Consciousness Observing Itself

Awakening is for anyone who feels the quiet pull toward presence: seasoned practitioners, curious beginners, the gently skeptical, and those who have tried every productivity ritual and still sense something deeper. If you value guidance that points back to what is already here, rather than gamifying your awareness, you are already part of the audience we built this for.

In contemporary neuroscience, interoception is the capacity to sense the body's internal landscape: breath, heartbeat, and visceral rhythms. This network is largely mediated by the vagus nerve and represented in the insular cortex. Research shows that refining this sensing improves emotional regulation and resilience, because the nervous system registers safety before the mind can label it. Exteroceptive awareness expands that same clarity outward, inviting the senses to rest on sound, light, and motion without clinging. The two are not separate circuits, but a continuum: steadiness inside allows perception outside to stay open rather than reactive.

Taoist practice describes this as wu wei, the effortless participation in the Tao. When the inner currents are unforced and quietly noticed, qi is free to harmonize with the environment. Awareness flows from the lower dantian (the body’s energetic center) through the senses without meeting resistance, so the ordinary world feels like an ally rather than a threat to manage.

Vedantic teaching names the same recognition as the union of Atman and Brahman. Interoceptive stillness reveals the substratum of awareness that is prior to sensations; exteroceptive openness lets forms arise within that same consciousness without dividing the seer and the seen. When practice moves between these poles, the insight is practical as well as transcendent: the nervous system is soothed, and the non-dual truth that "this" and "I" are the same field becomes lived experience.

Physicist David Bohm proposed that the universe unfolds from an implicate order, a seamless flow he called the holomovement. What appears as discrete objects, including our own bodies, are explicate expressions of that deeper wholeness. In this view each part carries the pattern of the whole, much like a fragment of a hologram contains the entire image. The sensation of a bounded "me" is a practical appearance, but the underlying field of consciousness is continuous.

Bohm explored this further with Jiddu Krishnamurti, noticing how thought creates psychological division by naming and defending a center. When attention listens without resistance, the contraction loosens and there is a felt sense that the same intelligence breathes through the forests, the mind, and (we have a meditation called "The Space Between" for this reason). The individual does not vanish; it is recognised as a local movement of a greater presence rather than a separate origin.

When the beta build is ready, you’ll receive an invitation with simple instructions to install Awakening through Apple's TestFlight. During the beta testing period the app is free.

No. Awakening was created from within the realization itself, drawing on Taoist and Vedantic understanding. There’s no striving toward awakening, it’s the simple recognition of what already is. Modern meditation apps often turn practice into self-improvement, filled with goals, reminders, and score streaks. But awareness doesn’t need gamification. Just as you don't need to force the in or out breath, meditation unfolds naturally when effort drops away. The Awakening app offers a space for that—presence without agenda, silence without aim.

Beyond meditation, the app includes original essays and contemplations on consciousness, perception, and the nature of being. These writings are not instruction but an invitation to reflect on the same insight found in the meditations: that awareness is not something to attain, but the very fabric of consciousness noticing itself.

Awakening will be $9.99 per month, or $69 per year (saving 42%). Every membership unlocks new meditations released each month and companion philosophy essays that explore consciousness and the nature of reality.

Headphones are recommended for the full binaural immersion, but every soundscape is mixed to remain calming and immersive on speakers as well. If you are not listening with headphones or find the binaural beats too much, simply use the mixer within the app to turn it down or off completely.

We don't promise any such thing. At the same time I will not promise that chopsticks will make it any easier to eat noodles. For some, the chopsticks become second nature, like breathing or writing with a pen. Do you need chopsticks? Of course not. You don't need this meditation app. Some people achieve awakening through the course of their day-to-day lives. Some with the use of psychedelics. But for many, meditation that aligns with Taoist principles and Vedantic teachings helps nudge them towards deeply profound experiences and awakening.