The process (of awakening) requires us to face the most profound fear of our own annihilation or destitution

To face that fear and continue is the challenge of awakening

In the end there’s nothing we can do

We either come to the edge and let go or we don’t

Rather, it will happen or it won’t

There is an inevitability about it

Ultimately all beings wake up

(Maybe)

And it’s not a choice

But the unfoldment of the story of ‘you’

One day the belief in yourself as a person just isn’t there

And it becomes obvious that the person you thought you were was and is a character in a dream

And you’re the dreamer, consciousness

.

There’s no-one doing any of this

It’s just happening

And if I say ‘you’ need to see this

It’s not the person I’m talking to

It’s You

If you want to wake up because you think you’ll get more of anything

Then that’s ‘false view’

If you think that awakening will prevent your utter destitution

Then that’s ‘false view’ also

I’m not trying to scare you

Or discourage you

I just want to name the fears and expectations directly

Drop your expectations and face your fear

Because expectations are a distraction

And fear is a threshold you must pass

To be free

ॐ

If you’re serious about self-discovery, if you’re serious about the truth, then you have to be willing to give up everything you think you know. You have to be willing to question and look at every assumption and become like a clean slate. Because untruth and suffering hides under the rocks of unexplored assumptions.

Here the most important thing is willingness, because without it you’re not going to get anywhere, you’re not going to see what you need to see. You’re likely to be precious about some idea or some concept that you hold, some interpretation that you’ve organised your life around. Because coming to see the fullness of your own being is easy, it’s right here. What’s hard is letting go of your attachments, letting go of your preconceptions and your cherished beliefs.

You might say that the maturity of the seeker is somehow measured or exemplified by this willingness to look, to push through their defensiveness around their notions and concepts. Nisargadatta Maharaj talked about the most important quality of a seeker as being earnestness. And this earnestness is that willingness to throw themselves on the fire if they need to.

Of course this willingness is actually how ‘able-ness’ is expressed. Or stated another way, when spiritual ripeness comes about through Grace, the capacity and inclination to inquire into your true nature arises as willingness, earnestness, sincerity. When this occurs only the real, the true, will satisfy your yearning. You’ll find yourself drawn inwardly to abide in your own silent nature. The things of the world will lose their lustre and charm. When Grace descends it’s only a matter of shedding the remnants of false notions and misperceptions.  And quite naturally false ideas and attachments will drop from your Emptiness like autumn leaves.

ॐ

It’s often the case that nondual understanding in the dualistic mind is the product of ‘secondary mind’, the logical, analytical mind, and not a wisdom emanation from Pure Mind. True wisdom is born directly from Self-nature without reference to understanding. It’s the difference between knowledge born of Self-recognition, and the cogitations of the functional mind and it’s rationalistic outputs.

In a sense one can suffer from the consistency of functional mind as it produces self-supporting arguments and theories that appear complete on their own level, however the nature of such ‘knowledge’ is entirely theoretical and concludes without recourse to direct non-conceptual apprehension. It’s hard to penetrate such understanding because of the strong crystalline nature of its structure, but the absolutist assertions about what-is that are derived from the seat of reason and not from the seat of insight simply don’t satisfy.

But it’s life itself that deposes this usurping intelligence by offering endless exceptions to whatever conceptual framework is held, as the failure to accomodate the ever-fresh, ever-proliferating nature of being becomes the incentive to look beyond concepts altogether. Non-duality as a paradigm is a profound intellectual understanding, and perhaps even represents a kind of ultimate iteration of conceptual understanding as such. But it’s only when ALL understanding is transcended that the living truth is realized. Reference to secondary mind is still available, but is known to be merely relative and conceptual.

Ultimately all appearances are born from Original Mind, and even the notion of delusion is a spontaneous arising. But the belief that the goal of Self-inquiry or the spiritual ‘path’ is to understand nonduality intellectually is delusionary, and the idea that understanding on its own level could be satisfactory is misguided. The development of intellectual understanding will only find its satisfactory conclusion in its own transcendence. That said, a rarefication and refinement of comprehension seems to be a precursor of its own demise, albeit not a immediate guarantee of it.

Transcendence is a leap of faith, a jump into the void, a fall into unknowing. It is the final step from the clifftop, when the freefall begins and never ends. No (apparent) form is stable, so to cling to anything is futile and cause for suffering. Remain in freefall, enjoy the breeze!

Many will cling to understanding as if it were a fixed point in an ocean of change. But understanding is itself relative and subject to change and dissolution. There’s no-thing to rely on. Even Being itself; who can say?

If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C. This is the functional mind, this is the mind that calculates and concludes. And it’s fine for building bridges and writing code and following recipes. It’s functional, it describes, it extrapolates from what it’s seen before. But this form of intelligence is nested within total knowledge, the infinite potentiality of intelligence itself, and as such cannot fully fathom or describe its own origins.

Knowing is known on its own level, in its own Nature. It is primordial and self-supporting. It is singular, awake intelligence, it is the universal Subject. The I-I. And no amount of analysis or reason can deliver the lived experience. It is beyond and prior to all such considerations, but is immanent and ever-present as your very own awareness.

“Know that by knowing which everything is known.”

ॐ

To awaken you have to be ready. But there’s nothing you can do to make yourself ready, because you’re not doing anything, because the you you think you are doesn’t exist.

So it’ll happen when it happens. Not a moment too soon, not a moment too late.

So do or don’t do, it’s all as it should be.

This is not comforting for a suffering ego, I know this.

So do something then, if you want, if you can. If you have choice available to you, use it.

But then you start worrying about whether it’s the right choice or the wrong one. And so the suffering comes, born from duality, doubt and confusion

It’s a miserable existence being an ego. Seeing and living from the deluded view of separation. But there’s so little that stands in the way (that appears to stand in the way) of Reality, Truth, Clarity.

It’s all just a misunderstanding of what and how you’re experiencing. A misapprehension that’s so easily cleared up.

Identify the source of thought. Recognize the origin of seeing, knowing, experiencing. Where are you looking from?

It sounds like a riddle but it’s not. You’re already looking from there, Here, This, Now.

It’s the persistence of a certain kind of thought that muddies the view and your understanding, your experiencing. Or so it seems.

But you are always Here.

Liberation is not the mere self negation of the enlightened “I don’t exist!”, nor the self aggrandisement of the enlightened “I am the universe!”, nor the subtle duality of ‘Union with God’.

Which comes first, I AM or IS?

The Self IS

Atma is Brahm is Consciousness

Brahman alone is Real

The world is Brahman

There is only Brahman

TAT TVAM ASI

AHAM BRAHMASMI

OM TAT SAT

Know this and be free

ॐ

What is Enlightenment, Moksha, Buddhahood, Liberation?

It’s the obliteration of the Ten Fetters, the complete dissolution of the occluding mental densities that give rise to avidya. It’s the destruction of the ‘thicket of views’ that confuses and confounds the realization of Self and of life in the Natural State.

It is ‘what remains’ when the cloud of unknowing passes. It’s the ‘Who I Am’ when the personal story ends for good.

It is ‘what is’ without adornment, it’s the ‘Peace that surpasses all understanding’.

It’s the abiding recognition of your nature as awareness itself, the end of the delusion that “I am the body”, and the living knowledge that “I am the Self”.

May you know it now.

ॐ

Beginner’s Mind is very helpful in Self-inquiry. What that means is you let go of all of your concepts, all of your learning, everything you think you know – just drop it for now.  Put it in your pocket, tuck it away and come at the observation and inquiry with a fresh, open, empty mind.

In this way you can, for a moment, explore your experience directly and look with a uncluttered, unbiased awareness.

All these concepts that you’ve dropped for the time being, you can pick them back up later if you find that they’re still valid or useful. But what you might find is they are neither.

ॐ

What is This?

Who am I?

What am I?

What kind of answers am I looking for?

What could satisfy?

Questions are beautiful, more illuminating than answers. Questions stop the mind.

So if I told you “you are consciousness”, would that help?

Would you be satisfied?

Would your suffering diminish at all with that piece of information?

Perhaps you could hold that thought in your mind, maybe you could write it down, repeat it as a mantra, an affirmation, a bumper sticker.

But is it true? For you?

Or is it just a hope, or an aspiration, some idea you like the sound of, so you repeat it to yourself.

But all the while you suffer from the other thoughts that assail you.

And if only you could banish those ones that trouble you, and keep the ones you like…

Then…

If only.

You got it all worked out.

If only…

You’d be happy if….

You’d be free if…

What if I were to tell you that your happiness was already here?

That your freedom is on THIS side of your experiencing?

Not on the far side of some desire or condition you’ve artificially imposed.

You betray your birthright when you forgo what is here for what is not.

The real for the dream.

And you miss the essential wholeness and completeness when you sacrifice reality for a lie.

All that we are is contained in love

The ‘fact’ of the answer becomes a thing to hold, to grasp, to identify with, to maintain, to defend, to lose.

Do you have an empty cup?

Can we drop all the teachings now and simply be?

Teachings get cumbersome, they get reified into persistent things, they become a hook to hang your coat on.

So…

Questions are better

than answers.

ॐ

The seemingly simple task of describing a path from ‘a’ to ‘be’ unravels the very notions that uphold the conditioned view. It’s impossible to find a starting point, there’s no beginning. It seems like a cliché but it’s true, any given point is arbitrary, no ‘event’ is original, always there is a preceding moment.

So where could I begin to recount my own path? Was it the day I sat in a white chair and began to meditate in earnest, or the day I first heard the Buddha’s teaching? Or was it the time my mind stunned to a halt over a girl and I burned my books?

The personal story is uninteresting, it’s old news. The present moment is already full, dragging the past around gets terribly cumbersome.

Identify the sense I AM. Abide there.

This is the origin of all experiencing. Give yourself to this, fall in love with this. This ‘I-I’.

This is the Self.

Remain as the Self and all becomes the Self, is known as the Self; there’s nothing but the Self.

Don’t fall in love with fragments and forget the Whole. Rest as radiant awareness.

Rest, because there’s nothing to do.

Abide, because there’s nowhere to go.

Be, because this is what you are.

The wave is the ocean. Atma is Brahm.

Everything is just happening in awareness. You are awareness. Can you confirm or deny this for yourself? Can you reflect on your experience, use your discrimination to test this for yourself?

Notice that this self-reflection and discrimination are happening spontaneously. Awareness is spontaneously knowing itself.

The person goes looking for the person and finds that the person doesn’t exist.

Hahaha. The Cosmic Joke.

It was always awareness knowing itself.

Delusion is like a fog, it lifts. Enlightenment is clarity.

Drop all notions of a path. Trust your own existence and abide as that which you are, in the recognition and freedom of what is.

ॐ

Your life is not your responsibility, you’re not doing it, you’re not ‘living’ your life, if anything life is living you. It’s important to recognize this. The burden of activity is not yours. Doership is a concept that has been imposed on the uncaused nature of life. Even the notion of a cosmic, supreme doer is an imposition.

We have the power of observation and discrimination. Use it to see what’s true and what’s not. Go find a doer if you can, at any level, in any realm of reality. Observe as awareness itself, see the waves of life move without cause, or need for cause. A singular flow of appearance arising in emptiness. These appearances are mindstuff, the cogitations of universal being. You.

What’s it going to take for you to admit your Divinity? It’s you, you, you!

But I’m not talking to this body-appearance you take yourself to be. You are not the body, stop orienting yourself around it. The buzz of sensations and memories, projections and opinions are just a bundle of noise in your transparent, unbounded nature.

Am I wasting my words? Who is hearing this? The person? Or the uncaused being that you are?

Who hears hearing? Who knows knowing?

Can an object know itself? Can the seen be the seer?

Don’t be too quick to answer the questions. Observe what’s true in your experience, in your awareness, awareness itself – yourself – your Self – the Self.

Identify the sense I AM. This is ananda, bliss. From here the world flows. The Great Tao.

The Truth is here if you want it, not ‘there’ in the objects of awareness. And when you see this, then there’s no ‘there’ – just This.

All is ‘I’

I-I

Atma

And Atma is Brahm.

Who can see this, know this?

All that is, is consciousness.

Who could know this?

Consciousness.

Be conscious, of being conscious.

Don’t think about it, just be aware.

Notice what’s already true.

You are aware, you are awareness.

Why jump into the mud of personhood? Why wrestle with the ghosts and projections of the deluded mind?

You are the pristine mind and all that appears shares your nature. Modulations occur spontaneously, the dance and play of life. The tissues of existence so seemingly robust are subtle beyond measure, the fabric of emptiness.

Where is this ‘world’? From where does it come and to where does it go?

I AM

ॐ

That we believe ourselves to be a person is completely taken for granted. We don’t even think to look into this, to question its veracity. We’ve been conditioned to stop short in our curiosity about our nature.

Go all the way. Use your discrimination and intelligence to fathom what’s true. I can set you down the right track, many can, but you must walk the walk.

Perhaps it’s only when the limits of our knowledge fails us in some way that we even become interested in looking beyond our previously prescribed limits of comprehension. Maybe our life needs to break apart a little first. Maybe it needs to fall to pieces. Either way “if it ain’t broke, don’t look” seems to be the maxim of choice for most.

Who wants to know?

To whom do these thoughts arise?

To me.

Who am I?

.

There is a pathless path, a road to self-knowledge that begins and ends right here and right now. It is the road of stopping, of ending, of keeping still.

Quiet.

From where do thoughts appear?

If you watch them, in real time, you can locate their source. Not conceptually, or inferentially, not by speculating on their psychological origins. No, right now, arising in your mind. Are you not the awareness-space in which they arise? Are you not the emptiness that Knows?

Just watch, observe, abide.

So tell me, where is this body of yours? Where is your sense of self, of being?

What comes first, the knowing or the known? Are they two?

And is this mind of yours in the body? Or is this body in the mind?

And this mind, whose is it? And how big is it? And where?

Abide

Observe

Inquire

This is the work of the Jnani. This is the awakening Spirit.

It is only conditioning that seems to muddy the view. Only thoughts, concepts believed.

There’s nothing to do here. Life wakes up to itself naturally, spontaneously, in its own time, through you and I. This game of separation is fleeting, short-lived, less than a heartbeat; a whisper, a story, and a dream.

You are not the body, the cause of all your misery. It’s here, sure. It shows up, but you are so much more – intelligence itself, life itself, existence itself. The only thing holding you back from knowing this for yourself is your loyalty to concepts, particularly about yourself.

There’s an obviousness about our nature that is revealed when observed, but the mind’s insistence on holding a contrary view, the insistence on filtering what-is through a framework of conceptual notions, and the refusal to drop the false in the light of the true, the real..

Any moment, any given moment you can simply refuse to pick up anything. Forget about dropping, just leave it be. Let it go, remain open, you are openness itself.

Breathe.

In the light of the truth the false dissolves, has no weight, no substance, inconsequential.

The truth is bliss.

You have to set your motives straight. Do you want some philosopical position you can cling to or some knowledge you can use as social currency? Or do you want the truth on its own terms, for its own sake?

Keep checking in. It’s just you that you’re accounting to, no-one else is calling you to step up. It’s just that the price of truth is integrity, or ‘earnestness’; true sincerity, courage, and humility.

And ultimately surrender. Not to anyone or anything, just surrender.

ॐ

Trust, rest, all is well.

You are home, always. This is it, believe it or not.

Hope is for fools. Running, chasing, holding, grasping, needing, wanting.

This is it, be here now.

Let the hope fall away, need be gone, cherish what is, here, this.

Simple, silence, source.

Time? Gone too.

Space? Just this, no inner, no outer, no names.

Rest.

Put your house in order, tidy your room, take out the trash, clean your teeth, pay the rent, do your job, become what you must become, live up to your potential, hold the line, stand your ground, sink or swim, do or do not (there is no try).

Abide. The Dude abides

I stare into the depths, the deep waters of the mind, nothing stirs, for now. And then..

Any dragons today?

I have to keep telling people that they’re wrong. I have to take their personal viewpoint and show them, if they’re willing to see, that they don’t exist as they believe themselves to be.

Even though what I show them about themselves is far greater and more permanent and fulfilling, even so they mostly don’t want to hear it or see it. But when they do, and they go “aaaaha!”, we share a communion of spirit, of truth, of reality and being. We share the recognition in union, and the resistance of the person is forgotten and forgiven.

The person stands in the way of the truth.

The person is fun while it lasts.

The person is a cartoon character who thinks it’s alive.

The person is an appearance in the Self.

Which are you? Can you choose? The ‘me’ or the ‘I’?

The person will end one way or the other.

The Self remains.

I AM.

You exist as transpersonal Being. In fact even describing your essential nature in terms of personhood is misguided. You are the unconditioned Satchitananda, the eternal Brahman, that which Is, in which the unending multitude of beings are born and die. But all that appears to you and in you is a mere dream.

WAKE UP!

You have forgotten your nature, you wear a mask that you take to be yourself, but the mask was never you, and for all your lapses of memory you remain the supreme Self.

When you give up your human tics like grasping, and hiding, and resisting, and wilful blindness, then what’s left is you as I AM.

Blast away your trivial attachments to minor powers and social currencies that only serve to bolster the pitiful illusion of personhood. Behold your Emptiness, endless and alive, eternal and inexhaustible, limitless. Jettison your faintheartedness.

Stand free! Stand free!

I am the deep waters
and the pouring rain

I am the swamp of hope
the mud of delusion

I am blue sky
wide and open

I am the cloudless night
ablaze

Of mountains
I am Meru

Of oceans
I am the deep blue

Of ravages
I am time

Of hatred
I am the betrayed

Of sleep
I am eternal slumber

Of love
I am the devoted

Of time
I am now

Of sex
I am tantra

Of hope
I am love

Of music
I am silence

Of beauty
I am youth

Of knowledge
I AM

To what extent is clinging to strong views problematic? Ideology?

In the absence of the recognition of the unconditioned view and the attendant satisfaction of the identifying function with the unbounded and eternal awareness-nature, the identifying function does its best with what is at hand, namely transient phenomenal ‘objects’. Now the more obvious objects of identification include the body and material ‘possessions’. But the more subtle ones are subtle abstract concepts, such as religious ideations and ideological constructs.

Naturally these conceptual objects are exclusive, failing as they to do to be all-encompassing, and limited, as they are, in their nature as mere mental constructs..

Why are we so terrified of the void? Why do we so desperately need to have something to cling to? Have some spine, people!

Just let go.

Holding on is such hard work. Aren’t you exhausted yet? Are you done yet trying to figure it all out? What would happen if you just stopped and gave up? Aren’t you even a little curious?

Struggle, holding tight to the reins. Release your grip, give your white-knuckles a break and just see what happens. Breathe. Breathe again. Introduce yourself to a more easeful way to be. Learn to relax. Could it be so simple?

Stay open. It’s a beginning. Turn up, sit, wait, watch.

Breathe, and breathe..

Good.

ॐ

Have a practice.

Take time out each and every day to sit in the cave of your interior and wait and watch. This is where the dragons are and this is where the gold is.

It is the cave of the unknown and that is the place of fear. It takes courage to enter and to face whatever comes. You will wrestle your demons here and gardens of bliss will grow here.

And just by turning up you call forth whatever dwells in the unseen, dark places of your being. You are the hero venturing forth with courage and awareness. You light the torch in the dark places, you illuminate that which is unformed and inarticulate.

You are the Light Bringer.

This is my cave. I come here alone. I leave the safety and comfort of the tribe and I sit in solitude, in waiting. I cannot know what will come so I cannot prepare. But I know that I am, I exist. And I have slayed dragons before, and I have gathered gold and flowers.

.

I am the cave and I am the light. And I am the dragon and the flowers. I am the spilled blood of demons and virgins. I am the temple bell and the sleepless night. I am the dream of hunger, the wolf-whistle and the kindness of strangers.

I am the dragon and I am awake. The gold is mine. Courage or not, you will die. If not by my hand then by the ravages of time. Is it truly gold that you seek, hero? Or is it the end of death?

I am the cave. Timeless. So many heroes, so many dragons, so much gold and blood. My walls and floor hold no stains, but I remember all.

I am the gold and the virgin and the light of life. I am the object of desire and greed. I will not fulfill. I am what I am. I remain in my immutable nature, I adorn the world and all the beings in it. Yet I remain untouched and unmixed. I do not decay or waste away. I am ever resplendent, bright as the sun at noon. Behold, here I am, the object of your aspiration and surrender.

.

We don’t want the gold, we want to be the gold. We don’t want love, we want to be love. We don’t want to be free, we want to be freedom.

Unity means free of boundaries, devoid of separation. Yoga is not to unite but to be unity. Nonduality is the state of nonseparation.

We are freedom, not free.

Love not loved.

Truth not true.

Peace not peaceful.

Life is the cave of dragons. Each day, each moment we must stand and face what comes. Armed only with our nature and our wits and the light of truth and courage..

I’ve been slaying dragons for so long now, but they keep coming back. These damn hydra. Sisyphus I am. I don’t need the gold. What do I need the gold for anyway? I need sleep more than I need gold.

Fighting is for heroes, I’m no hero.

I fight not for me but for others. There’s nothing in it for me. But since I must fight, I fight for them. Even though they despise me and reject me, I speak my truth because I must.

.

Is there a better way to be?

Than what?

Than striving, controlling, wanting, needing, being someone, something..

Is letting go, stopping, dropping the chase, surrendering and accepting what-is.. is shedding the burden of being and doing a better way, a more peaceful way, a fuller way?

If I drop my sword and allow myself to be devoured by the dragon, what then?

If my bones become food for the plants and birds, what then?

Can we give up the struggle and see what comes, what remains?

When we’re tired of holding on can we just let go and see what happens?

Do we trust enough? Do we care too much? Fear too much?

Do we lack the courage to release our grasp?

Do we even know what would happen if we did?

Do we fear to find out?

Do we dare?

Let go?

So we freefall into oblivion, forever. So what?

Enjoy the fall. There’s an adventure for the fainthearted!

It’s happening anyway. It is what is. We just don’t care to admit it. We’re just really, really tense about our not-knowing.

We are freefalling, there are no fixed points. Endless openness in all directions. Freedom is exhilarating, no?

Breathe in, breathe out, repeat if necessary.

Breathe through the fear, because this is how it is and you’re stuck with it. Might as well get used to it. No point denying the truth, it has a way of insisting itself.

.

In the cave of dragons, the voice of the father echoes out words of reproval. I thank him for his wisdom and go my own way.

My heart is filled with fear and love, but I am free.

Softly I begin to sing, words of goodness and kindness, words of joy and ease and peace. Words of love and essence. The melody is the fabric of Being, it is the Song of Life.

Behold the kindness of life.

ॐ

Why do we practice, why do we seek? Is it to attain or achieve some conceptual goal we call Enlightenment? Or is it to recognise that in every moment of our existence we are inescapably aware, we are here, we exist?

In fact we are awareness itself, we only have to look right now to see the fact of it. There is no path to it, there is only recognition of it; and that recognition is always available now.

Enlightenment is our natural condition, no-one has a monopoly on it, and it is not proprietary. Along the road we can make use of guides and pointers, teachers and teachings; but there is no master key, because there is no door, there is only Openness.

Feel into your natural presence, be aware of your existence. Recognise what is always here and what passes. Remain as awareness, remain as the witness, keep quiet. Thoughts are fine, feelings and sensations too. But know yourself as That which sees them all come and go.

There is a seamless continuity from your silent seeing through all the passing waves that arise in your experience. See it all, notice that you are free from its influence; it all spontaneously comes and goes in its own way. The burden of activity is not yours, you are Freedom itself.

ॐ

The problem of human suffering is the problem of misapprehension. Our ideas about the nature of the world are at odds with the reality of it. The key mistake is that we take ourselves to be separate individuals existing in an objective world. We believe that our sense of I-ness originates in the physical body and in that body is a mind that runs the show.

Suffering arises because the belief that we are the body is to believe that we’re limited and are therefore vulnerable, that we can be harmed in body and mind, and therefore our very existence can be threatened.

With this belief it’s perfectly natural to feel anxious and fearful, and no amount of sweet and empowering affirmations will abate this natural sense of vulnerability, even though it’s based on a falsehood. The end of suffering comes when you discover the truth of who and what you really are.

When the light of reality dawns in you as the direct recognition of your existence as unbounded, ever-present, formless awareness, the fear and insecurity born from the sense of limitation falls away naturally and effortlessly.

ॐ

My only aim is to help you recognise yourself as boundless, ever-present awareness right here and now, and to recognise your essential wholeness and completeness.

Your true nature is easeful, lack-free Being; freedom and peace is who and what you are. Your awareness-nature is where you’re looking from, feeling from, sensing from. Look for yourself, identify yourSelf this very moment as the formless Seer.

Know that you can never lose yourself, you can only believe that you are lost. Fall in love with the silence of your Being, merge beyond merging into the recognition that you are always already here, always boundless and open, always aware, free of affliction.

You are the formless witness, what can touch you, what can harm you?

ॐ

The recognition of our nature as non-conceptual awareness — spiritual awakening — is relatively simple. But the consequences of this recognition typically have challenging implications for our human-ness, conditioned as it is around the ego-belief. Awakening is rarely the end of the story. A reconstruction of the lived experience and outward expression in light of the newly acknowledged awareness-identity is inevitable, but it takes time to unfold.

During this post-awakening period, experience can alternate between heady bliss and the most challenging inner and outer experiences. It’s helpful to adopt the attitude of openness and allowing; to let whatever subjective experience that arises to pass through without resistance. This is perhaps the best way to minimize the ‘negative’ impact of this fundamental and necessary reorientation.

This process is an automatic one. For a while it probably won’t feel that way, you might feel that you have to ‘do’ something. But remember: allow, accept, let go, surrender (if you can). These are good pointers to be followed, but in time you’ll realize that they simply express your natural condition.

And trust the process, which is specific to your particular expression. Ultimately all that is untrue and a cause for suffering is falling away. What remains is the simple clarity of What Is.

ॐ