1. Since suffering is identical with mixing up the Self with the content of objective experience (e.g., “I am the knower” or “I am the doer”), the first step on the path of Advaita Vedanta is normally to “unmix” the Self from the content of objective experience. This is termed viveka, or discrimination.

One, hereby, comes to take one’s stand as witnessing awareness: I am this to which a knowing thought or a doership thought is appearing.

2. After a while, however, two things become astonishingly clear. One is that any “other entities” that seem to exist and that are neither arisings (objective experiences: thoughts, sensations, or perceptions) nor awareness don’t actually exist. For instance, there is no ego-entity. There is no body identity. There is no mind entity. These are just I-thought-arisings, sensing arising, thinking-arising, and so on.

The other is that, thanks to the “thinning out” of all apparent entities, you really do experientially understand that you are aware presence, or witnessing awareness.

3. Having understood, provisionally so, that there’s nothing other than awareness (your identity) and arisings (those experiences that appear to and in you, awareness), you now realize that viveka, or discrimination, can’t be the final teaching. This is because, in your direct experience, there is no subject/object relationship; there’s only seamless experiencing. Nor is there variety in unity: there’s not variety, not variety in unity, and not countable unity. There is there an experienciable Being/becoming duality. And so on.

You see, in other words, that awareness and arisings can’t really be separated, can’t be held apart, and that’s not because there’s a union but because there was never separation, never otherness in the first place. You see, in short, that there aren’t arisings after all.

There’s only the Self, and the Self is only experiencing, or being, Itself.