"The terms ‘aware being’ and ‘awareness’ are identical. The suffix ‘-ness’ means ‘the presence of’, so ‘aware-ness’ means ‘the presence of that which is aware’, or ‘aware being’. ‘Conscious-ness’ is ‘the presence of that which is conscious’. ‘Knowing presence’ is the presence of that which is knowing. ‘I’ is the knowing of being. Beauty is the identity of knowing and being.

The value of the phrases ‘aware being’ and ‘knowing presence’ is that they spell out linguistically that knowing and being are one, not two. Normally we think that these two are different, that to know and to be are two different modes. They are not. The only way we know something is by being that thing, that is, in identity."

Source:
"Love and intelligence in action"
by Rupert Spira

“The mind is constantly looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continually re-creates itself.

When each thought absorbs your attention completely, it means you identify with the voice in your head. Thought then becomes invested with a sense of self — this is the ego, the mind-made me. That mentally constructed self feeds incomplete and precarious. That’s why fearing and wanting are its predominating emotions and motivating forces.

When you recognize there’s a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you’re awakening out of your unconscious identification with a stream of thinking.

When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice (the thinker) but the one who is aware of it. Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.”

Eckhart Tolle