Life itself holds up a mirror for our awakening

Many of us are using our spirituality as a way to avoid life, to avoid seeing things we really need to see, to avoid being confronted with our own misunderstandings and illusions. It is very important to know that life itself is often our greatest teacher. Life is full of grace, sometimes it’s wonderful grace, beautiful grace, moments of bliss and happiness and joy, and sometimes it’s fierce grace, like illness, losing a job, losing someone we love, or a divorce. Some people make the greatest leaps in their consciousness when addiction has them on their knees, for example, and they find themselves reaching out for a different way of being. Life itself has a tremendous capacity to show us truth, to wake us up. And yet, many of us avoid this thing called life, even as it is attempting to wake us up.

The divine itself is life in motion. The divine is using the situations of our lives to accomplish its own awakening, and many times it takes the difficult situations to wake us up.

The irony is that most human beings spend their lives avoiding painful situations. We are not successful, but we are always trying to avoid pain. We have an unconscious belief that our greatest growth in consciousness and awareness comes through beautiful moments. We may, indeed, make great leaps in consciousness through beautiful moments, but I’ d say that most people make their greatest leaps in consciousness in the difficult times.

This is something a lot of people don’t want to acknowledge, that our greatest difficulties, suffering, and pain are a form of fierce grace. They are potent and important components of our awakening, if we’re ready for them. Whether the circumstance is illness, the death of a loved one, divorce, addiction, problems at work, it’s important to face our life situations in order to see the inherent gifts that are available.

I saw that what happens in the body and mind ultimately can’t be avoided. Everything has to be dealt with-everything. Everything has to be seen through.

I tell you this because everybody has a story. We all have our own ways in which life is attempting to hold up a mirror, to squeeze the conditioned self out of us, to squeeze out of us the holding and grasping, to squeeze out all of our beliefs and ideas and concepts and self-images.

If we are willing to look, we will see that life is always in the process of waking us up. If we are not in harmony with life, if we are working in opposition to it, then it is a rough ride indeed.

When we are not willing to see what life is trying to show us, it will keep ramping up the intensity until we are willing to see what we need to see. In this way, life itself is our greatest ally. It is almost a spiritual cliché to say that life is your greatest teacher. We can only know what it means when we have been through it, when we have allowed ourselves to have life hold up a mirror so we can see ourselves clearly.

To think that enlightenment only comes through wonderful experiences is to delude yourself. For most of us, the path to enlightenment is not rosy. We need to acknowledge this, because otherwise we’re only going to let ourselves travel toward that which feels good, that which supports our image of what the path of awakening should be. The truth of the matter is that most people who say they want awakening don’t actually want to awaken. They want their version of awakening. What they actually wants is to be really happy in their dream state. And that’s okay, if that’s as far as they’ve evolved.

The authentic impulse toward enlightenment is that internal prayer asking for whatever it is that will bring us to a full awakening, regardless of whether it turns out to be wonderful or terrible. It is an impulse that puts no conditions on what we have to go through.

This authentic impulse can be a bit frightening, because when you feel it, you know it is real. When you have let go of all conditions you have let go of your illusion of control.

This isn’t a journey about becoming something. This is about to unbecoming who we are not, about undeceiving ourselves. In the end, it’s ironic. We don’t end up anywhere other than where we have always been, except that we perceive where we have always been completely differently. We realize that the heaven everyone is seeking is where we have always been.

 The end of your world. Adyashanti.

Trascendence As Avoidance

I want to emphasize this. If you avoid those aspects of your life that are not in harmony -those where you may still be in denial- that kind of avoidance is going to hinder your spiritual awakening- In the early stages, it may not have much of an effect. But later, as we get more into the more mature opening of realization, there is no more room for denial. This is something that a lot of people don´t count on. A lot of us think that somehow enlightenment is going to allow us to avoid dealing with those things in ourselves that we find uncomfortable.

Awakening can be the ground from which we meet every person and situation. It can be the ground from which we relate to all the circumstances of life. But this takes a lot of courage and a lot of fearlessness. It also takes something I continue to emphasize: a very simple sincerity. This kind of sincerity arises from that which loves the truth and sees that the truth is the greatest good.

To be anything less than real, to be in avoidance of anything at all, diminishes our experience of who we are. As I often say to my students, to be less than truthful with the people and situations in your life is to withhold the expression of who you are. In the end, we must come to see that truth itself is the highest good, that truth itself is the greatest expression and manifestation of love. Ultimately, love and truth are identical; they are like two sides of a coin. You can´t have truth without love, and you can´t have love without truth.

Awakening calls forth a transformation in both our interior and exterior lives. Again, please don´t think this transformation is about having the perfect life, the perfect job, the perfect mate, the perfect marriage, or the perfect friendship. This is not about perfection; it is about wholeness. It is not about having things exactly as we want them, but about having things exactly as they are. When we allow things to be, a sense of harmony develops; the gap between our realization and who we are as a human being gets smaller and smaller. A seamless continuum begins to emerge between realization and expression, awakening and its actualization.

(The End Of Your World. Adyashanti)