What is AWARENESS apart from mind & attention?

There is a great confusion between thought and awareness. Some people believe that awareness emerges from mind or brain, others confuse awareness with attention. Can you make clear the distinction and what awareness really is?

Awareness is NOT a function of brain or mind. Awareness is the eternal, unchanging and timeless essence of a human being. Awareness is what makes you know that you exist and could witness your thoughts and even brain-function and continues even outside the body such as soul travel.
Let's discuss attention here and see where we go from there. Attention is given to something and and it is a form of love. For instance if you hold a baby in your arms and you think it is the cutest thing on earth then your attention is love. You pay so much attention to it that you
forget about yourself. When attention becomes 100% just like watching a movie and you are totally transported in your attention then you enter another viewpoint of life. Suppose you have a lover that you are so attracted to that even his touch sends you to heaven, then in the moment of making love you are in ecstasy so that you are no longer an ego but pure
ecstatic joy, and that's also oneness. That's 100% attention.

Awareness is more than attention. Awareness is what makes you know that you know and experience. If I were to ask you, "What are you right now forgetting the past name and form and experiences?" You'd have to say, "All that I am right now is just awareness." When everything has been stripped from you because all is past such as name, education, experiences, memories, language, all that you have known, culture, upbringing, religion, nationality, likes and dislikes, ideas, hopes, fears, thoughts, emotions then all you are left with is pure awareness. Awareness is what makes you know that you exist. It is pure because it has no memory of time and can never suffer or feel pain or unhappiness. Awareness 'just is.' Awareness is unborn. Awareness is love (often called God). Awareness is your essence.
Are we clear so for? Don't read further until you are clear of what I have said.

Now that you clear about Awareness and that it is pure, we can move to the next step. What you become AWARE-OF IS A THOUGHT. First there is pure awareness and you know that you exist but you are innocent and pure. Then this awareness becomes aware of something -- that's a thought! That's how thought comes into being. Thought always emerges from awareness (but awareness is NOT a thought). If you have got that we can move on. From
THOUGHT, when it is believed-in and made real, then it becomes an emotion. Emotion is a motion of energy (E-Motion) and therefore is felt in the body as anxiety, stress, fear, agitation, exhilaration, excitement, passion etc and always acting on the body. For instance, if a man watches a woman naked that he likes he can immediately get an erection. This erection is a
thought activating an emotion and sending this message to the body making that big erection. Isn't this a wonder that has so much beauty in it? The body is an emotional body and in it lies great energy. The body's sensations are all activated by thought that becomes an emotion.
While attention can be fragmented to one subject or object, on the other hand, awareness is much more than attention...it is the very LIFE itself making a life know itself. Awareness has no beginning (it boggles the mind) and therefore when a child is born, it is not his first entry into
life. It feels it is its first entry because it has a new form and brain but its memory goes way back into the past. So, although awareness makes thought possible. Awareness is NOT a thought. When you think a thought you can be aware of it. It is awareness that makes thought possible. However, since most people are not spiritually awake they are not aware of the
thoughts as such -- most of the time people believe that what they think is real and thus get caught in their emotional body as reality.
Thought and awareness are one in function and need each other. Thought is mind. Mind creates the world we experience. And, here's the best part. Awareness and Thought are married for life so that when the body passes away (the shell of us) we still are very much alive as thought/Awareness and therefore retain our personality, beliefs and even ego
after death. Those we have loved will always be with us whether we are in body or not.

How do I start in a basic way to understand?

I have watched your videos and read your scripts. I feel moved by them and something in me resonates to it all. Yet it is all new to me, is there a simple way to understand it all?

The first step is by asking yourself, "Who am I?" and see where we go from there. Do it now and then read the following: --
Did you come up with some name or personality or past in replying to who you are?
Did you use some phrases from some spiritual literature you have been reading and replied by saying, "I am a spiritual being!" or "I am a soul" or something like that?
Did you reply by saying, "I really don't know?"
If you used the first answer then you strongly believe you are the past and this will take quite some time to depogram yourself. So, take it easy step by step and learn the basics until you feel comfortable.
If you have answered the second one through reading spiritual literature then there is the need to 'feel' for yourself and not what you have read. You have become intellectual and hypnotized by words. Words can never be the truth but they can only help for the heart to eventually recognize. Listen more to what the heart says rather than what you read.
If you have replied, "I don't know!" then congratulations because you have been sincere. Now acknowledge that you really don't know and you are open to receive.

There are four steps to realize who you are and they take sincerity, honesty and stick-to-it-ivness, they are very simple...

1. Ask yourself what you want out of life and you'll come up with a list of qualities or goals. They would be all wrong because what you really want is 'you.' For instance if I ask you, what do you want? You might say, "I want to be happier or more loving or richer or healthier etc..." however, the real want is this -- who is it that wants those things? 'You.' It is you who wants to be happy, healthy, loving etc. So be honest and know that initialy all you want is you. That is as it should be because we learn through this 'me' we think we are.

2. Second step is a little more advanced. Ask yourself, "This 'me' that I really want isn't it the same with everyone?" Here you will discover that everyone is basically selfish and it is okay because they can't help it. Yes, everyone is the same and all they want is themselves first. The average person always asks (inside their head), "What's in it for me?" However, when you realize that everyone is the same then you start feeling better about yourself and that you are not alone. Of course, this acknowledgment requires honesty and open-hearted accepanceof the truth.

3. The third step becomes even more advanced and it is this -- since we are all the same behind our appearance (body and personality) then aren't we all one and just don't know it. For instance, if you resent someone and blame them, isn't it you who is experiencing the resentment? If you are angry at someone, isn't it you who is angry and suffering from it? If you blame someone for doing you an injustice, isn't it you who suffers for not forgiving?

This third step is quite advanced and we start seeing how we are all one beneath our body/mind appearance. However, how you feel about others is what returns to you. This is learning the karmic principle of 'what goes around, comes around.' As we learn this precious lesson of karma (law of cause and effect) then we start (automatically) becoming more understanding, more loving and open. You will begin understand how others feel and also understand that your thoughts carry messages others pick up. Here you start becoming aware of what you are thinking because others can feel it without even realizing that they are feeling it.

4. Then we enter the fourth step and most advanced of all -- here you see that a relationship is NOT two people interacting but One Feeling Being. For example, if you love someone, you are not really loving them but simply feeling the love arise in you and in them as they respond, so in truth there is only ONE OF YOU. In other words, when you say 'I love you' and they return it, there aren't two people interacting but only One Great Love feeling that has become one. It is like having such a great time dancing that you forget about the dancing and become one with the music, then there is only music. It is here in this advanced stage that you start realizing who you are.

You are NOT the experiencer but the experience -- you are not making love, LOVE is happening to both of you -- you are not singing but it is your heart opening and expressing itself. This is the real you when you become one with the moment. You forget about the ego of appearance and thoughts and become become the heart. The Heart is pure awareness known as Presence. This is how you start to realize who you really are.

Each step above takes 'work' to realize fully and start living it. You cannot jump from one to the other unless you have completely mastered the one before it. You know you have mastered it because you start living it. This is when you realize your oneness with God. You'll come to know in this fourth stage that GOD is all there is and known as LOVE.