Category: Teachings

When a person wakes up, what is it they awaken to? And what do they awaken from?

Awakening is about discovering the nature of what is real — what inside you is unchanging. It’s coming to see how there’s an underlying truth that’s apart from the compelling sense of who-you-are.

If waking up matters to you, please realize it has nothing whatever to do with spiritual self-improvement. Allow yourself to rest from tortured attempts to “do better,” to be vigilant. What awakening is about has to do with something much more essential than perceived spiritual shortcomings. The ego does not wake up.

Yet it’s surely possible to awaken to the mind-invented nature of the self. And to come at last to rest in the part of “you” that’s real and changeless.

* * * * *

What is your self made of? When you contemplate yourself, what does that encompass? Allow the lens of looking to become as wide as it can open, taking in the fullness of your sense of who you are. See if you can simply look, without agenda or judgment.

If waking up matters to you, please realize it has nothing whatever to do with spiritual self-improvement.

Consider:

• Your history, particularly the experiences that have significantly shaped you
• Perceived strengths and liabilities
• How you identify yourself 
• Your present circumstances (including any “problems”)
• Things you believe to be true or essential, including perceived needs
• Ideas you have about right and wrong, good or bad
• What stirs anger in you, or fear
• How you see yourself as better or worse than others
• What you long for
• The sense of success and failure
• What you feel when you look in the mirror
• Your orientation to your own death

As all of this comes into view, allow it the space it needs, without assessment or recoiling. As the lens takes it all in, if you notice yourself avoiding, or becoming self-critical (or self-congratulatory), simply notice that too.

Now gently observe the changeable nature of these features of your sense of self. (Was it all this way when you were a little kid? Do you imagine it will matter on your death bed?) Or if you detect some consistency about yourself that feels essential and enduring, see if you derive a sense of identity from that. Allow yourself to question the reality of such a thing. Did your mind produce it?

If what initially appears to be real in you has any quality of good-vs.-bad, this is an indication that it’s the ego-devoted mind that’s gone looking for the real. All the familiar self is capable of detecting is more of itself. This is a valuable thing to observe operating. Learn to never trust any of its findings as “the truth.”

* * * * *

Ask yourself this: What in me is real — in a way none of these changeable things are? What is not subject to conditioning, to mental filters? 

What is it in a human being — in any of us — that is unchanging? That’s unaffected by experience or belief? This something is without preferences. It has no age; it’s the same now as it was when you were three. Nor is it different from one person to another. (Imagine that.)

Here’s the juicy question at the heart of it all: By what means is the real detectable? What do you use to sense it? And how does that differ from thinking?

* * * * *

Yes, the radical transition surely is like awakening from a dream. This likeness gets deftly tossed about in spiritual circles, with all of life — the self — being dismissed as “just a dream.”

Yet have you noticed how this “knowing” doesn’t seem to alter the felt reality of what typically absorbs attention? How it doesn’t stop the dream from recurring? You may suppose you’ve known for a long time about the dream of the self. But until awakening, you’ve known it only in your head. If getting it with your mind was of real value, you wouldn’t continue living in the dream as if it were real. The purely mental “knowing” about the dream is not to be mistaken for the visceral recognition that comes with awakening.

To be sure, there is value of a kind to the mental comprehension of self/life-as-dream. It can start a person questioning appearances, noticing assumptions, wondering what’s real, what’s mind-generated.

When you wake up, you know the truth of the dream from the inside of you, not courtesy of the mind. It “dawns,” like it’s brand-new. It’s felt in the body, like warm sun on the face, like the touch of finger to skin. It’s known.

* * * * *

Consider what the spiritual life might fruitfully consist of. Note your own orientation to inner exploration.

As you explore the fullness of the real-seeming self, you do not need to exert effort to change any of it. In fact, if you engage in any attempt to improve the self, as an imagined way to come closer to awakening, you’re only dignifying the self, underscoring its perceived significance. By working on yourself — trying to be more compassionate and less judgmental, to stop believing your thoughts — you’re merely amplifying the felt substance of the “you” that never was real in the first place. The whole thing exists entirely in the mind — including the wasted effort to spruce it up.

Instead, allow the self-observation to be entirely restful. Simply see that you have a tendency to believe your thoughts, to engage in self-improvement. Relax all exertion. Keep your eyes open. This is more a matter of curiosity and observation than a search-and-destroy mission.

* * * * *

Along the way, ask What is doing the seeing? What inside you is capable of looking at the whole thing, as if from outside it? Clearly it’s not ego-devoted thought doing this. We’re back to that juicy question. If the real cannot be detected by the ordinary mind, what in us can recognize it?

It’s consciousness itself. Plain awareness, without agenda or preference. It’s what can see your self operating, absent any distress or wish to improve.

Consciousness is the only thing that’s real and changeless within you. All the rest — the living self, what happens in life — is what happens “within” consciousness. Some of it’s even fun. And yes, some of it hurts.

It’s good to assume, as you go along, that the extent of the real-seeming self is significantly “bigger” and more deeply rooted than whatever you’ve realized previously. Continue being curious, open to seeing whatever is there. Allow the lens to get bigger and bigger.

Along with the growing clarity about the not-real stuff, the matter of what is real may surely dawn, in its own sweet time.

You may sometimes find yourself thinking Things have never been this bad before. This thought could be about your own life or the life of a loved one, or perhaps in reference to the climate crisis or the political scene. Maybe it arises from the keenly-felt recognition of the enduring injustice and suffering everywhere you look.

Then the question comes How is it possible to be at peace, given all this? 

(more…)

We ache all our lives to be loved unconditionally. To be seen through and through as we truly are, without judgment or any attempt to alter. To be entirely held in that vast cherishing and acceptance.

The primal longing for unconditional love occurs initially in the presence of our original care-givers. As life unfolds, while that hunger never abates, it may be transferred to a partner or friend, to one’s own children, as possible sources of fulfillment.

(more…)

When you allow yourself to sink into the reality of something challenging, or to grant a painful feeling its necessary space, in that moment you are really and truly alive. Because you’re no longer at a distance from life itself, as it is just now. You’re able to rest — to feel that you’re really here.

You’re spared the ongoing struggle against life, as if the two of you were opponents. Talk about blessings! You’re relieved of the awful burden of carrying the mess you’ve created (unacknowledged reality, unallowed pain). Forgoing all of that frees you to really live your life. Your capacity for delight — and for blossoming consciousness — becomes greater than it was, back when you were your own worst enemy.

Sometimes in deep surrender a person discovers a startling peacefulness just on the other side of letting go accustomed resistance and mental handling. The sense of well-being can be sweet, and deeply restful — even as (yes) pain may come with what’s being accepted. There is no contradiction there. (Did you think life was “supposed” to be easy, always in line with your preferences? Or that your happiness depended on that fantasy alignment?)

The avoided, buried stuff, when no longer held at a distance, can open doors to one revelation after another — all of it ultimately liberating from the crippling illusion of the ego-self.

When you decline to protect yourself from uncomfortable feelings, from some buried or unwelcome reality, the pain that may come has a curious quality of cleanness. Because what you’re feeling involves alignment with the truth. It’s a relief to stop lying to yourself.

When you allow self-transparency, there is a wholeness to your aliveness. More becomes available to the clarity and wisdom of awareness. All of which may prepare the ground for awakening. The more you hold yourself at a distance from what-is, the more you’re holding wakefulness at bay.

Sometimes wisdom emerges in the relaxing of resistance. The avoided, buried stuff (a vast accumulation, much of it habitual and familiar), when invited into awareness without judgment or the attempt to change it, can open doors to one revelation after another — all of it ultimately liberating from the crippling illusion of the ego-self. (As if it were real — as if it were what you truly are.)

Blessings galore!

* * * * *

Resistance wedges an artificial distance between yourself and reality — “reality” encompassing both outer circumstances and whatever may be going on in your gut.

Instead of resting in the real, allowing the truth of a thing, letting the discomfort be felt, there’s the strained attempt to manage it all via a mental construct or story. Then what have you got? Instead of there being one source of pain, now there are two, one of which is self-inflicted. There’s the possible difficulty of the real-life occurrence, and heaped on top of that is the weight of the convoluted mental and emotional response to it.

The burden of accumulated resistance is enormous. It exacts a continuing (and mounting) price, creating a toxic atmosphere for ongoing life as it unfolds. Enormous effort is involved in the habitual holding-away and mental scrambling for self-protection. It is, in fact, exhausting to keep up that familiar habit. Though we’ve long since grown so accustomed to the exertion that it little dawns on us what a cost it exacts — never mind that it is, in fact, optional! (Talk about insanity.)

When surrender doesn’t happen, it means there continue to be places inside yourself that are walled off from awareness — from aliveness. The presence of walled-off “rooms” — places you cannot or will not willingly go — means you’ve put constraints on what would otherwise be possible for you. Like ease, like delight and spontaneity. Fully living! Instead, the underlying issue is doomed to recur. You remain stuck, forever spinning your wheels. (And then you wonder How come I can’t seem to wake up?)

Anyhow, neither mental handling nor ferocious denial actually gets rid of anything. The stored-up mess of it all awaits you. The pressure of what’s accumulated intensifies over the ten-thousand episodes of non-acceptance. At some point, life will surely bring you to face it all. Which will be so much harder than if you’d simply learned to accept at each point along the way.

*****

How does surrender happen? Begin with noticing that resistance is happening. Without trying to change anything, without self-judgment, simply notice what’s happening. Discover your habitual method of holding reality at bay. Pay attention to the feel of it all — how the mind is scrambling to spin a story, to wall the thing off. Observe the mind’s frantic busy-ness. See if you can detect distancing from fear (or whatever feeling is deeply buried).

Allow a gentle curiosity to turn on a light — to illumine how resistance operates in you. The start of a new way of being is to become acquainted with the habitual one, without the attempt to enforce a change (which may be motivated by some belief about what’s “spiritual”).

Learning to let go the habit of resistance is not about trying to be otherwise. It’s got to do with simply watching what happens when you become conscious of resisting. Nor should learning to accept carry with it the hope for a certain outcome — like being more at peace, or experiencing some significant shift, or never again resisting. Keep an eye on any “means-to-an-end” approach. The reason to stop resisting is simply to remove the distance between yourself and life. The rest is not up to you.

Gradually you will notice yourself moving toward life (including the life within), in favor of building walls. The relief will be palpable.

*****

The strange and surprising discovery about wakefulness, whether it’s fleeting or sustained, is that the felt experience is of being in love with reality, just as it is. Even when life turns challenging, filling awareness with the recognition of the unknown, of being without control. The closer you come to fully yielding to reality, to being entirely available to it (however threatening or unnerving it might feel), the more readily wakefulness can come into the picture. And with it, a curious sense of well-being, which can be a revelation when what’s being surrendered to is heartbreaking.

A lifetime of resisting gently morphs, relaxing from automatically resisting to eventually starting-to-resist and then realizing that’s happening, followed by relaxing into acceptance. Which eventually eases into not resisting in the first place, its perceived “usefulness” having been clearly seen through as a useless (and torturous) sham.

So, dear heart, be brave! Spare yourself all the misery. Be alive. Allow yourself to rest in reality. Wake up to your very life, just as it is.

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