You have to admit that you don’t know what is appearing to you, thought you do know that something is. After all, a visual perception may be colored by any number of perceptive mistakes. This epistemic doubt, however, cannot touch the self-evident fact that something, whatever its content may actually be, is.

You also have to admit that it’s self-evident that you are. What you are is not yet known and about this you may be mistaken, but that you are cannot be put in doubt.

Furthermore, you know that you are conscious of the fact that something is.

Therefore, you have three natural points of departure: (1) something is, (2) I am, and (3) I’m aware that something is.

Pertaining to (1), we can take away any qualities with which we may be in doubt, qualities like color, size, shape, and so on. We can then temporarily set aside space, time, and causality. Then we can ask: What remains? It may seem as if this is “no-thing” or “no-thing-ness.” Hold onto this insight for now.

Pertaining to (2), we can ask: “As I allow the experience of ‘I am’ to come to my attention, do I discover any sensible qualities like color, shape, texture, flavor, and so on?” I don’t. “Can I find ‘I am’ in space or time?” I cannot. I begin to understand that ‘I am’ is none other than awareness.

Pertaining to (3), I can start to see a connection that is actually an identity: “If it’s true that I am awareness, and if it’s also true that awareness can only make contact with the stuff of which it (awareness) is made, then is it possible that awareness is none other than no-thing-ness (or reality)?”

Perhaps the longstanding Cartesian belief that there is spiritual or mind stuff set apart from physical or material stuff can slowly be let go of as we open to the possibility that there is only one substance and that substance is awareness, or awareness-reality.