The Indispensable Qualities of Awakening...

In essence the entire spiritual endeavor is a very simple thing:
Spirituality is essentially about awakening as the intuitive
awareness of unity and dissolving our attachment to egoic
consciousness. By saying that spirituality is a very simple thing, I
do not mean to imply that it is either an easy or difficult endeavor.
For some it may be very easy, while for others it may be more
difficult. There are many factors and influences that play a role in
one's awakening to the greater reality, but the greatest factors by
far are one's sincerity, one-pointedness, and courage.



Sincerity is a word that I often use in teaching to convey the
importance of being rooted in the qualities of honesty, authenticity,
and genuineness. There can be nothing phony or contrived in our
motivations if we are to fully awaken to our natural and integral
state of unified awareness. While teachings and teachers can point us
inward to "the peace beyond all understanding," it is always along
the thread of our inner sincerity, or lack thereof, that we will
travel. For the ego is clever and artful in the ways of deception,
and only the honesty and genuineness of our ineffable being are
beyond its influence. At each step and with each breath we are given
the option of acting and responding, both inwardly and outwardly,
from the conditioning of egoic consciousness which values control and
separation above all else, or from the intuitive awareness of unity
which resides in the inner silence of our being.



Without sincerity it is so very easy for even the greatest spiritual
teachings to become little more than playthings of the mind. In our
fast-moving world of quick fixes, big promises, and short attention
spans, it is easy to remain on a very surface level of consciousness
without even knowing it. While the awakened state is ever present and
closer than your feet, hands, or eyes, it cannot be approached in a
casual or insincere fashion. There is a reason that seekers the world
over are instructed to remove their shoes and quiet their voices
before entering into sacred spaces. The message being conveyed is
that one's ego must be "taken off and quieted" before access to the
divine is granted. All of our ego's attempts to control, demand, and
plead with reality have no influence on it other than to make life
more conflicted and difficult. But an open mind and sincere heart
have the power to grant us access to realizing what has always been
present all along.



When people asked the great Indian sage Nisargadatta what he thought
was the most important quality to have in order to awaken, he would
say "earnestness." When you are earnest, you are both sincere and one-
pointed; to be one-pointed means to keep your attention on one thing.
I have found that the most challenging thing for most spiritual
seekers to do is to stay focused on one thing for very long. The mind
jumps around with its concerns and questions from moment to moment.
Rarely does it stay with one question long enough to penetrate it
deeply. In spirituality it is very important not to let the egoic
mind keep jumping from one concern to the next like an untrained dog.
Remember, awakening is about realizing your true nature and
dissolving all attachment to egoic consciousness.



My grandmother who passed away a few years ago used to say to me
jokingly, "Getting old is not for wimps." She was well aware of the
challenges of an aging body, and while she never complained or felt
any pity for herself, she knew firsthand that aging had its
challenges as well as its benefits. There was a courage within my
grandmother that served her well as she approached the end of her
life, and I am happy to say that when she passed, it was willingly
and without fear. In a similar way the process of coming into a full
and mature awakening requires courage, as not only our view of life
but life itself transforms to align itself with the inner mystic
vision. A sincere heart is a robust and courageous heart willing to
let go in the face of the great unknown expanse of Being—an expanse
which the egoic mind has no way of knowing or understanding.



When one's awareness opens beyond the dream state of egoic
consciousness to the infinite no-thing-ness of intuitive awareness,
it is common for the ego to feel much fear and terror as this
transition begins. While there is nothing to fear about our natural
state of infinite Being, such a state is beyond the ego's ability to
understand, and as always, egos fear whatever they do not understand
and cannot control. As soon as our identity leaves the ego realm and
assumes its rightful place as the infinite no-thing-ness/every-thing-
ness of awareness, all fear vanishes in the same manner as when we
awaken from a bad dream. In the same manner in which my grandmother
said, "Getting old is not for wimps," it can also be said that making
the transition from the dream state to the mature, awakened state
requires courage.



Sincerity, one-pointedness, and courage are indispensable qualities
in awakening from the dream state of ego to the peace and ease of
awakened Being. All there is left to do is to live it.



© Adyashanti 2008