We are no-thing, no separate individual. Our apparent separateness is no more important than if our fingernail suddenly decided it was not a part of our body. Try as it may to move in its own direction, it would still be carried along with the fate of the entire system. Once we recognize clearly the insignificance of our separate selves, we become free internally to move in the most creative ways possible, no longer in a struggle to protect a self-image and set of personal concepts that have become irrelevant. Something fresh comes alive inside of us that will flow in directions the smaller identity would never have imagined.
Despite this mystery of being nothing, there is urgency on the planet calling for awakening, calling for individuals to come up out of the shadows of delusion and claim their birthright, which is to live a conscious and co-creative existence.
Collectively, as a species we will recognize our essential relationship with nature when we are awake; we will understand the beauty of diverse cultures as opportunity rather than conflict when we are awake; we will create balance so that all peoples are able to meet their basic needs when we are awake; we will truly understand the teachings that were the foundations of the religions when we are awake; we will realize that the gifts in the forms of male and female perspectives are only fully functional when they are given equal weight and respect when we are awake; and we will see the power we have to re-create the collective mental structures that cause violence, despair and fear when we are awake.
Our Challenge and Our Hope
Humans have struggled within the maelstrom of envy, greed, rage, fear and suffering ever since Cain and Able came to blows at the beginning of history. Each generation that fails to solve the problem continues the patterns on into the next, and our DNA is burdened with the memory of all the past injustices known to the species.
We perpetuate these in the way we teach our children, and the kinds of darkness we expose them to, both in our family lives and the cultural images and media we produce. We continually attack other cultural or racial groups we see as different, or problematic, as if their children did not matter, and would not grow up with desperation and a desire for revenge, and we fail to see how this prejudice and repression cripples our own lives. Countless generations have been reared only to go to war, and to be slaughtered just as their young adult lives are on the threshold of maturity. It is an insanity that only humans seem to play out. It is an insanity that is a by-product of not knowing who we are. Even our religions support it, and universally have ignored the simple and clear commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” If God were a person he or she would be astonished at our inability to accept these few simple words. After all, it is in our own best interest.
But God is not a person. God is our personification of the true Source and the essence of all people, and so it is only through the realization of many people that there is hope for a sane social order. No single father-figure God is going to reach down from the sky and solve our human catastrophes, for only we humans, turning into our hearts to discover our Source, can discover the currents of the our true potential.
A few mystics have spoken these truths throughout the ages, yet only fragments of their teachings are understood, and these are corrupted quickly by the limited minds of their followers. But think of it, if millions of people knew, directly and unmistakably, that the awareness living through them, looking into the eyes of another and looking from the eyes of another, was truly the One Source; and if we saw in the birth of any child (of any land or culture) the potential for nurturing a divine spirit, what might be the impact on our world? When this same light is seen streaming from the plants and the animals, the heart has to become gentle, the mind open, and the seeking of creative humane solutions to human issues become more pressing. When enough humans recognize there is no essential problem with our world, our diversity, our appearance, we will begin to set aside the ignorance that has caused us so much pain, and find effective ways of diffusing the suffering of those who are not yet awake.
Each of us lives out a unique possibility in the world, playing it inevitably as part of the holographic puzzle of existence. We flow into the collective mind-stream at birth with our packet of conditions that need expression, or seek healing, or will make a contribution in some unique way that no one else could ever exactly match. Our life is basically impersonal, simply playing out as it is meant to be. We can ride the stream joyfully, or drag our feet and try to swim the other way. But if we are blessed to catch a moment when we suddenly want to wake up, to look within and find out where the source of all this energy and consciousness resides, we have found the most important personal potential of our lives, that of becoming free of ourselves.
Freedom terrifies the mind at first, because mind senses this may mark the end of its capacity to override our heart, and we may end up in a position of being naked of our concepts and those belief systems that we think make us a “somebody”. Without the mental database as a guide, we think we will go crazy. Because of this, many complicated spiritual systems have arisen to guide one slowly into these depths, providing lots of practices, guides, spiritual concepts, and structures that might hold us through our fears. (The effectiveness of these varies immensely.)
But something radical is happening today: people are awakening outside of any system, structure or practice. They just wake up! Perhaps this is a new thing, or just something never recorded in earlier ages of history. (Although it seems to be what happened to many of the founders of world religions!) Today the people waking up know they are not saintly or even especially holy, and have little interest in starting a religion, so it is very confusing for them to understand what has happened in the context of the religions in which they were raised.
Awakened Lives are Not Passive
Until recently there seems to have been a myth that awakened or enlightened people retreated silently into caves or monasteries, or took passive positions, and simply allowed their radiance to mirror the Truth to those who came seeking them. Some preached or did good services for others in the world. Being awakened and free appeared to be an end in itself. This is a myth born of inadequate study of the enlightened state.
The early Buddhist patriarchs traveled the world to teach, often established and managed monasteries, and some of them gave stirring speeches to thousands. Christian saints and mystics, both men and women, founded organizations, wrote treatises, served the poor, created music and educational centers, and worked ceaselessly as they followed their deepest inclinations. Hindu mystics did the same, wrote numerous sacred texts, built monuments and temples and continued ceaselessly worshipping the divine in some form, long after they knew they were only the Self worshipping the Self.
The Sufi mystics of Islam raised families and created centers of learning and inspired extraordinary poetry and art, and continued to do this even under repressive movements in their own religion. The Judaic rabbis who saw the Truth wrote, raised families, and managed their temples while living actively in the world. For a group of people who understand nothing exists but God, these folks kept remarkably busy. A few of them, like Hildegard of Bingen, a nun in the 14th century, said she would become ill if she did not follow her inner directions.
Spiritual enlightenment is not a passive state. For some, like Ramana Maharshi, one of the great sages of India, there was an appearance of simply laying around the ashram all day, while people visiting him fell into samadhi. That was the service offered through his being. But then there was Aurobindo, who established with his friend, The Mother, an entire city in India, and wrote an encyclopedia of teachings while he struggled to find a way to evolve the human mind to an awakened state; and there was Gandhi, who through his inspiration almost single-handedly led India to freedom from British rule, and translated the ancient spiritual concept of non-violence (ahimsa) into modern-day terms. Anyone who believes that spiritual awakening implies there is nothing to do had better look more closely at the evidence.
Spiritual seekers sometimes begin
their journey because they wish to escape the world, and envision a spiritual state of detachment in which they will float about, a few feet from their bodies, lost in ecstasy for the rest of their lives. But the truth is that on a truly complete spiritual journey, detachment from the personal leads to compassion for the whole, and a subsequent natural calling to your own unique way of expressing the infinite in the world. Being free of your separateness and of the clinging to a single way of being, you are free to respond to whatever needs appear in the flow of your life. No one can advise you ahead of time how this might play out. You simply become willing to live in the unknown, and listen to your deepest inclinations.
Now, if you are not awakened, you may believe that following your inclinations have sometimes gotten you into trouble, and might not be especially useful to the world. But the inclinations I speak of are not like the impulses programmed in by conditioning, or the instincts that are motivated by power or fear.
Part of the process that happens during a true and complete awakening is the facing of the shadow aspects of the smaller self, and the seeing through or the burning away of these tendencies. An inclination is a point of authenticity, something felt from the gut or the heart that simply wants to be manifest though us. It happens to us in those moments when we simply know we must go in a certain direction, as if our life was designed for it, and we follow no matter what obstacles appear. There really can be very little objection after awakening when an inclination is clear, because there is no sense of a “me” to object. There is only a sense of life being lived, movement happening, happiness existing outside of any events taking place, and no attachment to a particular outcome.
It is this kind of action, without a “me” who is acting, that holds hope for the world. To the mind it seems improbable because without thinking, how can one figure out what is best to do? And without motivation, why would anyone do anything at all? This is a mystery that cannot be understood until it happens to you. It is as if a secret part of you that wants to contribute to the good of the whole is lying in wait, and when you open the door in your heart, behind which it was trapped, it excitedly peeks out and begins to tease you into trying something new, and its tendency is to see the sacred in everything and to want to serve the greater good in some way. It may do so in a limited and quiet way, or it may take on some great project, or it may do anything in between. Either way, you won’t care, because the old you is not there to object. Only the flavor or the sense of the old you hangs around, rather astonished at what is happening, and wondering what comes next. It is a very different feeling than being driven by your thoughts. There seems to be no drive at all, just a simple getting on board to see what will happen.
The Impersonal Movement of Freedom
If the day arrives when even a quarter of the world wakes up, the impact on religion, education, culture and politics may be profound. Those who sincerely seek through religion a relationship with God will start to know the difference between seeking and discovering the Truth, and believing a conceptual framework passed down by others. They will find so much more contentment and peace in this knowing, that the function of their churches will have to change or collapse.
An awakened spirit will embrace those aspects of science, such as quantum physics, which describe what they are experiencing, and the understanding of consciousness will usher in new dimensions of physical and psychological healing. Those who want wisdom, and not just rote knowledge pumped into their children, will create educational systems that address the creative as well as the academic mind, and value relatedness with others equally with the capacity to think with discrimination.
Cultures in an awakened society will look for the best they can share within their diversity and develop ways to solve issues creatively. Politics will be seen for the anachronism it has become, a posturing based on power, money and greed that rarely manages to represent the collective needs of the society. People will want their leaders to be enlightened, vital, creative, non-violent, culturally sensitive, and immune to manipulation by special interests. They will demand intelligence, wisdom, evidence of effectiveness, compassion and integrity over sound-bites in political debates. They will refuse to send their children into war, and to waste the world’s valuable and limited resources on weaponry. They will become stewards of the environment.
There is a great underground movement ripening in the world at this time. It has no leaders, and no time-line, but arises scattershot across the spectrum of countries and societies. I have seen it in colleges and Christian churches, small community groups and Jewish temples, QiGong masters, earnest eastern meditators, grandmothers gathered to fight war, major trend-setters in the transpersonal movement, spiritual leaders of every faith, obscure esoteric movements, and collective gatherings of tribal peoples. I meet people around the world, in groups or isolated circumstances, who are waking up. I have had letters from Bulgaria, Thailand, China, The Ukraine, Estonia, Germany, Japan, Holland, Sweden, Australia, England, Canada, Mexico, most of the U.S, and many other places, from individuals experiencing deep realizations of who they are. They are all going in one direction, seeking Truth, wisdom, love and peace. It is like a new species of flower that has been waiting thousands of years to bloom, waiting for our maturity.
Much of our planet is in pain today, burdened by war, rebellion, genocide, and the eternal challenges of hunger, poverty or natural disasters. As distressing as it is to witness destruction and suffering throughout the world, the media and social networking that report on our conflicts bring into the collective consciousness the need for fresh spiritual, political, environmental and economic models. Old models are breaking down, their raw edges exposed like the rusted framing of a collapsed building. They simply no longer work for the majority. New voices and directions will eventually arise from under the rubble of our human fragility. As The Mother of Aurobindo’s community once wrote, “Whenever you see a great darkness, you can be certain at the core is a great light.”
Dreams of an awakened world are ancient. Chuang-tzu (c369-c.286 BCE) beautifully described a society that lives in awakeness, which can be found in English in an adaptation of his work by the poet Stephen Mitchell in The Second Book of the Tao. To live in the Tao is to live in full alignment with what is, to follow the natural flow of what is called for in the moment. Chuang-tzu describes an age where no one receives special attention but those who govern are the “highest branches of the tree”. In such a world people naturally do what is right, act out of kindness, value one another equally, are trustworthy and so they may wander freely in their country, and keep no record of their good deeds.(2009, Mitchell, Stephen The Second Book of the Tao, Penguin Press, England p.62).
Our age is a time of immense power, full of conflict and potential. Our species must shake ourselves loose from blind and destructive habits in order to seek authentic lives. It is time to let go of assumptions about life put upon us through hundreds of generations no wiser than we are (and who had much less opportunity than we do for seeking Truth). It is time to turn inward to discover who and what we are, and allow ourselves to open up to new perspectives. There are many opportunities today to become awake, to find guidance and inspiration. We are at a transition as a species and a planet, and new perspectives are demanded.
It used to be we were taught that it was the great gift of a lifetime to become free, as if it were a personal opportunity. But it is much more -- it is a calling to return to our Source, to evolve to a healthier internal life, and then to bring the energy and vitality of our roots back into our species. We are spirit in molecular energy structures, as is all of creation, but to believe this is to buy into another dream-world illusion. Just as we cannot satisfy hunger by reading a recipe, or listening to someone else’s enjoyment of a meal, we cannot satisfy this need with a concept, no matter how erudite. We need to know in our cells what it means, personally and individually, one by one, for the use of the Whole. Then the concept can fall away, and we can simply be alivene
ss, enjoying a healthier world, a world where awakening is simply part of the understanding of the human potential.
Appendix A
Questions from A Student
The following questions were created by a student/friend of mine, George, trying to get at the essence of the awakened spirit. Perhaps they will address some of your thoughts about awakening as well.
What is the purpose of life?
Like many people I felt when I was young that I must find the purpose of my life, as if some magic message would come through that would tell me what to do. Since I never found a clear and undeniable interior message, I set goals and felt I had determined my own direction, always wondering if I was going the way I was meant to go.
The mind wants the security of knowing what to do next, so it enjoys a sense of purpose. It thinks “I will do this important work”, “raise this child”, “serve this group of people to the best of my ability”, “make a great discovery”, or perhaps, “become awakened in this life.” In retrospect I see that life was carrying me, and that the apparent choices were simply the unfolding of the story I lived. Whatever we have experienced was our purpose, in the sense that we are part of a collective flow of human lives and we each have our unique place. It may be a place of simplicity or one of radical upheavals and dramatic change. It is what it is. If our thoughts require us to claim a specific purpose we will do so because it makes the dream of a separate self more comfortable. Sometimes this sense drives us to achieve.
The Awakening Guide: A Companion for the Inward Journey (Companions for the Inward Journey Book 2) Page 14