One of the analogies that my guru often used to describe awareness and the mind is viewing awareness as a traveler and the mind as the world. When you go to San Francisco to visit you have experiences that San Francisco offers. You experience San Francisco but you are not San Francisco. You are in a place called San Francisco having San Francisco experiences. Then you leave San Francisco and go to New Delhi. When you are in New Delhi you no longer experience San Francisco anymore because you are no longer there. Now you are in New Delhi having New Delhi experiences. Are you New Delhi? No, you are in a place called New Delhi but you are certainly not New Delhi.
The same way a traveler can travel to different cities around the world and have a variety of experiences, your awareness can travel within the mind and have a myriad of experiences as well. But wherever in the mind your awareness goes you have to realize it is not that area of the mind. You are pure awareness at any given point in time.
