How does a seeker become a finder?
What is it that establishes one permanently beyond separation?
How does an individual go from intellectually knowing the truth and tasting it on occasion to living truth as an ongoing reality in every moment?
These are questions that have lived with me for many years now.
I don’t have the answers to them, but I am very curious to know.
Does one have to dissolve one’s ego completely to wake up?
And if so, how would one go about doing that?
Can the ego even take itself apart? Is that possible?
Perhaps if one practices meditation and self enquiry often enough, enlightenment just suddenly happens one day.
Maybe it’s not possible, maybe full enlightenment is only an illusion that takes us away from the now and the idea should simply be dropped.
It could just be grace that decides who wakes up and stays awake and who only has a glimpse of a satori here and there.
Awakening is potentially best thought of as an accident, but maybe spiritual practice makes us accident prone.
There are so many ways to look at this and consider what might be.
I’ve heard different spiritual teachers over the years address this subject from completely opposite points of view. That awakening is the only thing worth going for and should be pursued with everything you have. AND, putting any effort into trying to get somewhere is a mistake on the spiritual path and you should simply rest and be here.
So, which is it?
Maybe it’s both simultaneously.
It’s possible that going for awakening is paradoxical in that one has to realise that it is a futile exercise while still trying everything that you can to wake up.
Most awakened ones have stories of doing spiritual practices for many decades at least. Sitting for hours staring at blank walls. Those kinds of war stories. However, there are exceptions to that rule. Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie’s spontaneous awakenings through severe depression lend credence to the idea that awakening can happen at any time to anyone. Although, maybe that’s only in the case of those who choose surrender when faced with a tremendous magnitude of suffering?
If it is the case, though, that to wake up and stay awake, it requires enormous effort on the part of the one trying to wake up, how do we reconcile that with non-doing, surrender, Wu Wei and letting go? Aren’t they exact opposites of each other?
Maybe, but maybe not.
Perhaps it is this exact paradox, this koan of sorts, that needs to be seen through.
Perhaps enlightenment is an impossible task and an ever-present reality that is here and now in every individual right now that just needs to be recognised and realised.
If what we’re truly seeking is awareness, then yes, it is here.
Ask anyone if they’re aware in this moment and what will they say? Of course I am.
Right, but how often are you conscious that you’re aware throughout your day? And how often are you lost in thought or some emotional state or planning your next move or reminiscing the conversation you just had with a friend? How often are you fully embodied? How often are you present? How often are you open? How often are you psychologically flexible as opposed to being rigid and stuck?
So, awareness is always, immovably, palpably here.
Yet, at the same time, there are innumerable obstacles to being aware of awareness in every moment for most of us.
To confuse the subject further, I also believe there are people that are actually seekers that claim to be finders and also people that seem to have found something profound, yet still say the process of inquiry continues to this day. There may not be the same restless searching attached to the process of inquiry, it may be done more naturally and spontaneously than most seekers, but still it continues. I interviewed Isaac Shapiro a few months ago and he told that the process of inquiry is still ongoing for him.
Maybe all it takes is a deep recognition of truth at any point and the rest falls away as illusion?
Maybe it’s extremely simple and straightforward and, yet, is the most difficult thing you’ve ever attempted to do at the same time.
Good luck!