Adyashantis Writings

from Adyashanti.org Writings

Contents
Everything Under the Sun ....................................................................................................................... 4
Standing in Your Own Two Shoes............................................................................................................ 6
The Infinite .............................................................................................................................................. 8
True Autonomy........................................................................................................................................ 9
Immeasurable Reality ............................................................................................................................ 10
Truth Is................................................................................................................................................... 12
An Inner Revolution............................................................................................................................... 13
This Amazing Opportunity ..................................................................................................................... 15
The Indispensable Qualities of Awakening ........................................................................................... 17
Are You Ready to Lose Your World?...................................................................................................... 20
The Novel of Life.................................................................................................................................... 22
Realizing Your True Nature.................................................................................................................... 24
Authentic Inquiry ................................................................................................................................... 28
A Single Desire ....................................................................................................................................... 30
The Quest .............................................................................................................................................. 31
How Very Fortunate Adyashanti's Reflections After Ten Years of Teaching...................................... 33
Everything Comes Back to Nothing ....................................................................................................... 35
Everlasting Inheritance .......................................................................................................................... 37
Radical Emptiness .................................................................................................................................. 40
The Awakened Way What is it like to live an awakened life? ............................................................ 41
You Are the Buddha Adyashantis first silent retreat ......................................................................... 45
How Long Will It Take? .......................................................................................................................... 47
Freedom and the Unknown .................................................................................................................. 49
The Courage to Question ...................................................................................................................... 50

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How You Treat Others ........................................................................................................................... 52

True Meditation .................................................................................................................................... 53
The Only Price Giving up our positions .............................................................................................. 55
Selling Water by the River ..................................................................................................................... 57

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Everything Under the Sun

Look around you; there is only one reality. The reason that you are here, wherever here is for
you, is because it is the only place that you can be right now. But even though reality is right
here, and even though there is quite literally nothing but reality, it is very possible for you to
miss it altogether. By miss it I mean to imagine that reality is something or somewhere other
than here. As strange as it may sound it is very possible, even probable, that even though you
have eyes to see, you do not see. And even though you have ears to hear, you do not hear.
What you see and hear is not exactly what is actually here, but what you imagine is here.

Our imagination is a very powerful force in determining what we perceive. If we imagine that
the world is teeming with evil forces, we will surely perceive the world as evil. But if we
imagine the world to be essentially good, we will perceive it as good. Either way it is the
same world that we are looking at. But the world is neither good nor bad in and of itself; it is
simply what it is. And if we see the world as either good or bad, we will not be able to see it
as it actually is. We will only be able to see it as we imagine it to be.

Now take this idea and apply it to everything and everyone in your life. Try it for a moment,
or an hour, or a day. And if you do, you may begin to notice that the world you imagine to
exist does not exist at all. This may cause you some fear, or possibly the thrill of discovery,
but either way the important thing is to get some distance from the habitual way the mind
contorts and creates perception.

But even though our mind imagines the world and everything in it to be other than the way it
actually is, the reality of existence remains eternally untouched by our misperception of it.
This is both relatively good and bad. It is good in that existence is eternally what it is. We
need not worry about reality becoming something other than reality. But it is bad in the sense
that the world we imagine to exist is always colliding with the world as it actually is. This
collision is the cause of immense human suffering and conflict.

So we are trapped within our illusions and misperceptions. And the greatest illusion of all is to
believe that we are not trapped. But even when we realize that we are confined within a prison

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of our own making, we are trapped because all the ways we struggle to get out of our illusions
are illusions themselves. So, yes, we are trapped, and helpless to boot.

But there is a very strange thing that can occur at exactly the point where you realize that
there is no escaping the imaginary world of your illusions. You bare your heart open to
illusion, surrender your eternal struggle against it, and admit to being bound by its cunning
imagination. I dont mean that you become despondent or resigned to your fate. I mean that
you truly let go in the face of your utter defeat and stop struggling.

And when all the struggle ceases, we realize that the prison of our mind cannot hold us in
anymore, because the prison was all along something we imagined into existence. And
imagined things arent real, they dont exist. But we could never really see this as long as we
were fighting the phantoms of our minds. We needed the one thing that our imaginary minds
could not bring about, could not fake or create: the genuine surrender of all struggle.

In the blink of an eye, we are no longer confined within illusion nor our attempt to avoid
illusion. When all struggle ceases, there is nothing to bind us to a distorted perception of
existence and we can finally see. What we see is that we do not simply exist within existence,
but all of existence exists within us as well. And although everywhere we look we see the
endless diversity of life, we also now see our own true face in everything under the sun.

Adyashanti 2010

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Standing in Your Own Two Shoes

The real search isnt a search into tomorrow, or to anywhere other than now. Its starting to
look into the very nature of this moment. In order to do that, you have to stand in your own
two shoes, as my teacher used to say. What she meant by standing in your own two shoes is
you have to look clearly into your own experience. Stop trying to have someone elses
experience. Stop chasing freedom or happiness, or even spiritual enlightenment. Stand in your
own shoes, and examine closely: Whats happening right here and right now? Is it possible to
let go of trying to make anything happen? Even in this moment, there may be some suffering,
there may be some unhappiness, but even if there is, is it possible to no longer push against it,
to try to get rid of it, to try to get somewhere else?

I understand that our instinct is to move away from whats not comfortable, to try to get
somewhere better, but as my teacher used to say, You need to take the backward step, not the
forward step. The forward step is always moving ahead, always trying to attain what you
want, whether its a material possession or inner peace. The forward step is very familiar:
seeking and more seeking, striving and more striving, always looking for peace, always
looking for happiness, looking for love. To take the backward step means to just turn around,
reverse the whole process of looking for satisfaction on the outside, and look at precisely the
place where you are standing. See if what you are looking for isnt already present in your
experience.

So, again, to lay the groundwork for awakening, we must first let go of struggling. You let go
by acknowledging that the end of struggle is actually present in your experience now. The end
of struggle is peace. Even if your ego is struggling, even if youre trying to figure this out and
do it right, if you really look, you might just see that struggle is happening within a greater
context of peace, within an inner stillness. But if you try to make stillness happen, youll miss
it. If you try to make peace happen, youll miss it. This is more like a process of recognition,
giving recognition to a stillness that is naturally present.

Were not bringing struggle to an end. Were not trying to not struggle anymore. Were just
noticing that there is a whole other dimension to consciousness that, in this very moment, isnt

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struggling, isnt resentful, isnt trying to get somewhere. You can literally feel it in your body.
You cant think your way to not struggling. There isnt a three point plan of how not to
struggle. Its really a one point plan: Notice that the peace, this end of struggling, is actually
already present.

The process is therefore one of recognition. We recognize that there is peace now, even if
your mind is confused. You may see that even when you touch upon peace now, the mind is
so conditioned to move away from it that it will try to argue with the basic fact of peaces
existence within you: I cant be at peace yet because I have to do this, or that, or this question
hasnt been answered, or that question hasnt been answered, or so and so hasnt apologized
to me. There are all sorts of ways that the egoic mind can insist that something needs to
happen, something needs to change, in order for you to be at peace. But this is part of the
dream of the mind. Were all taught that something needs to change for us to experience true
peace and freedom.

Just imagine for a moment that this isnt true. Even though you may believe that its true, just
imagine for a moment: What would it be like if you didnt need to struggle, if you didnt need
to make an effort to find peace and happiness? What would that feel like now? And just take a
moment to be quiet and see if peace or stillness is with you in this moment.

Adyashanti 2011 - Excerpted from Falling Into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering

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The Infinite
All things all beings and all activities, no matter how ordinary are equal expressions of the
Infinite. There is no more or less Infinite, no higher or lower Infinite. Therefore, all attempts
to either find or hold onto the Infinite are based in illusion. And illusion itself is none other
than the Infinite.

The Infinite uses all measures in order to awaken in all the various forms in existence. It uses
birth, life, death, happiness, sorrow, clarity, and delusion in order to awaken. All of your
seeking is in reality the activity of the Infinite as well. No matter how far astray or deluded
you become, you can never get a single step away from the Infinites embrace. If you could
all at once stop believing your dreaming mind and be completely still right in the midst of
your present state, the Infinite would effortlessly present itself.

Adyashanti 2010

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True Autonomy
To discover our autonomy is the most challenging thing a human being can do. Because in
order to discover our autonomy, we must be free from all external control or influence. This
means that we must free our mind from all that it has collected, all that it clings to, all that it
depends on. This begins by realizing that we are in a psychological prison created by our
minds. Until we begin to realize how confined we are, we will not be able to find our way out.
Neither will we find our way out by struggling against the confines we have inherited from
our parents, society, and culture. It is only by beginning to examine and realize the falseness
within our minds that we begin to awaken an intelligence that originates from beyond the
realm of thinking.

If spirituality is to be meaningful, it must deliver us from all forms of dependence including

the dependence on spirituality and help awaken within us that creative spark which all beings
aspire to. For the culmination of spirituality lies not only in discovering our inherent unity and
freedom, but also in opening the way for life to express itself through us in a unique and
creative way. Such uniqueness and creativity is not to be found in anything the human mind
has ever created, nor is it to be found in our ideals of human perfection or utopian dreams.

True autonomy arises when we have broken free of all the old structures, all psychological
dependencies, and all fear. Only then can that which is truly unique and fearless arise within
us and begin to express itself. Such expression cannot be planned or even imagined because it
belongs to a dimension uninhibited by anything that has come before it. True autonomy is not
trying to fit in or be understood, nor is it a revolt against anything. It is an uncaused
phenomenon. Consciously or unconsciously all beings aspire to it, but very few find the
courage to step into that infinity of aloneness.

Adyashanti 2009

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Immeasurable Reality
In its true sense spirituality is not a plaything or a pastime. It has nothing to do with enhancing
you or your status in the dream state. Nor is it about gurus in long flowing robes, secret oral
teachings, ancient traditions, or holy books that people claim were written by God. Its about
here and now and you, and whether you are asleep within the dream state or awake within the
awakened state.

It is the nature of all dreams that the characters therein are so busy being well, dream
characters that the bigger reality of what lies outside the dream state eludes them. But then
again, dream characters dont wake up from the dreams they are a part of; the dreamer does. If
spirituality is to be meaningful it must address what lies beyond the dream state that most of
us create in our minds and humanity lives in day-to-day, for unless we awaken from our
personal and collective dreams we will continue to live in a state of unconsciousness on the
surface of a life of infinite potential.

Only that which is real and true has the power to liberate us from the mechanical and
magnetic draw of the dream state. For ultimately it is ignorance (the belief in things that are
untrue) that imprisons us within a trance state, which is induced by taking the conditioned
stream of thinking within ones mind to be true. If we are to awaken from the minds hypnotic
embrace, we must question all of our beliefs and assumptions down to the very source of our
being until that which is true, real, and everlasting reveals itself.

Truth is that which lies beyond the grasp of the dreaming mind. It is not something that can be
captured and stated like a fact can. Truth is a timeless reality and therefore sacred in the true
sense of the word. Please do not think of truth in mystical terms or even in spiritual terms.
Truth refers to the whole of existence and beyond. Truth exists as much in your teacup as it
does in your temples and churches. Truth is as present in shopping for your groceries as it is
in chanting to God. To think of truth only in spiritual or religious terms is to miss the whole of
it, for in doing so you create the boundaries and divisions that are the very antithesis of truth.

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Truth is an immeasurable reality not at all separate from your own being. For in the revelation
of truth, all beings rest within your being. Put more simply, if you cannot find it now
underfoot, Im afraid that you have missed it entirely.

Adyashanti 2009

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Truth Is
Truth is only discovered in the moment.
There is no truth that can be carried over
to the next moment, the next day, the next year.
Memory never contains truth, only what is past, dead, gone.

Truth comes into the non-seeking mind fresh and alive.

It is not something you can carry with you, accumulate, or hold onto.

Truth leaps into view when the mind is quiet, not asserting itself.
You cannot contain or domesticate truth, for if you do, it dies instantly.

Truth prowls the unknown waiting for a gap in the minds activity.
When that gap is there, the truth leaps out of the unknown into the known.

Instantly you comprehend it and sense its sacredness.

The timeless has broken through like a flash of lightning
and illuminated the moment with its presence.

Truth comes to an innocent mind as a blessing and a sacrament.

Truth is a holy thing because it liberates thought from itself
and illumines the human heart from the inside out.

Adyashanti 2009

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An Inner Revolution
The enlightenment I speak of is not simply a realization, not simply the discovery of ones
true nature. This discovery is just the beginning the point of entry into an inner revolution.
Realization does not guarantee this revolution; it simply makes it possible.

What is this inner revolution? To begin with, revolution is not static; it is alive, ongoing, and
continuous. It cannot be grasped or made to fit into any conceptual model. Nor is there any
path to this inner revolution, for it is neither predictable nor controllable and has a life all its
own. This revolution is a breaking away from the old, repetitive, dead structures of thought
and perception that humanity finds itself trapped in. Realization of the ultimate reality is a
direct and sudden existential awakening to ones true nature that opens the door to the
possibility of an inner revolution. Such a revolution requires an ongoing emptying out of the
old structures of consciousness and the birth of a living and fluid intelligence. This
intelligence restructures your entire being body, mind, and perception. This intelligence cuts
the mind free of its old structures that are rooted within the totality of human consciousness. If
one cannot become free of the old conditioned structures of human consciousness, then one is
still in a prison.

Having an awakening to ones true nature does not necessarily mean that there will be an
ongoing revolution in the way one perceives, acts, and responds to life. The moment of
awakening shows us what is ultimately true and real as well as revealing a deeper possibility
in the way that life can be lived from an undivided and unconditioned state of being. But the
moment of awakening does not guarantee this deeper possibility, as many who have
experienced spiritual awakening can attest to. Awakening opens a door inside to a deep inner
revolution, but in no way guarantees that it will take place. Whether it takes place or not
depends on many factors, but none more important and vital than an earnest and unambiguous
intention for truth above and beyond all else. This earnest intention toward truth is what all
spiritual growth ultimately depends upon, especially when it transcends all personal
preferences, agendas, and goals.

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This inner revolution is the awakening of an intelligence not born of the mind but of an inner
silence of mind, which alone has the ability to uproot all of the old structures of ones
consciousness. Unless these structures are uprooted, there will be no creative thought, action,
or response. Unless there is an inner revolution, nothing new and fresh can flower. Only the
old, the repetitious, the conditioned will flower in the absence of this revolution. But our
potential lies beyond the known, beyond the structures of the past, beyond anything that
humanity has established. Our potential is something that can flower only when we are no
longer caught within the influence and limitations of the known. Beyond the realm of the
mind, beyond the limitations of humanitys conditioned consciousness, lies that which can be
called the sacred. And it is from the sacred that a new and fluid consciousness is born that
wipes away the old and brings to life the flowering of a living and undivided expression of
being. Such an expression is neither personal nor impersonal, neither spiritual nor worldly,
but rather the flow and flowering of existence beyond all notions of self.

So let us understand that reality transcends all of our notions about reality. Reality is neither
Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Advaita Vedanta, nor Buddhist. It is neither dualistic nor
nondualistic, neither spiritual nor nonspiritual. We should come to know that there is more
reality and sacredness in a blade of grass than in all of our thoughts and ideas about reality.
When we perceive from an undivided consciousness, we will find the sacred in every
expression of life. We will find it in our teacup, in the fall breeze, in the brushing of our teeth,
in each and every moment of living and dying. Therefore we must leave the entire collection
of conditioned thought behind and let ourselves be led by the inner thread of silence into the
unknown, beyond where all paths end, to that place where we go innocently or not at all, not
once but continually.

One must be willing to stand alone in the unknown, with no reference to the known or the past
or any of ones conditioning. One must stand where no one has stood before in complete
nakedness, innocence, and humility. One must stand in that dark light, in that groundless
embrace, unwavering and true to the reality beyond all self, not just for a moment, but forever
without end. For then that which is sacred, undivided, and whole is born within consciousness
and begins to express itself.

Adyashanti 2008

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This Amazing Opportunity

Lets remember why were here at retreat: for this amazing opportunity to really look into the
core of our own existence, the core of life itself that is so easy to overlook. Its so easy not to
pay attention to it, because its not noisy and its not clamoring for attention like all the other
aspects of the human mind. Egoic consciousness is always pretending to be the most
important thing that is happening.

And yet theres this thread, this sense of something other than, deeper than, more real than,
more essential than this scattered and divided noise that so many human beings live in, in
their minds. And right in the midst of all that, there is a presence, there is an awareness, an
unconditioned awareness, an unconditioned consciousness. Right in the middle of this
conditioned mind, conditioned consciousness, is this shining, unconditioned essence. Essence
doesnt mean a little part hidden somewhere in us, the little teeny kernel of essence. Essence
means the totality, the whole thing. Essence means the truth of you as opposed to the untruth
of you.

Essence isnt a small thing, essence is an immense thing. The essence of you is everything
you ever see, taste, touch, and experience. Everywhere you go, every step you take, every
breath you take is actually happening by the essence, of the essence, in the essence, and to the
essence. All the rest is noise and chatter.

So we come here to give our attention, our affection, our time. Our most highly prized
commodity is our time. Anything or anyone you give your time to shows immediately what is
most important. And I want to remind everyone that what you really are, what the person next
to you is, what the children in Africa scraping up the little grains of rice are, this timeless
essence, is not hidden. Its not hidden at all. Its in plain view. Everywhere you look, thats
the essence. And the mind would say, Where? Where? I dont see it. All I see is a car, a
billboard, a tree, the person in front of me, the funny man on the stage. Where is this essence?

Its easy to grasp for it, isnt it? Where is it? What is it? I want to understand it. I want to
know about it. How can it work for me? How can I utilize it? But it doesnt come upon us
through the grasping of it, through the striving for it, and through the struggling for it. Theres
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no merit gained through wasted effort, through excess struggle. There are no merit points for
the people who drove themselves the craziest along the way to self-realization. For most
people its so obscure that it seems very intuitive to grasp and to struggle instead of relaxing,
not grasping, letting something come to you, letting the truth of your being reveal itself to you
on its terms, in its way, letting it happen.

It will happen. Its always happening. Its always trying to show itself.

Adyashanti 2008

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The Indispensable Qualities of Awakening

In essence the entire spiritual endeavor is a very simple thing: Spirituality is essentially about
awakening as the intuitive awareness of unity and dissolving our attachment to egoic
consciousness. By saying that spirituality is a very simple thing, I do not mean to imply that it
is either an easy or difficult endeavor. For some it may be very easy, while for others it may
be more difficult. There are many factors and influences that play a role in ones awakening to
the greater reality, but the greatest factors by far are ones sincerity, one-pointedness, and
courage.

Sincerity is a word that I often use in teaching to convey the importance of being rooted in the
qualities of honesty, authenticity, and genuineness. There can be nothing phony or contrived
in our motivations if we are to fully awaken to our natural and integral state of unified
awareness. While teachings and teachers can point us inward to the peace beyond all
understanding, it is always along the thread of our inner sincerity, or lack thereof, that we will
travel. For the ego is clever and artful in the ways of deception, and only the honesty and
genuineness of our ineffable being are beyond its influence. At each step and with each breath
we are given the option of acting and responding, both inwardly and outwardly, from the
conditioning of egoic consciousness which values control and separation above all else, or
from the intuitive awareness of unity which resides in the inner silence of our being.

Without sincerity it is so very easy for even the greatest spiritual teachings to become little
more than playthings of the mind. In our fast-moving world of quick fixes, big promises, and
short attention spans, it is easy to remain on a very surface level of consciousness without
even knowing it. While the awakened state is ever present and closer than your feet, hands, or
eyes, it cannot be approached in a casual or insincere fashion. There is a reason that seekers
the world over are instructed to remove their shoes and quiet their voices before entering into
sacred spaces. The message being conveyed is that ones ego must be taken off and quieted
before access to the divine is granted. All of our egos attempts to control, demand, and plead
with reality have no influence on it other than to make life more conflicted and difficult. But
an open mind and sincere heart have the power to grant us access to realizing what has always
been present all along.

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When people asked the great Indian sage Nisargadatta what he thought was the most
important quality to have in order to awaken, he would say earnestness. When you are
earnest, you are both sincere and one-pointed; to be one-pointed means to keep your attention
on one thing. I have found that the most challenging thing for most spiritual seekers to do is to
stay focused on one thing for very long. The mind jumps around with its concerns and
questions from moment to moment. Rarely does it stay with one question long enough to
penetrate it deeply. In spirituality it is very important not to let the egoic mind keep jumping
from one concern to the next like an untrained dog. Remember, awakening is about realizing
your true nature and dissolving all attachment to egoic consciousness.

My grandmother who passed away a few years ago used to say to me jokingly, Getting old is
not for wimps. She was well aware of the challenges of an aging body, and while she never
complained or felt any pity for herself, she knew firsthand that aging had its challenges as
well as its benefits. There was a courage within my grandmother that served her well as she
approached the end of her life, and I am happy to say that when she passed, it was willingly
and without fear. In a similar way the process of coming into a full and mature awakening
requires courage, as not only our view of life but life itself transforms to align itself with the
inner mystic vision. A sincere heart is a robust and courageous heart willing to let go in the
face of the great unknown expanse of Being an expanse which the egoic mind has no way of
knowing or understanding.

When ones awareness opens beyond the dream state of egoic consciousness to the infinite
no-thing-ness of intuitive awareness, it is common for the ego to feel much fear and terror as
this transition begins. While there is nothing to fear about our natural state of infinite Being,
such a state is beyond the egos ability to understand, and as always, egos fear whatever they
do not understand and cannot control. As soon as our identity leaves the ego realm and
assumes its rightful place as the infinite no-thing-ness/every-thing-ness of awareness, all fear
vanishes in the same manner as when we awaken from a bad dream. In the same manner in
which my grandmother said, Getting old is not for wimps, it can also be said that making the
transition from the dream state to the mature, awakened state requires courage.

Sincerity, one-pointedness, and courage are indispensable qualities in awakening from the
dream state of ego to the peace and ease of awakened Being. All there is left to do is to live it.
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Adyashanti 2008

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Are You Ready to Lose Your World?

There is a very famous poem written by the third patriarch of Zen, Seng-tsan, called the
Hsin-Hsin Ming, which translates as Verses in Faith Mind. In this poem Seng-tsan writes
these lines: Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions. This is a reversal of the way
most people go about trying to realize absolute truth. Most people seek truth, but Seng-tsan is
saying not to seek truth. This sounds very strange indeed. How will you find truth if you dont
seek it? How will you find happiness if you do not seek it? How will you find God if you do
not seek God? Everyone seems to be seeking something. In spirituality seeking is highly
honored and respected, and here comes Seng-tsan saying not to seek.

The reason Seng-tsan is saying not to seek is because truth, or reality, is not something
objective. Truth is not something out there. It is not something you will find as an object of
perception or as a temporal experience. Reality is neither inside of you nor outside of you.
Both outside and inside are not getting to the point. They both miss the mark because
outside and inside are conceptual constructs with no inherent reality. They are simply abstract
points of reference. Even words like you, or me, or I, are nothing more than conceptual
points of reference existing only in the mind. Such concepts may have a practical value in
daily life, but when assumed to be true they distort perception and create a virtual reality, or
what in the East is called the world of samsara.

Seng-tsan was a wily old Zen master. He viewed things through the eye of enlightenment and
was intimately aware of how the conditioned mind fools itself into false pursuits and blind
alleys. He knew that seeking truth, or reality, is as silly as a dog thinking that it must chase its
tail in order to attain its tail. The dog already has full possession of its tail from the very
beginning. Besides, once the dog grasps his tail, he will have to let go of it in order to
function. So even if you were to find the truth through grasping, you will have to let it go at
some point in order to function. But even so, any truth that is attained through grasping is not
the real truth because such a truth would be an object and therefore not real to begin with.

In order to seek, you must first have an idea, ideal, or an image, what it is you are seeking.
That idea may not even be very conscious or clear but it must be there in order for you to

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seek. Being an idea it cannot be real. Thats why Seng-tsan says only cease to cherish
opinions. By opinions he means ideas, ideals, beliefs, and images, as well as personal
opinions. This sounds easy but it is rarely as easy as it seems. Seng-tsan is not saying you
should never have a thought in your head, he is saying not to cherish the thoughts in your
head. To cherish implies an emotional attachment and holding on to. When you cherish
something, you place value on it because you think that it is real or because it defines who
you think you are. This cherishing of thoughts and opinions is what the false self thrives on. It
is what the false self is made of. When you realize that none of your ideas about truth are real,
it is quite a shock to your system. It is an unexpected blow to the seeker and the seeking.

The task of any useful spiritual practice is therefore to dismantle cherishing the thoughts,
opinions, and ideas that make up the false self, the self that is seeking. This is the true task of
both meditation and inquiry. Through meditation we can come to see that the only thing that
makes us suffer is our own mind. Sitting quietly reveals the mind to be nothing but
conditioned thinking spontaneously arising within awareness. Through cherishing this
thinking, through taking it to be real and relevant, we create internal images of self and others
and the world. Then we live in these images as if they were real. To be caught within these
images is to live in an illusory virtual reality.

Through observing the illusory nature of thought without resisting it, we can begin to question
and inquire into the underlying belief structures that support it. These belief structures are
what form our emotional attachments to the false self and the world our minds create.

This is why I sometimes ask people, Are you ready to lose your world? Because true
awakening will not fit into the world as you imagine it or the self you imagine yourself to be.
Reality is not something that you integrate into your personal view of things. Reality is life
without your distorting stories, ideas, and beliefs. It is perfect unity free of all reference
points, with nowhere to stand and nothing to grab hold of. It has never been spoken, never
been written, never been imagined. It is not hidden, but in plain view. Cease to cherish
opinions and it stands before your very eyes.

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The Novel of Life

When you read a novel, and you read about various characters, you may like some and not
like others. Or when you watch a movie, think about your relationship with the characters.
You might like them; you might not like them, but youre not finding your sense of self in
them. Youre not referencing your self-worth by the characters in a novel or when you turn on
the TV. You just have your thoughts about them.

But imagine if you turned on your TV or you read a novel and you actually completely
derived your sense of being and your sense of self from one of the characters. Immediately
your perspective is very different, isnt it? Now your perspective has gone from something
thats very vast to something thats very limited, seen only through the eyes of the character.
Sadly, thats how most human beings spend their lives. They have this little character in their
mind called "me," and theyre actually viewing that me as personal when its not.

The me is very impersonal, not meaning cold or distant, but just meaning without inherent
self nature, in the same way that when you read a book, the characters are without self nature.
They actually dont exist outside of your imagination. They dont even exist in the book,
because the book is just words. And without someone reading the words and bringing it all
alive within imagination, nothing even exists on the printed page. Its all within the reader, all
the life.

When the Buddha talked about the realization of no-self, he was talking about the self thats
an image in the mind being completely seen through. And when there is no image of self,
experience has nothing to bounce off of. Everything just is as it is, because there's no
secondary interpretation. The one thats interpreting is the one thats in pain. And thats the
one who suffers. Thats the one who causes others to suffer.

The false self, the self thats an image in the mind, uses every experience to measure itself:
How am I in relationship to whats happening? Am I wise? Am I stupid? Am I clumsy? Am I
courageous? Am I enlightened about this? Thats the movement of consciousness reflecting
on an image of itself that doesnt actually exist. Its always measuring each and every

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experience, and then believing in the interpretation of the experience rather than seeing
Everything just is.

Everything actually just is. From the perspective of consciousness, even resistance just is.
And if you resist resistance, thats just what is. You cant get away from it. You start to see
that the only thing that goes into resistance, a story, or an interpretation of what is, whatever it
is, is this mind-created persona. It's like a character in a novel. When you read a novel, every
character has a point of view. It has beliefs. It has opinions. Theres something that makes it
distinct from other characters. Our persona is literally this mind-created character thats
always making itself distinct. So it always needs to evaluate everything against its
preconceived idea.

Theres another vantage point. The other vantage point is not only outside the character, it's
also inside the character. Its the ultimate vantage point thats outside, and its also playing all
the parts from the inside.

Thats basically what it means to really wake up: were waking up from the character. You
dont have to destroy the character called me to wake up from it. In fact, trying to destroy
the character makes it very hard to wake up. Because whats trying to destroy the character?
The character. Whats judging the character? The character.

So you leave the character alone. The character called you, just leave it alone. Then its much
easier for the awakening out of that perspective to happen.

You dont lose the character; you just gain the whole novel of life. Its not like you lose
anything. You just gain the whole book. You gain the whole universe. As Buddha would say,
Lose yourself, gain the universe. Its not a bad deal. Or Dogen: To know yourself is to
forget yourself, and to forget yourself is to be enlightened by the 10,000 things, which means
to see yourself everywhere. Wake up from your character, and then you see your self nature in
all characters - not just one, but all of them.

So we dont lose anything. We gain all characters. We just lose the fixation, thats all.

2005 Adyashanti
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Realizing Your True Nature

Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an experience. What is it that
is feeling? What is it that is thinking or sensing? This is not about coming up with the right
name for it, so dont name it for a moment. Its about just noticing, just experiencing. Feel it.
Sense it. Welcome it. Spiritual awakening is realizing what occupies the space called me.
When you listen innocently, youll see that there really is something more here than a me.

Your me is always experiencing this moment in relation to some other moment. Is this
moment as good as it was two weeks ago? Will it be the same today as it was yesterday? The
me worries about what it knows and whether or not it is good enough to get enlightened. Your
me might call itself Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Advaitan, atheist, agnostic, believer, or
nonbeliever, but no matter what your me is identified with, when you become very open and
relaxed, you can suddenly be aware that something else is occupying your body-mind.
Something else is looking out from your eyes, listening from your ears, and feeling your
feelings. That something has no qualities. Realizing your true nature is realizing what is
present without qualities. We can call it the emptiness of consciousness, the Self, or the NoSelf. To directly experience this emptiness, the aliveness of it, is spiritual awakening. It is to
realize yourself as beautiful nothingness, or more accurately, no-thing-ness. If we say its just
nothing, we miss the point.

When your image of the me takes a break, youll find all you are doing at that moment is just
being open. You feel quite relieved that you are not trying to get to another moment or a
better experience. You feel yourself just being in a very relaxed, easy sense of peace. You
havent gained anything at all youre not smarter, you dont necessarily know more than
anyone else, and you havent suddenly become holy. If you are resting as your own true
nature, then you feel that there is really nowhere else to go.

At that moment, you feel as if your path has ended. It can be hard to end it when so much is
invested in your path, but if you really want to be free, you must want to know the truth more
than anything else. And when you do, you find that the truth is so damn empty. There is so
much nothing to it. There is so much nobody there, just a very vivid awakeness.

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But even then you can realize the truth and still not operate from it. You can have a very deep
awakening experience and still not function from that awakening because the me is still
convinced that a me is necessary. The me always brings you back into relationship with
anotherit can be the world and me, my job and me, the dog and me, whatever. Have you
noticed how the way you relate to your thoughts, feelings, and sensations is often slightly
adversarial? How its never quite the right moment? How its almost perfect, but not quite?
The Buddha said, All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire. This
is the movement of the me who always wants a little more out of the moment.

The me is clumsy. As my mother used to say, Youre like a bull in a china shop. Did you
ever hear that? If you let your mind imagine a bull getting loose in a china shop, thats how
the me is. Its knocking things over, things like the most precious china. With a whisk of its
tail, there goes . . . grandmas four-generation-old antique china cups! Boom theyre gone.
When your me is operating, its like that bull. It tends to make a lot of noise because its
always in a slightly adversarial relationship with its moment. It produces noisy thoughts,
feelings, beliefs, or opinions. It also likes to search, moving its head around, scanning for the
right emotion in the body, scanning through the mind for the right concept. Its always in
movement like a radar, looking for the right thing to happen.

As soon as you move your attention away from the radar scan, you start to notice something
else. Inside, there is something that is not creating nearly as much noise as the me. This
something else, this openness, this awakeness, is not searching for the next moment or
scanning for the right emotion or experience. You can get the sense of it now. What does it
feel like to simply be awake? Whether you think you are awake or not doesnt matter dont
worry about that for now. What does the awakeness itself feel like? What is the experience of
that awakeness before you try to be more or less awake? Just with a willingness to open, you
can start to feel it. How does this awakeness feel? How does this openness feel? Just by
bringing your attention there, just by noticing without any effort, this formless or empty sense
of being heightens itself as if to say, Someone is finally paying attention.

When this openness is present, you can recognize how it experiences your body. How does
openness experience a feeling, emotion, or thought? How does it experience the movement
called me? Allow yourself to get a real taste of this. This openness is in a completely
different relationship with everything that exists, starting with you. Its in a different
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relationship with the moment; its not going anywhere. Have you noticed? Its not trying to
achieve something else. It hasnt elevated you or demeaned you. Start to sense the profound
innocence of this openness. Its not perceiving from the pastnot from the last moment, much
less from the accumulation of a lifetime. Its perceiving only in this moment.

Openness has not accumulated anything, so its free. It has a profoundly innocent but wise
relationship to everything. It is something primary, awake, and alive. You can sense how
incredibly precious it is. When you look right into it, there is nothing there. Let yourself
experience this openness, this nothingness. Let yourself see how it experiences your body and
mind right now, in this moment. Its so different from the experience of the me. This
nothingness is the peace that surpasses all understanding, and its right here at your fingertips.

Awakeness is inherent in all things and all beings everywhere, all the time. This awakeness
relates to every moment from innocence, from absolute honesty, from a state where you feel
absolutely authentic. Only from this state do you realize that you never really wanted
whatever you thought you wanted. You realize that behind all of your desires was a single
desire: to experience each moment from your true nature. You find that simply walking
outside and seeing a leaf in the breeze or seeing a street person on the corner is the most
exquisite of experiences. You dont need anything big; each moment has a beauty all its own.
Even the very ugly moments have a beauty when experienced from this innocence, this
beautifully disarming state of awakeness.

During any moment, you can ask yourself, What is it like for emptiness to experience this
moment? What is it like for awakeness? Really listen, because openness is quiet and soft.
You cant insist upon it. You cant grab for it, so dont reach. Just open. Look for the
openness, feel from the openness, and relate from the openness. It can freak you out if youre
not used to it. If you find yourself in a place that you dont like, just ask how openness is
experiencing this moment. A shift happens, and you find yourself saying, Ill be damned
its actually enjoying this!

This relationship from your heart, from the truth of your being, from openness is something
that cant be taught. I remember what it was like when I went as a Buddhist to undertake the
precepts. You read through them, study them, and kind of take them inside. You do whatever
the little me does with them, like deciding you are going to do a really good job of it until
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you find out otherwise. You think you know what the precepts are, then you really awaken to
your true nature and realize that this is how your true nature naturally sees things. Its very
simple. Thats it. Now you dont need any precepts because your true nature sees that way all
the time. You dont need to be reminded of how your true nature sees. You only need to be
reminded of what your true nature is.

So if you want to find out how openness relates to each moment, just go inside. Be that
openness. Be that emptiness. All you can do is ask yourself, inquire for yourself. How is it
relating to this thought in my head? To this person? To this moment? You can see this. Go
directly to the source, to the only authority that is finally liberating: your own awakeness,
your own emptiness perceiving this moment. It will teach you how to live.

Berkeley, California, March 17, 2002

Adyashanti 2006

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Authentic Inquiry
What is inquiry, really? This is a good question. And like most really good questions, it is
very basic. Authentic inquiry is allowing yourself to care, to take on the weightless burden of
caring. Everyone knows what its like to inquire out of intellectual interestasking for the sake
of asking or because you think you should. This is not caring. When you care about
something, it gets inside of you. It gets inside the shell that keeps you from being affected or
bothered, the shell that keeps anything really new from happening.

So in the beginning, to deeply inquire about anything, you have to care about it. You have to
care enough to allow it to get inside that shell. What do you really care about? What pulls you
into here and now, this minute? What is the most important thing to you? For real inquiry, it is
important to be asking about something you sincerely care about. The question needs to be
personal, not about a spiritual teaching or something thats outside of your experience. It
needs to be something thats coming from the inside.

When you care, you care from the inside. Many people impose ideas from the outside upon
themselves, but this isnt inquiry. When you really care, you enter a love affair with what you
care about. Sometimes it draws you into bliss, sometimes into confusion. You dont know
what to do. You dont know where you are going. You feel a bit out of control. Youre letting
this caring get under your skin. To find out that you care like this is the most important thing;
otherwise you can spend your whole life caring about what someone else says you should care
about.

Like many people, you may be afraid to find out how much you care because that caring
could just steal you away. What is the one thing that will matter the most at the end of your
life? Without it, you would say: Thats what it was all about and I missed it. If you had the
best job, lots of money, the perfect lover, or whatever your ideal is, and suddenly your life
was over, what would still be left undone? Thats what its all about.

When you find that kind of caring, inquiry has some power behind it. You also find your own
inner integrity. You find something inside thats stable. Theres a place inside you that is

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willing to be a little crazy crazy enough to take inquiry seriously and hold nothing sacred.
Holding nothing sacred means that nothing is assumed to be true and all of your assumptions
are fair game. The more spiritual they are, the more they are fair game. Ultimately it is your
most sacred and unquestioned assumptions about yourself, others, and life that are most
important to question.

Many people find their spirituality taking them outward. They think they are going inward
because they have heard the spiritual teaching, Inquire and look within. Meanwhile, they are
out in the stars somewhere looking for someone elses experience, looking for the right
experience, or looking for the experience they believe they are supposed to have. This is
spirituality going entirely in the wrong direction. Inquiry is a means of taking you back to
yourself, back to your experience.

When inquiry is authentic, it brings you into the experience of here and now, bringing you to
the full depth of it, pulling you into it. The question pulls you back into the mystery of your
experience. What am I? takes you right back into the mystery. If your mind is honest, it
knows it doesnt have the answer. You ask, What am I? and instantly, there is silence. Your
mind doesnt know. And when it doesnt know, there is an experience right here, right now,
that is alive. You bump into nothingness inside that no-thing, that absolute nothingness
which your mind cant know.

The answer does not come in the form of a description or phrase; it is a direct experience. And
this experience, your livingness, always transcends any words or intellectual answer. In fact,
the truth of your being is eternally transcending itself. As soon as it projects itself out as
something, even as a profound insight, it has already transcended it. So eventually the inquiry
wears itself out. You wear yourself out. You wear your ego self out. You wear your spiritual
self out. You wear it all out. Youve inquired yourself out of this whole thing, and youre
disappearing faster than you can put yourself together.

As Nisargadatta Maharaj said so brilliantly and beautifully, The ultimate understanding is

that there is no ultimate understanding. When its in the head, its an impressive piece of
understanding; when its in the heart, as the Buddha said, its extinguished. You find a living
experience of being, empty of content, empty of you. This is where spiritual awakening
begins.

This

is

the

living

answer

of

authentic

inquiry.

Adyashanti

2007
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A Single Desire
Awakeness is inherent
in all things and all beings
everywhere
all the time.
This awakeness relates to every moment
from innocence
from absolute honesty
from a state where you feel
absolutely authentic.
Only from this state
do you realize
that you never really wanted
whatever you thought you wanted.
You realize
that behind all of your desires
was a single desire:
to experience each moment
from your true nature.

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The Quest
The quest for enlightenment is the quest for truth or reality. Its not a quest for ideas about
truth thats philosophy. And its not a quest to realize your fantasies about truth thats
fundamentalized religion. Its a quest for truth on truths terms. Its a quest for the underlying
principle of life, the unifying element of existence.

In your quiet moments of honesty, you know that you are not who you present yourself as, or
who you pretend to be. Although you have changed identities many times, and changed them
even in the course of a single day, none of them fit for long. They are all in a process of
constant decay. One moment youre a loving person, the next an angry one. One day youre
an indulgent, worldly person; the next a pure, spiritual lover of God. One moment you love
your image of yourself, and the next you loathe it. On it goes, identified with one self-image
after another, each as separate and false as the last.

When this game of delusion gets boring or painful enough, something within you begins to
stir. Out of the unsatisfactoriness of separation arises the intuition that there is something
more real than you are now conscious of. It is the intuition that there is truth, although you do
not know what it is. But you know, you intuit, that truth exists, truth that has absolutely
nothing to do with your ideas about it. But somehow you know that the truth about you and
all of life exists.

Once you receive this intuition, this revelation, you will be compelled to find it. You will have
no choice in the matter. You will have consciously begun the authentic quest for
enlightenment, and there is no turning back. Life as youve known it will never be quite the
same.

A great Zen master said, Do not seek the truth; simply cease cherishing illusions. If there is
a primary practice or path to enlightenment, this is itto cease cherishing illusions. Seeking
truth can be a game, complete with a new identity as a truth-seeker fueled by new ideas and
beliefs. But ceasing to cherish illusions is no game; its a gritty and intimate form of
deconstructing yourself down to nothing. Get rid of all of your illusions and whats left is the

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truth. You dont find truth as much as you stumble upon it when you have cast away your
illusions.

As the master said, Do not seek the truth. But you cant stop seeking just because some
ancient Zen master said to. Seeking is an energy, a movement toward something. Spiritual
seekers are moving toward God, nirvana, enlightenment, ultimate truth, whatever. To seek
something, you must have at least some vague idea or image of what it is you are seeking. But
ultimate truth is not an idea or an image or something attained anew. So, to seek truth as
something objective is a waste of time and energy. Truth cant be found by seeking it, simply
because truth is what you are. Seeking what you are is as silly as your shoes looking for their
soles by walking in circles. What is the path that will lead your shoes to their soles? Thats
why the Zen master said, Do not seek the truth. Instead, cease cherishing illusions.

To cease cherishing illusions is a way of inverting the energy of seeking. The energy of
seeking will be there in one form or another until you wake up from the dream state. You
cant just get rid of it. You need to learn how to invert it and use the energy to deconstruct the
illusions that hold your consciousness in the dream state. This sounds relatively simple, but
the consequences can seem quite disorienting, even threatening. Im not talking about a new
spiritual technique here; Im talking about a radically different orientation to the whole of
your spiritual life. This is not a little thing. It is a very big thing, and your best chance of
awakening depends on it. Do not seek the truth; simply cease cherishing illusions. And if
youre like most spiritually oriented people, your spirituality is your most cherished illusion.
Imagine that.

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How Very Fortunate Adyashanti's

Reflections After Ten Years of Teaching
It has been ten years since I began teaching, and in those years there has been much change
and evolution in the expression of the teaching, as well as the emergence of a growing
community and supportive organization. Since I began teaching at my teachers request, I
have focused on only one thing: to express and transmit the fundamental realization of unity
that lies at the heart of all forms of true spirituality in the most direct and unadorned way
possible. I have always held the conviction that while the various spiritual traditions and
lineages are valuable carriers of ancient teachings, practices, and subtle transmissions, they
need to have a constant living renewal breathed into them by truly free and creative human
beings lest they start serving the needs of the dream state and not those of the awakened state.
It is good to remember that the goal of Buddhism is to create Buddhas, not Buddhists, as the
goal of Christianity is to create Christs, not Christians. In the same vein, my teachings are not
meant to acquire followers or imitators, but to awaken beings to eternal truth and thus to
awakened life and living.

To serve this intention my teaching has been, and continues to be, in a constant state of
renewal. As more and more of my students come into the deeper realms of spiritual
adulthood, so too does the expression of the teachings evolve to address and clarify the deeper
reaches of spirituality. I find that as time goes on I can touch upon more subtle and
challenging aspects of spiritual awakening as those who come to see me become more
established in the deeper aspects of spiritual realization. It is this spontaneous dance and
interplay between teacher and student that breathes new life into our shared exploration and
expression of truth.

While the expression and scope of this teaching work evolves, it continues to be rooted in the
direct experience of awakening from identifying with the body-mind-personality to the
universal truth of what we are. For all things and all beings are enlightened Buddhas from the
very start and it is only attachment to identity, ideas, and concepts that obscures this fact.
Thus the paradox of already being the very truth that you are seeking. Beware though, for
intellectual understanding will do as little to bring you to realization as repeating the word
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water will do to quench your thirst. An intuitive leap of remembrance is whats called for,
for you are awake and nothing, expressing yourself as everything in this very moment.

Never did I anticipate or imagine the size or growth of this Sangha. There were some
evenings in the early days of my teaching when I was the only one who came. On such
evenings I would sit in silence for an hour or so before gathering my things and returning
home. Other times two or three people would come, and over time more and more. From the
beginning, numbers were unimportant. I always felt that if I could help just one person to
truly wake up, I would feel fortunate. And how very fortunate I have been!

I can honestly say that I know much less now than I did ten years ago when I began teaching.
Each day that passes now is a deeper step into the unknown, a place far beyond where thought
has ever touched. A place where there are no ideas, ideals, or new theories but instead a
living and dynamic whole which alone can be called sacred, everlasting, and right before our
very eyes.

May all beings realize the nature of the ground upon which they stand, and who it is that
stands upon it.

Adyashanti 2006

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Everything Comes Back to Nothing

Inexplicably it comes. When you least expect it. For a reason you can never know. One
moment you are striving, figuring, imagining, and then, in the blink of an eye, it all
disappears. The struggle disappears. The striving disappears. The person disappears. The
world disappears. Everything disappears, and the person is like a pinpoint of light, just
receding until it disappears. And theres nobody there to witness it. The person is gone. Only,
only awareness remains. Nothing else. No one to be aware. Nothing to be aware of. Only that
remains itself. Then its understood, finally and simply.

Then everything, all the struggle, all the striving, all the thinking, all the figuring, all the
surrendering, all the letting go, all the grabbing hold of, all the praying, all the begging, all the
cursing, too, was just a distraction. And only then is it seen that the person was, is, and ever
will be no more than a thought. With a single thought, the person seems to reemerge. With
more thoughts, the world seems to reemerge right out of nothing. But now you know.

The incarnation is nothing more than a thought. A thousand incarnations are but a thousand
thoughts. And this amazing miracle of a mirage we call the world reappears as it was before,
but now you know. Thats why you usually have a good laugh, because you realize that all
your struggles were made up. You conjured them up out of nothing, with a thought that was
linked to another thought, that was then believed, that linked to another thought that was then
believed. But never could it have been true, not for a second could it have actually existed.
Not ever could you have actually suffered for a reason that was true only through an
imagination, good, bad, indifferent. The intricacies of spiritual philosophy and theologies are
just a thought within Emptiness.

And so at times we talk, and I pretend to take your struggles seriously, just as I pretended to
take my own seriously. You may pretend to take your own struggles seriously from time to
time, and although we pretend, we really shouldnt forget that we are pretending, that we are
making up the content of our experience; we are making up the little dramas of our lives. We
are making up whether we need to hold on or surrender or figure it out or pray to God or be
purified or have karma cleansed its all a thought. We just collude in this ridiculous charade

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of an illusion pretending that its real, only to reveal that its not. There is no karma. There is
nothing really to purify. Theres no problem. There is only what you create and believe to be
so. And if you like it that way, have at it!

But we cannot continue this absolute farce indefinitely. We cannot continue to pretend this
game we play, indefinitely. Its impossible. Everything comes back to nothing.

And then its a bit harder to hold a straight face consistently for the rest of your life.

Transcribed from a talk in Pacific Grove, CA, June 9, 2006.

Adyashanti 2006

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Everlasting Inheritance
An Unfinished Poem by Adyashanti

Listen now, or lose your life, for what I have to say is what you have imagined in quiet
moments but have failed to realize in full. Perhaps you were too timid or astonished at the
critical moments, or couldnt find the courage to step through the veil of your frail life when
the door was opened for you.

Or perhaps you wanted to keep your life as your own, and chose to hold onto a few pennies
when you could have had gold. No matter, for yesterday has passed into the dust of
remembered dreams, and tomorrows story is yet to be written.

Which is precisely why you and I are now here together. You and I. You and I. Oh, the sheer
mystery of it how could anything be more grand? Stand with me here at the precipice and
take my hand in yours, for I am good company to those ready to depart familiar ground. If
not, then let loose of my hand now and take that of a more familiar companion. For where we
stand is known, but our next step will not be, nor the one after or the one after that.

So shoulder all of your longing and intent and leave all else behind. I give you fair warning:
The world you are about to leave will not be there when you return. For nothing truly left
behind is ever the same upon our return. Let us not waste any more time on discussions or
debates; you have surely been caught in those tide pools too long already. Too much talk is
wearying to the soul and evades the spirit of things. Longing is the true measure of a man or
woman and alone has the power to draw us out of ourselves and into the vast air of eternity.
But we shall not rely only on the winds of longing, for they can be fickle and unpredictable.
We shall also need the fire of intent, that fine-tipped arrow of courage flying true and straight
to its goal, piercing through the fabric of our dreams as it goes.

This is as fair a day as any to begin the journey back to your origin. So lift your foot together
with mine and we will step off the well-trodden paths and into the uncharted woods where the
essence of things lies waiting for you to open your eyes.

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It is time to begin watching your steps, dear companion. For you have already wasted the
goodness of too many days stumbling along with the unconscious drove. Today I bid you to
place no foot upon the earth without feeling the sinews, skin, and bone of your feet with each
step. How awake you are to the least of things will determine how awake you become to the
greatest in due time. For in the play of time, the great and manifold diversity of things in the
end proves their unity. And it is toward the end that we are headed, for it is only by means of
the end that we arrive here, on this spot, free and immortal.

I can see in your eyes a fear and confusion. All this talk of endings brings a tremble to your
bones. But fear not, for I do not speak of death or chaos except to point out that you have
already fallen prey to both. No, I talk of awakening from the death of sleepwalking in dreams
and veiled imagination. Beyond the veil all is well, and more well than I can attest. Within the
immortality of what you are, there is a contentment and peace born only of your true identity.

Have you not been told how grand you are, how uncontained, how limitless? I for one
maintain that you are as unseen and eternal as the space that spans beyond the myriad
universes. I praise the immortal self, not one self among many, but the self within all selves.
For everywhere I go, and in each and everyone I meet, I greet my secret and unseen self. For I
know each man and each woman as I know myself, none greater or lesser in essence or worth.

I have no desire or pull toward the gods, nor sacred relics, nor holy books. For I have waded
through the various dogmas and found them lacking the essential vision, the unitary glance
that reveals Gods hand within every gesture. Why should we go looking for more than we
are, when we are what we are looking for? Beware of a misguided longing, for it leads in the
end to brutality. How much blood has already been spilled in Gods name and how much
more to come?

I bid you, dear companion: Throw off the yoke of belief, for to arrive at the nobility of truth
you must be cleansed of all borrowed knowledge till you are as innocent as the day before you
were born. You must forge from within your longing a fiery sword of discrimination,
unsheathed from the past, starting now on this hill we stand upon, determined to never again
take anything secondhand, but instead prove true or false each statement yourself.

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For truth belongs to neither man or woman, nor holy book, nor well-reasoned philosophy or
belief, but only to itself immortal and pure. I seek only to remove untruth from your mind so
that you may be restored to the unitary vision which is your everlasting inheritance.

Adyashanti 2006

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Radical Emptiness
To the extent that the fire of truth wipes out all fixated points of view, it wipes out inner
contradictions as well, and we begin to move in a whole different way. The Way is the flow
that comes from a place of non-contradiction not from good and bad. Much less damage
tends to be done from that place. Once we have reached the phase where there is no fixed selfconcept, we tend to lead a selfless life. The only way to be selfless is to be self less, without a
self. No matter what it does, a self isnt going to be selfless. It can pretend. It can approximate
selflessness, but a self is never going to be selfless because there is always an identified
personal self at the root of it.

Being selfless isnt a good, holy, or noble activity. Its simply that when there is no self,
selflessness happens. This selflessness is very different from having a moralistic standpoint.
When action is selfless, it tends to do no harm. It tends to be the salvation, the secret alchemy
that awakens and removes conflict. Its a byproduct of not having a self. It just so happens
that reality is overflowing with goodness and love.

This is radical emptiness, where everything is arising spontaneously. There is no more need to
discriminate with the mind between what seems to be the right thing or the wrong thing to do.
In ego-land its helpful to have an ego that can discriminate between right and wrong, but at a
certain point, thats not what you are operating by. You are operating by the flow of the Tao,
which is a higher order of intelligence. You dont need to intellectually discriminate anymore
because the Tao discriminates without discriminating; it knows without knowing; it moves
without moving. There is no sense of being enlightened or unenlightened. Since there is no
self, there is nothing to be enlightened or unenlightened.

We can talk about enlightened beings and non-enlightened beings, and conceptually that has a
use. But when there is no self, when there is radical emptiness, the whole enlightenment thing
is sort of irrelevant because reality has become conscious of itself, which is enlightenment.
Thats what is often missed. People believe that enlightenment is an improvement on reality,
like becoming a super human being or God-knows-what. But enlightenment is when reality is
awake to itself as itself within itself. Adyashanti 2006

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The Awakened Way What is it like to live

an awakened life?
While the world is trying to solve its problems and everyone around you is engaged in the
same, youre not. While everybody around you is trying to figure it out, trying to arrive,
trying to get there, trying to be worthy, youre not. While everyone thinks that awakening is a
grand, noble, halo-enshrouded thing, for you its not. While everybody is running from this
life right now, in this moment, to try to get there, youre not. Where everybody has an
argument with somebody else, mostly everybody else, starting with themselves, you dont.
Where everybody is so sure that happiness will come when something is different than it is
now, you know that it wont. When everybody else is looking to achieve the perfect state and
hold on to it, youre not.

When everybody around you has a whole host of ideas and beliefs about a whole variety of
things, you dont. Everyone on the path is getting there; you havent gotten anywhere.
Everyone is climbing the mountain; youre selling hiking boots and picks at the foot in the
hope that if they climb it and come back down, they may be too exhausted to do it again.
When everybody else is looking to the next book, to the next teacher, to the next guru to be
told whats real, to be given the secret key to an awakened life, youre not. You dont have a
key because theres not a lock to put it in.

When youre living what you are in an awakened way, being simply what youve always
been, youre actually very simple. You basically sit around wondering what all the fuss is
about.

When everyone is sitting around saying, I hope that happens to me, you remember when you
did that. You remember that you didnt find a solution to that. You remember that the whole
idea that there was a problem created all of that.

When youre being what you are, when youre living the awakened life, theres nobody to
forgive, because theres no resentment held, no matter what.

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The truth of your being doesnt crave happiness; it could actually care less. It doesnt crave
love, not because you are so full of love, but because it just doesnt crave love. Its very
simple. It doesnt seek to be known, regarded highly, or understood. When youre living what
you are in an awakened way, theres no ideal for you anymore. Youve stepped off the entire
cycle of suffering, of becoming; youre not interested.

Its a curious life you find yourself in. You find yourself where you are. Not where I am,
where you are. Where you really are. Where we really are. Its a curious place to be
(especially in the beginning) not to be driven by anything pleasure or displeasure, helping or
hurting, loving or hating. The only thing that will move you (and I dont mean to be too poetic
about this) is the same thing that moves a leaf hanging from a tree. Its simply because the
breeze blows that way. So you always know what to do: The breeze blows that way, and
thats the way you go. You dont ask questions anymore. You dont evaluate why the breeze
is blowing that way because you know that you dont know why. And you know you cant
know why. Theres never been a leaf anywhere that knows why the wind blows that way on
that day at that moment. That breeze changes the orientation of your life, moment to moment
to moment, simply because thats the way lifes moving. And when youre living in your
awakened self you have no argument with the way its moving because it is the same as you
are.

And you know that the breeze was always there, from the very beginning, and that it wasnt
reserved for special people. If you didnt notice it at some point in your life, you know it was
because you werent listening, or because you thought you had to figure something out before
you could listen, or because you thought there had to be some conclusion before you could
just listen so deeply, so without agenda, so without hope of a better future that you would feel
the movement.

Many of you know what Im speaking of.

Truth never explains why its moving that way at that moment. And if you ask, it wont give
any information. It would be like a leaf asking the wind, Why are you moving that way right
now? The question doesnt make any sense to the wind.

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But your argument with the way the truth would move, whatever that way is, is no longer
there for you. Youre no longer arguing with it. Youre no longer trying to figure it out.
Mother Mary didnt figure it out. Buddha didnt figure it out. Ramana didnt figure it out.
None of them figured it out. They just became That. Simple. Ordinary in the same way a
leaf is ordinary.

When youre living in your awakened being and living in an awakened way, power on any
level is not an issue for you. Its not interesting. The power to control another human being is
not interesting. Intellectual power is not interesting. The power to control yourself is not
interesting. The power that people want to give you is not interesting to you, not because it
shouldnt be; its just not. What would you want to do with it? You see that theres nothing
you want to do with it.

You realize, in the truth of your being, that you are the totality itself, but you have no interest
whatsoever in doing anything with that knowledge, with using that knowledge.

Finally, you realize that you really dont want to change anybody, not because you shouldnt
want to change them, because you just dont. You might not want to be around everyone, but
still you dont want to change them.

None of this is an ideal its the end of ideals. None of this is holiness; its the end of
holiness. Its the beginning of wholeness. None of this is something to achieve, because its
not achievable. Its simply what is in the truth of your being. Its just what is. You cant attain
whats naturally so. And nobody anywhere can ever tell you when or why, or to what degree
youll let go of untruth; you will let go when you let go, usually when nothing else works.

When youre living in the awakened way, in the awakened being that you are, youre alone,
and youre finally comfortable with it. Youre alone, but youre not lonely at all, because the
only one who was ever supposed to meet you where you are, the only one who ever could
meet you where you are one hundred percent, was you. Nobody else could ever fully meet
you where you are maybe ninety percent, maybe ninety-five. Nobody can meet you fully but
you. When you finally do, then you dont need anybody else to do it for you. Then youre
alone, more alone than you could ever imagine. And strangely, very strangely. you are more
connected, more intimate, more at one with everything. More. And you would have never
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thought that those two could in any way be together: total aloneness and total oneness. You
would have never guessed that thats the way it would end up. But it does, and it always has.

And finally, when youre just living in the awakened way that you really are, youll never
form an image again of what its like. Even as its happening, you wont form an image
because youll know theyre all images, dust. The way it was yesterday wont be the way it is
today.

Awakened Living Intensive. Berkeley, CA. October 5, 2003

Adyashanti 2003

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You Are the Buddha Adyashantis first

silent retreat
Rediscovered years later in an old file, the following talk was written by Adyashanti in
preparation for the first silent retreat he taught, in July 1997:

Starting right now, this moment, I am asking you to become the Buddha. I am asking you to
take your stand, to stand absolutely firm in your intention to awaken to the Truth of your Self.

This is what the Buddha did. He didnt say, Ill try. He didnt say, I hope Ill find the
Truth. He didnt say, Ill do my best. He didnt say, If not in this lifetime, then maybe
next lifetime. He came to the point where he didnt look for anyone else to tell him the Truth
or show him the Truth. He came to the point where he took it all on himself. He sat alone
under the Bodhi Tree and vowed never to give up until the Truth be realized.

The power of this very simple, yet unshakable intention and absolute stand to be liberated in
this lifetime propelled him to awaken to the simple fact that he and all beings are liberated,
that all beings are freedom itself. Pure awakeness.

The Buddha was no different from you. No different. That is why he serves as a good model,
because he was as you are now. So dont worship the Buddha. Dont put him on a pedestal.
Dont even look up to him. Become him. Have the same intentions, take the same stand. Be
the Buddha now! Put an end to all delaying, to all excuses, to all bowing down to saintly
figures of the past or present. Stand up!

You are the Buddha! You are freedom itself! Stop dreaming your dream! Stop pretending that
you are in bondage stop telling yourself that lie! Stop pretending to be someone, or
something! You are no one, you are no-thing! You are not this body or this mind. This body
and mind exist within who and what you are. You are pure consciousness, already free,
awake, and liberated. Stand up and walk out of your dream. I am here to say that you can do
this.

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Step out of the dream of your concepts and ideas. Step out of the dream of what you imagine
enlightenment to be. Step out of the dream of who you think you are. Step out of the dream of
everything you have ever known. Step out of your dream of being a deluded person. Stop
telling yourself those lies and dreaming those dreams. Step out of all of that. You can do it.
Nothing is holding you back. There are no requirements and no prerequisites to awaken.
There is nothing to be done, nothing to think, nowhere to go.

Just stop all dreaming. Stop all doing. Stop all excuses. Just stop and be still. Effortlessly be
still. Grace will do the rest.

At each and every moment from here on out, have the intention to directly experience Truth,
your true liberated Self. Dont think about the Truth directly return to your experience here,
now, moment to moment. Experience Truth. Experience your Self. Dive into your experience.
Your experience! Your experience of hearing, of seeing, of tasting, of breathing, of your heart
beating, of your feet touching the floor, of the birds, of the wind.

Experience the vastness of who you are. Experience the freedom of who you are. You are the
Buddha experience that. You are the Buddha.

Adyashanti, published 2005

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How Long Will It Take?

There is a wonderful story about a young man who checks into the monastery, full of juice
and ready to be enlightened yesterday. He asks the abbot, "How long will it take me to be
enlightened?" To which the abbot answers, "About ten years." The young man says, "Ten
years! Why ten years?" The abbot replies, "Oh, twenty years in your case." The man asks,
"Why do you say twenty years?" The abbot says, "Oh, Im sorry. I was mistaken thirty years."

If you really get it, you realize that to even ask the question gets you ten years. As soon as the
thought, "When will I really be free?" comes up, time has just birthed itself into existence.
And with this birth of time you have to think, "Probably at least ten years, maybe forever."
Where can you go in order to get here? Any step takes you somewhere else.

This is surprising to the mind because the mind always thinks of freedom, or enlightenment,
as some sort of accumulation, and of course there is nothing to accumulate. Its about
realizing what you are, what you have always been. This realization is outside of time because
its now or never.

As soon as your idea of enlightenment becomes time-bound, its always about the next
moment. You may have a deep spiritual experience and then As long as you insist ask, "How
long will I sustain this experience?" on the question, you remain time-bound. If you are still
interested in time and the spiritual accumulations you can have in time, you will get a timebound experience. The mind is acting as if what you are looking for isnt already present right
now. Now is outside of time. There is no time, and the paradox is that the only thing that
keeps you from seeing the eternal is that your mind is stuck in time. So you miss whats
actually here.

Have you ever felt that you really didnt like being here very much and that you wanted some
wonderful eternal experience? Thats what is often thought but not said when the teacher says,
"Be here right now." Inside you are feeling, "I am here, and I dont like being here. I want to
be there, where enlightenment is." If you have a really true teacher, you will be told that you

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are mistaken, that you have never been here. Youve always been in time, therefore, you have
never actually shown up here. Your body was here, but the rest of you went somewhere else.

Your body has been going through this thing called "life," but your head has been going
through this thing called "my fantasy about life" or "my big story about life." You have been
caught in an interpretation about life, so you have never really been here.

Here is the Promised Land. The eternal is here. Have you ever noticed that you have never left
here, except in your mind? When you remember the past, you are not actually in the past.
Your remembering is happening here. When you think about the future, that future projection
is completely here. And when you get to the future, its here. Its no longer the future.

To be here, all you have to do is let go of who you think you are. Thats all! And then you
realize, "Im here." Here is where thoughts arent believed. Every time you come here, you
are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake.
Emptiness that is full. Emptiness that is everything.

Adyashanti

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Freedom and the Unknown

Human beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often what fuels the spiritual
search. This very drive for security and safety is what causes so much misery and confusion.
Freedom is a state of complete and absolute insecurity and not knowing. So, in seeking
security and safety, you actually distance yourself from the freedom you want. There is no
security in freedom, at least not in the sense that we normally think of security. This is, of
course, why it is so free: there's nothing there to grab hold of.

The Unknown is more vast, more open, more peaceful, and more freeing than you ever
imagined it would be. If you don't experience it that way, it means you're not resting there;
you're still trying to know. That will cause you to suffer because you're choosing security over
Freedom. When you rest deeply in the Unknown without trying to escape, your experience
becomes very vast. As the experience of the Unknown deepens, your boundaries begin to
dissolve. You realize, not just intellectually but on a deep level, that you have no idea who or
what you are. A few minutes ago, you knew who you were, you had a history and a
personality, but from this place of not knowing, you question all of that.

Liberated people live in the Unknown and understand that the only reason they know what
they are is because they rest in the Unknown moment by moment without defining who they
are with the mind. You can imagine how easy it is to get caught in the concept of the
Unknown and seek that instead of the Truth. If you seek the concept, you'll never be free, but
if you stop looking to myths and concepts and become more interested in the Unknown than
in what you know, the door will be flung open. Until then, it will remain closed.

I've seen people who have never meditated come to satsang and have a deep experience of the
Unknown, and I've known many who remain in the trance because they stay with the mind's
techniques and strategies. There is no prerequisite for experiencing the Unknown. Everyone
has equal access to it.

Adyashanti 2002

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The Courage to Question

Spiritual seekers are some of the most superstitious people on the planet. Most people come to
spiritual teachers and teachings with a host of hidden beliefs, ideas, and assumptions that they
unconsciously seek to be confirmed. And if they are willing to question these beliefs, they
almost always replace the old concepts with new, more spiritual ones, thinking that these new
concepts are far more real than the old ones.

Even those who have had deep spiritual experiences and awakenings beyond the mind will in
most cases continue to cling to superstitious ideas and beliefs in an unconscious effort to
grasp for the security of the known, the accepted, or the expected. It is this grasping for
security in all its inward and outward forms which limits the perspective of enlightenment and
maintains an inwardly divided condition which is the cause of all suffering and confusion.

You must want to know the truth more than you want to feel secure in order to fully awaken
to the fact that you are nothing but Awakeness itself.

Shortly after I began teaching, I noticed that almost everyone coming to see me held a
tremendous number of superstitious ideas and beliefs that were distorting their perceptions
and limiting their scope of spiritual inquiry. What was most surprising was that in almost all
cases, even those who had deep and profound experiences of spiritual awakening continued to
hold onto superstitious ideas and beliefs which severally limited the depth of experience and
expression of true awakening.

Over time I began to see how delicate and challenging it was for most seekers to find the
courage to question any and all ideas and beliefs about the true nature of themselves, the
world, others, and even enlightenment itself. In almost every person, every religion, every
group, every teaching and every teacher, there are ideas, beliefs, and assumptions that are
overtly or covertly not open to question. Often these unquestioned beliefs hide superstitions
which are protecting something which is untrue, contradictory, or being used as justification
for behavior which is a less than enlightened.

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The challenge of enlightenment is not simply to glimpse the awakened condition, nor even to
continually experience it, but to be and express it as yourself in the way you move in this
world. In order to do this, you must come out of hiding behind any superstitious beliefs and
find the courage to question everything, otherwise you will continue to hold onto superstitions
which distort your perception and expression of that which is only ever awake.

Adyashanti 1999

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How You Treat Others

Spiritual people often want unconditional support and understanding from their friends,
family, and mates, but all too often seem blind to their own shortcomings when it comes to
the amount of unconditional support and understanding that they give to others. I have seen
many spiritual people become obsessed with how unspiritual others are and assume an
arrogant and superior attitude while completely missing the fact that they themselves are not
nearly as spiritually enlightened as they would like to think they are.

Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely you interact with others
with all others, not just those who support you in the way that you want. How you interact
with those who do not support you shows how enlightened you really are.

As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have not taken full
responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making
demands on others and life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but
Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for
you to be happy.

It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered
to be who and what you are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a liberating
effect on others. The biggest challenge for most spiritual seekers is to surrender their self
importance, and see the emptiness of their own personal story. It is your personal story that
you need to awaken from in order to be free.

To give up being either ignorant or enlightened is the mark of liberation and allows you to
treat others as your Self. What I am describing is the birth of true Love.

Adyashanti 1998

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True Meditation
True meditation has no direction, goals, or method. All methods aim at achieving a certain
state of mind. All states are limited, impermanent and conditioned. Fascination with states
leads only to bondage and dependency. True meditation is abidance as primordial
consciousness.

True meditation appears in consciousness spontaneously when awareness is not fixated on

objects of perception. When you first start to meditate, you notice that awareness is always
focused on some object: on thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, memories, sounds, etc.
This is because the mind is conditioned to focus and contract upon objects. Then the mind
compulsively interprets what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It
begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.

In true meditation all objects are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort
should be made to manipulate or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the
emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial
awareness itself. Primordial awareness (consciousness) is the source in which all objects arise
and subside.

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind's compulsive contraction around
objects will fade. Silence of being will come more clearly into consciousness as a welcoming
to rest and abide. An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will
facilitate the presence of silence and stillness to be revealed as your natural condition.

Silence and stillness are not states and therefore cannot be produced or created. Silence is the
non-state in which all states arise and subside. Silence, stillness and awareness are not states
and can never be perceived in their totality as objects. Silence is itself the eternal witness
without form or attributes.

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As you rest more profoundly as the witness, all objects take on their natural functionality, and
awareness becomes free of the mind's compulsive contractions and identifications. It returns
to its natural non-state of Presence.

The simple yet profound question "Who Am I?" can then reveal one's self not to be the
endless tyranny of the ego-personality, but objectless Freedom of Being -- Primordial
Consciousness in which all states and all objects come and go as manifestations of the Eternal
Unborn Self that YOU ARE.

Adyashanti 1999

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The Only Price Giving up our positions

Life without a reason, a purpose, a position... the mind is frightened of this because then "my
life" is over with, and life lives itself and moves from itself in a totally different dimension.
This way of living is just life moving. That's all.

As soon as the mind pulls out an agenda and decides what needs to change, that's unreality.
Life doesn't need to decide who's right and who's wrong. Life doesn't need to know the "right"
way to go because it's going there anyway. Then you start to get a hint of why the mind, in a
deep sense of liberation, tends to get very quiet. It doesn't have its job anymore. It has its
usefulness, but it doesn't have its full-time occupation of sustaining an intricately fabricated
house of cards.

This stillness of awareness is all there is. It's all one. This awareness and life are one thing,
one movement, one happening, in this moment -- unfolding without reason, without goal,
without direction. The ultimate state is ever present and always now. The only thing that
makes it difficult to find that state and remain in that state is people wanting to retain their
position in space and time. "I want to know where I'm going. I want to know if I've arrived. I
want to know who to love and hate. I want to know. I don't really want to be; I want to know.
Isn't enlightenment the ultimate state of knowing?" No. It's the ultimate state of being. The
price is knowing.

This is the beautiful thing about the truth: ever-present, always here, totally free, given freely.
It's already there. That which is ever-presently awake is free, free for the "being." But the only
way that there's total and final absolute homecoming is when the humanness presents itself
with the same unconditionality. Every time a human being touches into that unconditionality,
it's such peace and fulfillment.

In your humanity, there's the natural expression of joy and love and compassion and caring
and total unattachment. Those qualities instantly transmute into humanness when you touch
into emptiness. Emptiness becomes love. That's the human experience of emptiness, that
source, that ever-present awakeness. For the humanness to lay itself down -- your mind, your

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body, your hopes, your dreams, everything -- to lay itself down in the same unconditional
manner in which awareness is ever present, only then is there the direct experience of unity,
that you and the highest truth are really one thing. It expresses itself through your humanity,
through openness, through love. The divine becomes human and the human becomes divine -not in any "high and mighty" sense, but just in the sense of reality. That's the way it is.

The only price is all of our positions. The only price is that you stop paying a price.

Adyashanti 2004

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Selling Water by the River

Many seekers do not take full responsibility for their own liberation, but wait for one big,
final spiritual experience which will catapult them fully into it. It is this search for the final
liberating experience which gives rise to a rampant form of spiritual consumerism in which
seekers go from one teacher to another, shopping for enlightenment as if shopping for sweets
in a candy store. This spiritual promiscuity is rapidly turning the search for enlightenment into
a cult of experience seekers. And, while many people indeed have powerful experiences, in
most cases these do not lead to the profound transformation of the individual, which is the
expression of enlightenment.

In speaking regularly with spiritual seekers, it dawned on me one day how addicted so many
of them are to the power of charisma. They swap stories about how powerful this or that
teacher is and compare experiences. They get a charge from it, many mistaking charisma for
enlightenment. Charisma attracts at all levels: political, sexual, spiritual, etc., and it feeds the
ego's desire to feel special. The ego loves getting hits of power it's like a form of spiritual
candy. The candy may be sweet but can you live on it? Does it make you free?

Freedom is not necessarily exciting; it's just free. Very peaceful and quiet, so very quiet. Of
course, it is also filled with joy and wonder, but it is not what you imagine. It is much, much
less. Many mistake the intoxicating power of otherworldly charisma for enlightenment. More
often than not it is simply otherworldly, and not necessarily free or enlightened. In order to be
truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because if
feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true.
This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the
choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this
desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this
desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one's deepest
integrity.

In my experience, everyone will say they want to discover the Truth, right up until they
realize that the Truth will rob them of their deepest held ideas, beliefs, hopes, and dreams.

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The freedom of enlightenment means much more than the experience of love and peace. It
means discovering a Truth that will turn your view of self and life upside-down. For one who
is truly ready, this will be unimaginably liberating. But for one who is still clinging in any
way, this will be extremely challenging indeed. How does one know if they are ready? One is
ready when they are willing to be absolutely consumed, when they are willing to be fuel for a
fire without end.

If you start playing the game of being an "enlightened somebody," the true teacher is going to
call you on it. He or she is going to expose you, and that exposure is going to hurt. Because
the ego will be there, standing in the light of Truth, exposed and humiliated. Of course, the
ego will cry "foul!" It will claim that the teacher made a mistake and begin to justify itself in
an effort to put its protective clothing back on. It will begin to spin justifications with
incredible subtlety and deceptiveness. This is where real spiritual sadhana (practice) begins.
This is where it all becomes very real and the student discovers whether he or she truly wants
to be free, or merely wants to remain as a false, separate, and self-justifying ego. This
crossroad inevitably comes and is always challenging. It separates the true seeker from the
false one. The true seeker will be willing to bare the grace of humility, whereas the false
seeker will run from it. Thus begins the true path to enlightenment, granted only to those
willing to be nobody. Discovering your "nobodyness" opens the door to awakening as
beingness, and beyond that to the Source of all beingness.

Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special it's not. If you feel special in
any way, then enlightenment has not occurred. I meet a lot of people who think they are
enlightened and awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual experience.
They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a badge of honor. They sit among friends
and talk about how awake they are while sipping coffee at a cafe.

The funny thing about enlightenment is that when it is authentic, there is no one to claim it.
Enlightenment is very ordinary; it is nothing special. Rather than making you more special, it
is going to make you less special. It plants you right in the center of a wonderful humility and
innocence. Everyone else may or may not call you enlightened, but when you are enlightened
the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. I use the
word enlightenment all the time not to point you toward it but to point you beyond it. Do not
get stuck in enlightenment.
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Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and
away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This
movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the
sense of "me" strengthens itself this way. It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks
consciousness into a trance of identification. Identification with what? Identification with the
continuous loop of suffering. After all, who is suffering? The "me" is suffering. And who is
this me? It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and
aversion. You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream. Don't try
to change the dream, because trying to change it is just another movement in the dream. Look
at the dream. Be aware of the dream. That awareness is It. Become more interested in the
awareness of the dream than in the dream itself. What is that awareness? Who is that
awareness? Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer. Be It.

Enlightenment means the end of all division. It is not simply having an occasional experience
of unity beyond all division, it is actually being undivided. This is what nonduality truly
means. It means there is just one Self, without a difference or gap between the profound
revelation of Oneness and the way it is perceived and lived every moment of life. Nonduality
means that the inner revelation and the outer expression of the personality are one and the
same. So few seem to be interested in the greater implication contained within profound
spiritual experiences, because it is the contemplation of these implications which quickly
brings to awareness the inner divisions existing within most seekers.

Spiritual people can be some of the most violent people you will ever meet. Mostly, they are
violent to themselves. They violently try to control their minds, their emotions, and their
bodies. They become upset with themselves and beat themselves up for not rising up to the
conditioned mind's idea of what it believes enlightenment to be. No one ever became free
through such violence. Why is it that so few people are truly free? Because they try to
conform to ideas, concepts, and beliefs in their heads. They try to concentrate their way to
heaven. But Freedom is about the natural state, the spontaneous and unselfconscious
expression of beingness. If you want to find it, see that the very idea of a someone who is in
control is a concept created by the mind. Take one step backward into the unknown.

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There is nothing more insidiously destructive to the attainment of liberation than self-doubt
and cynicism. Doubt is a movement of the conditioned mind that always claims that It's not
possible, that Freedom is not possible for me. Doubt always knows; it "knows" that
nothing is possible. And in this knowing, doubt robs you of the possibility of anything truly
new or transformative from happening. Furthermore, doubt is always accompanied by a
pervasive cynicism that unconsciously puts a negative spin on whatever it touches. Cynicism
is a world view which protects the ego from scrutiny by maintaining a negative stance in
relationship to what it does not know, does not want to know, or cannot know. Many spiritual
seekers have no idea how cynical and doubt-laden they actually are. It is this blindness and
denial of the presence of doubt and cynicism that makes the birth of a profound trust
impossible, a trust without which final liberation will always remain simply a dream.

All fear comes from thought in the form of memory (past) or projection (future). Thought
creates time: past, present, and future. So fear exists and comes from the perceived existence
of time. To be free of fear is to be free of time. Since time is a creation of thought, to be free
of fear you must be free of thought. Consequently, it is important to awaken and experience
your Self outside of thought, existing as eternity. So question all notions of yourself that are
creations of thought and of time of past, present, and future. Experience your eternalness,
your holiness, your awakeness until you are convinced that you are never subject to the
movement of thought, of fear, or of time. To be free of fear is to be full of Love.

Many spiritual seekers get stuck in emptiness, in the absolute, in transcendence. They
cling to bliss, or peace, or indifference. When the self-centered motivation for living
disappears, many seekers become indifferent. They see the perfection of all existence and find
no reason for doing anything, including caring for themselves or others. I call this "taking a
false refuge." It is a very subtle egoic trap; it's a fixation in the absolute and all unconscious
form of attachment that masquerades as liberation. It can be very difficult to wake someone
up from this deceptive fixation because they literally have no motivation to let go of it. Stuck
in a form of divine indifference, such people believe they have reached the top of the
mountain when actually they are hiding out halfway up its slope.

Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the realm of transcendence. To be
fixated in the absolute is simply the polar opposite of being fixated in the relative. With the
dawning of true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of impersonal Love and
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wisdom that never fixates in any realm of experience. To awaken to the absolute view is
profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true
nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the
empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only
looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then your heart will be flooded with a
Love that you cannot contain.

Maybe I can point you to the great Reality within you. Maybe you will awaken to the direct
experience of Self-realization. Maybe you will catch the fire of transmission. But there is one
thing that no one can give you: the honesty and integrity that alone will bring you completely
to the other shore. No one can give you the strength of character necessary for profound
spiritual experience to become the catalyst for the evolutionary transformation called
"enlightenment." Only you can find that passion within that burns with an integrity that will
not settle for anything less than the Truth.

Enlightenment has nothing to do with states of consciousness. Whether you are in ego
consciousness or unity consciousness is not really the point. I have met many people who
have easy access to advanced states of consciousness. Though for some people this may come
very easily, I also notice that many of these people are no freer than anyone else. If you don't
believe that the ego can exist in very advanced states of consciousness, think again. The point
isn't the state of consciousness, even very advanced ones, but an awake mystery that is the
source of all states of consciousness. It is even the source of presence and beingness. It is
beyond all perception and all experience. I call it "awakeness." To find out that you are empty
of emptiness is to die into an aware mystery, which is the source of all existence. It just so
happens that that mystery is in love with all of its manifestation and non-manifestation. You
find your Self by stepping back out of yourself.

Ramana Maharshi's gift to the world was not that he realized the Self. Many people have had
a deep realization of the Self. Ramana's real gift was that he embodied that realization so
thoroughly. It is one thing to realize the Self; it is something else altogether to embody that
realization to the extent that there is no gap between inner revelation and its outer expression.
Many have glimpsed the realization of Oneness; few consistently express that realization
through their humanness. It is one thing to touch a flame and know it is hot, but quite another
to jump into that flame and be consumed by it.
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First published in the Inner Directions Journal, Fall/Winter 1999.

Adyashanti 1999

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