Yogi: This interview setting is kind of traumatic for me.
And, the whole afternoon, I was in a pre-panic mood. I made it here finally, but the awareness gets lost totally because it is too unpleasant.
Sayadaw: You don’t have to look at it; you already know that you’re in that state.
You only think it is difficult to be aware because you believe that if you’re aware of it, it’ll go away. You assume that if it doesn’t go away, then you’re not aware.
But in fact, awareness doesn’t make things go away. Awareness just makes you aware that something is present – and you were aware it was present.
So, it was not difficult to be aware; in fact, you were too aware. But if you thought that it was going to make it disappear, then, yes, that will be hard to achieve.
Neutral objects, it is easy for us to think ‘yes, there is awareness of this’, but with unpleasant objects it is very hard to feel that there is awareness because there is already a pushing of it.
That’s why we have to learn to face it and to maybe acknowledge intellectually that this is awareness. At first it is so unpleasant to know and experience it
If we do it often enough, the mind gets it that this is awareness, knowing that it is unpleasant and this is how it is.