Adyashanti interview...

RA: Like I think you said when you had your first awakening it was as if some voice came to you and said, "This isn't the end of it, keep going."

Adya: Yeah. It wasn't as if it said something, it did say something. (Laugh) And as my own teacher used to say, she'd say, "Awakening means that we now have made a start." When you've awakened now you can really start. When I heard that so many years ago, it was quite honestly quite disappointing 'cause I'm waiting for some great event which will be the END and I can be done with all this terrible drive for enlightenment and all that. And she would say, "Well, yeah. But also remember that when you awaken it means that we've just started." And it took me years to realize what she meant was actually true. Not that you just start in the sense that there is more to seek and strive for. Not in that sense but in the sense of awakening is the end of something, the end of that desperation, the end of that feeling like you have to find more or different or better. It is a very definite end when its authentic but also opens up other doors, that are just beginning to open and that's Infinite Capacity.

RA: I'd like to probe into those doors a little bit more but let's define awakening a little bit because everybody throws that term around, you know? It kind of reminds me of the Eskimos with their 32 names for snow. I really wonder if everyone is referring to the same thing.

Adya: They're not.

RA: I don't think so either, so how would you define that term in a nutshell?

Adya: Wow! Even for me its really hard because from what I've seen awakening can happen on many different levels and it can be more or less complete. And so what I mean by that is awakening, the common thread of it, no matter how deep it is or shallow it is, the common thread, the difference lets say between a spiritual awakening and a spiritual experience is that an awakening always involves a fundamental shift in your sense and view of self, of yourself. Who you take yourself to be. With awakening that fundamental sense of who you are shifts, right? That's like the ground work for the...you can have all sorts of spiritual experiences, very powerful, they can even be quite transformative, and quite amazing but the difference between a spiritual experience and awakening is awakening has as its essence effect a fundamental shift in identity. Now where it shifts to, that's where, say for instance for people its really common to, their sense of self is very much limited to their ego and ideas and their beliefs and all of that, about themselves. Even if they have spiritual beliefs otherwise, but emotionally and psychologically they are identified with the ego level. In spiritual awakening all of a sudden that identification spontaneously leaves and goes to lets say, its very common people go, okay my new identity is awareness, I am Pure Awareness. And that's not just a thought or a concept, its a lived experience, right? Almost like your locus of where you are and what you are shifts. And that's a huge transformation. Big shift, right? Life will not be the same after that as it was before.

But what I just mentioned, that's not the end of the line of awakening by any means. That's not even full awakening. It is awakening as I would define it but its not the whole picture cause its still dualistic in the sense of you being awareness, without location but then you have the whole world of form. What's all that?

RA: Yeah.

Adya: At that point I say now you've got the world down to a nice manageable duality. You've got you as awareness, consciousness and everything else. Now there's only two things in all of existence where there used to be billions. But it still is a duality that needs to be seen through, that needs to penetrated. In Reality there isn't that duality.



Adyashanti interview with Rick Archer

Buddha at the Gas Pump.