An alternative to thinking

An alternative for what purpose?

If you mean "something that does what thinking does", only better, you haven't begun to make a case.

If you mean "something entirely separate that we should do some of the time" then sure, there are plenty of things we should do other than thinking, and I can't imagine why anyone would think we need to be told that.

Of course, you don't have to think. The world doesn't disappear [...]

No shit. Do you think people here imagine that the world disappears when we go to sleep or watch a movie or have sex or anything else that doesn't involve much thinking?

Awareness is not thinking

I never said it was. I said that you do it with your brain. Those are not at all the same thing.

But if you imagine that when you are in the state you call being "aware" you are somehow perceiving the world directly and map-less: Nope. You've just got yourself into a state where you are oblivious to the maps involved.

you might think that you can only think about things

That is not my my opinion, nor is it something I have said. Perhaps you might try the experiment of reading what I write with the hypothesis that I understand more rather than less than you do, and see whether it makes better sense.

What you're saying is that you are "maps, that maps of the brain have created your awareness"? or is this a strawman?

Not so much a strawman as word salad. But for sure it isn't what I'm saying.

Don't you see this leads nowhere, that you actually believe the territory is the map without realizing it?

It may please you to believe that you know what I believe better than I do, but I see no reason to agree.

But maybe you're making a more modest claim, namely that we should be aware of our map-using. Yup, we should. What makes you think we aren't? Are you sure you are not creating maps? Are you aware that you don't exist, for example, that this is a map?

I never claimed to be "not creating maps". I don't know which of multiple things you mean by "you don't exist" but if what you mean is, say, that my notion of myself is a mental construct that may diverge from how the world really is then yes, I'm aware of that.

(I may well think that fact less earth-shattering than you would like me to think it, though.)

No that's maps [...] It's just a layer, our projections

You consider that e.g. whether I am on the earth or the moon is "just a layer", a matter of "our projections"? Because that is a thing the human race has discovered how to change, by careful use of well-calibrated maps.

If your attempts at "awareness" have detached you so far from reality that you really do think that: well, I'm sorry, and it's too bad you didn't come here earlier when there was still a prospect of a cure.

you believe that someone is trying to be more superior than you, because that can't be the case. How dare they

You keep trying to tell me what I believe (and feel). You keep getting it wrong. Perhaps your "awareness" doesn't confer quite as much insight as you suppose?

I don't know how you can let go of this point

I let go of it ages ago. It's no fault of mine that you keep harping on it.