Awakening...

Enlightenment is awakening from the dream state of separateness to the reality of One. It means waking up to what you truly are and then being that. Realize and be. Realization is not enough. After Self-realization one must act, do and express what one has realized. This is a whole new way of life----living in reality instead of living out the programmed ideas, beliefs, and impulses of your mind.

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. You are looking for God with his eyes. This truth is so simple, shocking and radical that it is easy to miss among one’s flurry of seeking. He is here to shake his students awake and not to ask them to dream better. We must wake up to the fact that we are all already living Buddhas. We are the emptiness, the infinite nothing. Let go of all ideas and images in our minds: they come and go and are not even generated by us.

Awakening is only the end of seeking and the end of the seeker. It is the beginning of a life lived from your true nature. It is a life of oneness, a human expression of oneness. There is no question of you becoming the One; you are the One. Are you a conscious expression of the One? Are you living consciously as the One? All his talks are about awakening of life lived after awakening.

One morning sitting in meditation, he heard the chirping of a bird, a spontaneous question came up to ask: “What is it that hears the sound?” Suddenly he realized that the sound, the bird and the hearing were the manifestation of one thing. Then he opened his eyes to find that he and the wall were the same one thing. Then he walked around the house just to find that everything in and around the house was part of the One. Then in the middle of a step, ‘his’ consciousness left him as if it was a separate entity. His consciousness is not he. Next, numerous images arose as if they were his past incarnations as far back as he could see. He exclaimed: “My God, I’ve been identified with various forms for umpteen lifetimes.” Suddenly he realized his consciousness or spirit had mistaken all the previous forms as his previous incarnations.

Now he realized that consciousness was not confined to a form: it was existing independently. Consciousness or spirit is no more defining itself by any form, a body, a mind, a lifetime, a single thought or a memory. These two experiences happen together. The first is that he became Oneness of everything, and the second he became the consciousness or spirit that totally woke up out of all identification, even out of Oneness. When the Oneness dropped away, there was still a basic awakeness, but it had two different aspects: he was either everything or absolutely nothing. This was the awakening, the realization of Self. Then he took an ordinary step, which felt like the first baby step of his life. Then the next step and the next and every step is a new one.

In each “first “ step, formless consciousness and Oneness just merged together so that the awakeness that had always identified itself as form was actually inside of the form, unidentified. It was not looking through any thoughts or memories of what had come before, just through the five senses. With no history or memory, every step felt like a first step.

Thus he realized that when he awakened up he woke up out of everything, including all the things that had brought him there, including Zen. So, he wrote a letter to his wife who is still sleeping: “Happy birthday. Today is my birthday. I’ve just been born.”

We humans define ourselves basically by the content of our minds, feelings and history. Many forms of spirituality try to get rid of thoughts, feelings and memories---to make the mind blank. This is not wise. It is better to see through thoughts and to recognise that a thought is just a thought, a belief is just a belief, a memory is just a memory. Then we can stop binding consciousness or spirit to our thoughts and mental states. What was looking through his eyes and senses was awakeness or spirit rather than conditioning or memory. This same spirit was actually looking through all the other pairs of eyes. It did not matter if it was looking through the other conditioning; it was the same thing. It was seeing itself everywhere, not only in the eyes, but also in the trees, the rocks and the floor.

It is paradoxical that the more this spirit or consciousness starts to taste itself, not as a thought or idea or belief, but as just a simple presence of awakeness, the more this awakeness is reflected everywhere. The more we wake up out of bodies and minds and identities, the more we see that bodies and minds are actually just manifestations of that same spirit, that same presence. The more we realize that who we are is totally outside of time, outside of the world, and outside of everything that happens, the more we realize that this same presence is the world----all that is happening and all that exists. It is like two sides of a coin. This experiential awakening is not rare, and no one teaches it to you.

When we are no longer functioning through our conditioning, the sense of “me” is no longer there. What really runs and operates this life is love. And this same love is in everybody all the time. Nobody owns this love. Everybody is essentially the manifestation of this love. Now in order to find out ‘what am I’ one will find that “I” am the silence between two thoughts. You are nobody. You are this openness, this presence. You are not a creation of thought, belief or faith. It is free of all identity. It is the uncreated.

Trying to hold on to one’s identities, even if it is the holiest of identities, is like shoving a camel through the eye of a needle. However, if one is pure space, one can push it through the smallest of eye needle. Not a shred of self-centred identity can go through, only nothingness can.

When we passed into our own nothingness, heaven is our experience. In our own awakeness we see that we are pure spirit with no form. This formless spirit is the essence, the animating presence of everything. This is being in heaven because, in each step, spirit and essence are occupying our body. That is the true meaning of being born again. Being born again is not just a religious conversion, it is being unborn when we realize that eternal nothingness is actually living this life called “my life.”

Being awakened spiritually does not mean that from now onwards we are going to be in good fortune. No. Being nothingness in the ocean, the waves may be high or low, we will not be affected by the waves. Within this awakeness is the peace that surpasses understanding, and our life does not need to be doing better. It can just do what life does: it just flows. We do not care.

The mind is dreaming. The awakened spirit is not dreaming. The mind tells all sorts of stories and wants to know whether you are progressing. But when you are awakened, you realize that all is a dream and it is not true---it is just a thought. Thought can tell a million stories inside of awareness, and is not going to change awareness one bit. The body may be sad with a sad story or good with a good story. When enlightened, you wake up out of your mind, out of your dream. You do not awaken. What has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are...............Adyashanti