Resting in awareness is the “aim” of spiritual practice. Awareness is how spiritual traditions designate <That> or the ultimate Brahman-Atman identity. Awareness is the very nature of the practitioner, the seeker. It is difficult to impossible to convey as a concept because words fail to define <it>. What you ordinarily associate with the word “awareness” is just a taste, a drop of infinity.
In contrast to the desired state of rest in awareness, there is Maya or the power of illusion and entrapment in appearances. Maya is of course <bad> according to the dualistic understanding. In Maya there is no rest, there is frantic circular motion of futility that lays waste to the slaves of Maya, robs them of their path to enlightenment.
Or so the story goes.
But there is another perspective of course. I am thinking specifically of the Shaivism of Kashmir, which has been described as a theistic monism as well as a monism that is life-affirming and world-embracing.
Maya is the Shakti of Shiva. Maya generates everything we associate with <existence> in the world of appearances. The power of creation-survival-destruction.
Maya is not imposed on anything, but rather Maya is Shiva’s exercise of potency and will to manifest and enjoy His own reality. His reality <as> universe and cosmos and material body. Shiva descends into “unreality” and returns to Himself — the arc of His divine play (Leela).
So God is playing Hide and Seek in the world. Hiding Himself and seeking himself, while all the while always being nothing but Himself.
Shakti AKA Maya is the expressive expansive <energy> of divinity. Shakti is literally everything that can be experienced in awareness and as awareness.
Because energy and awareness are nondual and ultimately the same Being-Awareness-Bliss. You could even say that the manifestation of Shiva <is> Shiva’s Ananda or Bliss, rightly understood. Shakti is Shiva’s Bliss.
So we circle back to the notion of resting as awareness. The “resting” describes Parabrahman or Paramashiva, the absolute which is already beyond the distinctions. Param is not some remote state that one aspires to reach, Param <is> the state of divine nature which is ever-present and all-comprehending.
The phases of Shiva’s being are simultaneous and not subject to temporal and spatial considerations. He is the gnat and the mountain and the turd and the asteroid, and none of the above. He is totality. In fact, Shiva <is> Shakti. She is He and He is She.
OM Namah Shivaya!