It's funny how we are born into this world so in love with everything. All that we experience is amazing and wondrous. Essentially we are aware; plain and simple.
Then the world begins to tell us that everything that we intuit is wrong. All of our desires are wrong and immoral. Basically everything we understood from birth was an incorrect perception that needed fixing with a healthy dose of shame and self loathing. Now, you see it, my child! You're almost perfect! Don't forget to second guess yourself!
Of course if we are lucky, 20 or 30 years down the road we start to notice that something is deeply wrong and we begin to investigate reality. This is where we start living again, trying to undo the damage and simply get back to that person we were when we were young.
I suppose the journey of life is a round trip from the past to the future and back to the present moment.
Thank you for this beautiful comment @nuthman. Exactly 20 something years into my life I realized I was not okay stifiling the sense that something was deeply wrong anymore! I love your perspective that perhaps life is a round trip. It reminds me of the T.S. Eliot quote:
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
I also agree that we're essentially aware when we're born... unified with everything around us. Then as we grow we're conditioned and molded and forget. But maybe we need to take that journey first? So when we arrive back to where we first began we can now consciously know it?
Maybe we do have to take the journey first.
Maybe life is like one of those movies where it starts by showing you the end, and then says "2 weeks earlier...." and then jumps backward.
So we are boundless/free/present at birth. We lose this sense at some point, then begin our journey to find it again; carrying with us that vague memory of how wonderful it felt.
Perhaps we do need to consciously observe the unraveling of the knots we've built up in order to fully understand all of this on the experiential level.