The Self is Ordinary, Ever-Present Awareness As we’ll see, the Upanishads, the source texts of Vedanta, talk of the Self in a poetic, grandiose and exalted way. This can make it seem that the Self is something cosmic, lofty and transcendent; something far removed from the everyday little person we’re all so intimately familiar with. In actual fact, the Self is your ordinary, everyday awareness. It’s the awareness that has been looking out of your eyes your entire life and in which every sight, sound, object, thought, emotion, desire and fear has been experienced. “The self that you are, the self that you are going to realise, is totally ordinary,” James Swartz writes. “It is the awareness that is observing your mind take in these words, nothing more. It is not inaccessible at all. It is hidden in plain sight. It is always present and greatly unappreciated for no other reason than lack of understanding.” The Self is pure awareness. It is the awareness in which the world of objects, incl...