always unknown. We might feel we are fully aware of a particular experience only to later realize that there is more to it than we thought. We might feel that our actions towards others are compassionate only to discover they do not seem to meet anyone’s needs. We might feel we know how to share our awareness with others only to find that we cannot communicate it easily.

Awareness operates through intuitions that arise from our past experiences. Everything we have noticed in each of these experiences becomes part our composite awareness. We cannot directly examine our awareness to determine whether it is adequate or whether the intuitions it provides are the right ones. Our experience of the present moment brings forward a particular intuitive sense of need that is unique to that moment. When we act on these intuitions, we act with the most compassion we can currently muster.

Unfortunately, this does not mean that our actions will be perfectly compassionate. There are aspects of need we have not seen and kinds of suffering we have never experienced. Navigating by intuition means we are following signals of need that are themselves challenging to see and understand. When our actions seem to reduce suffering and create joy, we might feel confident that they are compassionate. But it still remains possible that we would be capable of actions even more compassionate if our awareness were broader than it is now.

To enable the possibility of even greater compassion, we must remember that our awareness is always smaller than it could be. We must remain open and attentive to our experiences and to the experiences of others so that our awareness can continue to expand further. There is always more of both world and self for us to see and understand. Awareness is an endless project, and it is by reminding ourselves of its endlessness that we allow ourselves to grow continuously towards greater and greater compassion.