When — twenty years ago — the grace of awakening revealed itself to me, it happened so effortlessly and naturally that it took me by surprise. And yet the impact of this awakening on my everyday perception and relationship to life was radical in every way.
You want freedom. From your self. That pesky self that berates you when you get it wrong. Nags you for not being perfect enough. Condemns you for not living up to expectations. Yours or others.
The heart is infinite—like a bottomless well.
The heart can absorb and allow everything—including what you perceive as a grievance, as an attack, as an offense.
I often speak of the "seeking mechanism" that keeps us on a trajectory of looking for fulfillment in a future moment.
Give up the addictive movement of mind that is always searching for something better, something bigger, something that can never be quite grasped. But, my friend, never give up the true longing of your deepest.
Like most people, I used to meet life with fear. However seemingly loved I was in my relationships or however seemingly successful I was in my academic career, I carried a gaping hole of emptiness like a hungry ghost that demanded to be filled with something.
Fear is something most people complain about. It’s more than a complaint, it’s a fear of fear itself. It’s as if fear is a monster that threatens to destroy us or overwhelm us or create havoc in our lives. But what is this thing called fear?
The question of meditation will inevitably arise on the path of awakening. Of course, meditation as a practice for the novice on the spiritual path or the one who is seeking peace, is absolutely vital ... as it provides a view of the gap between thoughts. But I'm talking about the more experienced seeker ... the one who's been meditating for years and yet still is seeking an abiding state of peace or true self-realization and liberation.
When I was 13 years old, a war arrived on my doorstep. Out of the blue, who would have thought it. There I was in a kind of paradise, the sun hot on my skin, playing with dolls, basking in the success of my school grades … if a little bored, as an only child. And in a moment, the world changed.
There are many ways the ego feeds itself. It's not always bombastic or aggressive or confident. Sometimes it's a "poor me" kind of strategy. But what underlines all the ways the ego feeds itself, is the need to compare itself to other manifestations of ego.
We are in the midst of a great reset. A time to pause, even though everything seems to be hurtling at a zillion miles per hour. A time to reflect, even though the world constantly pulls us to the surface. A time to remember, even though we are fragmented by clashing opinions, conflicting information, and violent ideologies.
The true spiritual journey, especially in today’s world, requires each of us to become a master. It is no longer enough to seek the master, to sit at the feet of the guru, to worship an external authority. You must become the master!
There is a direct route to freedom, to peace, to a complete revolution of consciousness. This is to penetrate the veil of "experience" and see what is behind, beyond and within all experience.
We are hardwired physiologically to be on alert. This is a necessary protection for the physical vehicle. When we are in a dark alley and we sense someone following us, our nervous system is highly attuned to the possibility of fighting the stalker or running away. Or when we are walking across the road and a car doesn’t slow down, we are primed to react quickly to get out of the way.
But we need to differentiate this functional alertness from psychological reactivity — which is an emotional response that has nothing to do with biological survival.
You tell me you want peace. Peace in your life, peace in your mind, peace in your heart.
You tell me you don’t want to feel this tight knot of resistance in your belly when things don’t go your way, when life becomes stormy, when you feel you’re falling apart.
That which is already awake in you (awakeness itself) seeks you as much as you seek awakeness. The impulse of consciousness to know itself as the totality of you is as great as the impulse of your innermost desire to seek the freedom of unbounded consciousness.
Although surrender is often spoken of by spiritual teachers (including myself) as the key to spiritual freedom, somehow it has become erroneously equated with being passive. In other words, surrender is conveniently confused with “not doing anything.”
Contrary to what the egoic mind may like to believe, liberation from the suffering of pain and loss associated with physical form comes not by escaping the body, but by being fully present in the body.
As old world structures crumble, the possibility of a new world dawns on us. A world in which authenticity, transparency, and respect are the ground from which we live. This new world starts within — it’s an inner revolution, a 360 degree turnaround of consciousness in which we meet ourselves, each other, and the life we live from an internal landscape that is free of ego’s grip.
Standing at the fork in the road, dazed and bewildered. What happened to the world we knew? What happened to the ground we stood on? What happened to reality?
Empty yourself.
Empty your mind of unexamined beliefs, passed down through generations, inherited without question .. they do not belong to you.
Empty your heart of accumulated grievances, held onto regrets and resentments, hardened into a story of ‘poor me’ .. this is not who you are.
Many years ago — long before I set out on a spiritual path and long before I began the journey of inner inquiry and long before I had matured into the person I am today — I was spontaneously transported to a future world. Don’t ask me how I knew it was a future world, the knowing was simply irrefutable.
There’s an intelligence that’s deeper than thought and more intimate than concept.
There’s an intelligence that weaves together the substance of your body, the tapestry of your life, and the majesty of your light.
Relationship is a potent medicine.
Relationship invites you to get right up close and intimate with everything that is unilluminated in you. Every ugly emotion and dark feeling that has been pushed away because you’ve deemed them unacceptable becomes unimaginably highlighted in the torchlight of intimacy.
There is a tendency on the spiritual path to focus on the mind-qualities of illumination—such as clarity, insight, and wisdom—and to perpetuate the idea of an all-seeing, all-knowing God-like state as the pinnacle of self-realization. This emphasis on mind-illumination is prevalent in both old and new spiritual teachings of enlightenment. But a great error is made when supreme wisdom is upheld as the most precious prize.
There’s a question that is often bothersome on the seeker’s path …
Does awakening erase the personality? Do all personal traits, tendencies, and idiosyncrasies get wiped away in one fell swoop? Does our astrological imprint become obsolete? Do we transcend our conditioning completely? Do we return to some kind of innocent tabula rasa?
Love is a movement that rises up out of the stillness of being.
It has no agenda of pleasure or comfort-seeking, nor of pain aversion. Neither does it have an agenda of what the outcome of this movement should look like. Love simply moves, because movement is its nature.
Awakening has nothing to do with the achievement of a special state of consciousness. It has everything to do with presence and openness.
When you live as presence and openness - in all ways and always - you are the light of the world.
This spiritual thing needs to be unpacked. This thing about transcending the world, being immune to the world’s suffering, turning away from the world to go inside and contemplate your navel, achieving a higher state of consciousness in which nothing touches you. All this .. it’s no longer relevant today.
Awakening is not a self-improvement project. Although there are many who think it is.
Somehow, in today’s world of immediate access to teachings from all sorts of traditions, in today’s world of soundbites and spiritual quotes, awakening has become confused with the favorite project of the ego: becoming a better “me”.