Awakening is Not Rare

An Eternal Now SG

From the last pages of 'True Meditation' by Adyashanti (good book and audio CD! good meditation instructions)

TS: I've heard you say that you don't believe that awakening - defined as a fundamental shift of identity out of the personality and into awareness itself - is actually that rare. And that in fact this belief that awakening is rare is actually an obstacle to awakening. You don't think that awakening is rare?

Adya: No.

TS: Why is this belief an obstacle?

Adya: Because almost all of us feel like we're not the chosen ones. Most of us feel pretty ordinary when you get right down to it. If you have this unconscious or conscious belief that awakening is only for very extraordinary people, that totally contradicts our sense of ourselves. This idea may be the most powerful impediment to awakening. Our examples of awakening feed this. We have images of the awake being, and they are halo-enshrouded, with long hair, flowing gowns, and if they're doing anything in life they are always teaching, they always have disciples, they always have people following at their feet. These images are out there, and yet it's simply not so. It's very hard for our minds to get that enlightenment can look like your grandmother or your grocer. It doesn't need to look in any way extraordinary. Some enlightened beings are very charismatic. But you know what? Some unenlightened beings are very charismatic. But these images really get in the way. Awakening isn't about becoming extraordinary. If anything, it's about becoming ordinary. It's about becoming who we really, really are.

TS: I think one of the reasons some people believe awakening is rare is because they have been practicing meditation for twenty or thirty years and they haven't made the kind of breakthrough discoveries that you describe for yourself, and so there is a certain grumpiness or cynicism and a belief that enlightenment must be only for the rare few. Otherwise, they'd have to believe that there was something wrong with them or that they were a failure in some way.

Adya: That's one place their mind could go.

TS: Or that the path they're following isn't working.

Adya: Ah! That's a more threatening idea. Of course that's what I think contributed to my own awakening. I didn't blame it on the path but on my relationship with the path. That's why I encourage people to shake it up, shake it loose, let yourself question, open it up a bit. Don't be afraid to question. Look at yourself and see what hasn't worked. And have the courage to change, to move on if something's not working. Look with innocent eyes, very innocent, very open. That innocence is always there. it's a sense of wonder.

About the Author

Adyashanti (whose name means "primordial peace") dares all seekers of peace and freedom to take the possibility of liberation in this life seriously. He began teaching in 1996, at the request of his Zen teacher with whom he had been studying for fourteen years. Since then, many spiritual seekers have awakened to their true nature while spending time with Adyashanti.

The author of Emptiness Dancing, The Impact of Awakening and My Secret Is Silence, Adyashanti offers spontaneous and direct nondual teachings that have been compared to those of the early Zen masters and Advaita Vedanta sages. However, Adya says, "If you filter my words through any tradition or '-ism,' you will miss altogether what I am saying. The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. What you are is the beyond - awake and present, here and now already. I am simply helping you to realize that."

A native of Northern California. Adyashanti lives with his wife, Annie, and teaches extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area, offering satsangs, weekend intensives, and silent retreats. he also travels to teach in other areas of the United States and Canada. For more information, please visit www.adyashanti.org

An Eternal Now SG

http://www.kktanhp.com/adyashanti.htm

The First Awakening

At his first breakthrough he was twenty-five years old. It came after six to eight months of pushing and intensive striving. He was nearly going crazy. So he sat down to meditate, stuffing five years of effort into one minute. After muttering, “I can’t do this” several times, everything started to relax. In this relaxation, an inward implosion occurred. It was like being plugged into a wall socket when the heart was beating louder and the breathing got more laboured. He felt like dying. At that point, as soon as he did not mind dying, all the energy disappeared and he was in space. He became space and there was a fantastic amount of downloading of insights into his system. The downloading was so fast and furious that he could not decipher what they were. This downloading of insights went on for a while and then it stopped. Then he got off his cushion, and he bowed to the Buddha figure. After that he laughed loud because he realized that he got what he was chasing. He was chasing what he already was. This was the first awakening.

Once he stepped outside, a voice kept on informing him that, “There’s more to this. You haven’t seen the whole thing. Keep going. Don’t stop here.” From that moment onwards, his spiritual seeker energy disappeared and never to come back any more. Why try so hard to become what he already was. He was it, but he must find out what was this? So he continued meditating a lot. In the next five to six years what happened spiritually to him was not when he was meditating. The spiritual improvement was actually happening in his daily life. He was still training as a competitive racing bicyclist, which gives him a good self-image, as a high-calibre athlete. He was still domineering toward people in this competitive racing.

At twenty-six years old, he developed an obscure illness. This put him to bed for six months. He was rather dysfunctional during this period. So at the end of the illness he gave up the idea of being an athlete, which is very liberating. A year later, he went on the binge by training again. Another six months of illness came again: sinus infection, lung infection and mononucleosis. This time the school of hard knocks really make him let go of this self-image, but not the meditation.

During the same time, he went through an unhealthy and ridiculous relationship. It gave him an image of being a nice, good person and a helper. It was phoney and false. So he broke up this relationship. And together with the last illness, he was free again. It was wonderful to be empty in space again.

He got married at thirty-three years old, and took on a real job apprenticing himself with his father’s business. Having to put his life on hold until now because of his chasing for enlightenment, he decided to get on with his daily life. This is his personal spiritual progress. Two months later, his second awakening happened. His marriage provided the stability for his inward journey.

Second Awakening

The night before the happening he was sitting on the edge of the bed, a thought came through his mind. It said: “I’m ready”. This started the happening, but he went to sleep. The next day, when he started to meditate, within thirty seconds, he heard a bird chirp. And spontaneously a question arose: “Who hears this sound?” At that moment of this question everything went upside down: the bird, the sound and the hearing were one thing. Literally, they were experienced as exactly the same…the hearing was no more he than the sound and the bird and anything. It was very quick, very sudden, and it was just one.

The next thing that happened was some distant thought. He cannot remember what the thought was about, but he knew that the thought was not him. He knew that the thought and the awakened self are completely separate. There was zero identity in the thought. After a few minutes he got up to check the rooms and the contents of the house and his wife sleeping. They were all part of him. However there were no joyous emotions in this awakening. After these movements consciousness woke up, but it was completely separate from the body. Now he realized that all those trapped images were not his previous incarnations. He was asleep during those incarnations. He is now awake and all the previous forms including the present one were not real. Now this awakeness has no form, no shape, no colour, no nothing. No location but everywhere. This awakeness was everything and yet beyond everything. If all the forms and everything that he saw disappeared, this that he realized will not diminish one bit. This is the result of his awakening.

He now felt the sense of being bigger and outside the body. He also felt that body was within this awakeness or spirit. When the awakeness or consciousness came back into the body, it is also outside: so it is both outside and inside. He now also realizes that this current incarnation was merely a clothing to wear this time, and he was to function through this form. He now felt a great joy with this body/incarnation. Now with this awakening the very first step that he took was like a baby’s first step! This is a miracle. This is heaven: this life, this body. The great joke is “he was walking in god’s hand looking for god”. He now knew that there was no necessity to experience anything extraordinary. This ordinary life is totally satisfying and is a sort of a miracle.

From now onwards there was nothing to be searched any more and no more question to be answered. The outcome of this achievement is that there are no words like ‘wisdom’ or ‘love’ to epitomize it. It is as if he had reached the source, which turned out to be the unknown. The unknown in Buddhism is emptiness or void or sunnata. So now he knew what he was and he was emptiness, a mystery. It is like the “ I AM” in the bible, and there is no explanation on what this “I AM” is.

When a book or a phrase sparks something in one, it is at the level of insight, not the mind. His body then sings with the insight. All words and books can carry some transmission of the author to the reader. Sometimes the transmission can be very powerful: it is because of the author’s words, especially when there is a resonance to what is offered. The resonance ignites a potential, which then has to be worked out by the recipient, not the author. We have to become responsible for our own transformation.