A lot has been, is, and will be said on spiritual awakening but what is rarely said is that it is the most simple thing that will ever happen to “you”.
Spiritual awakening is often imagined as a sudden sort of magical projection in a world of light, peace, and happiness, detached from the reality of daily life, it is not the case at all. This is just a fantasy elaborated by the mind.
Spiritual awakening simply is the realization that you are not just that limited, and changeable person defined by a name, traditions, culture, past, and a specific personality but that you essentially are that permanent field of awareness in which that impermanent person seems to exist along with the rest of the world. It is that permanent field of awareness where all experiences rise and subside that I call Presence, it is your permanent self, your essential nature, and it is the main subject of that blog.
Spiritual awakening is often considered something gained from accumulating more and more layers of spiritual knowledge and spiritual practice but it is the opposite. Spiritual awakening is about dropping and letting go, it is about calling off the “horizontal” search in the world of thoughts and realizing that what you are searching for, YOU, is HERE and NOW. Not just as a person, a body, a mind, or an emotion but essentially as pure presence.
Awakening is just the revelation of a new point of view, a shift of the gravity center of consciousness, it does not suddenly change the substance of the personality but it does remove a lot of the fears and anxiety attached to the sole identification to the impermanent non-self. The establishment of peace and happiness is a gradual process that will naturally unfold as the newfound vision is embodied and integrated into the personality.
Spiritual awakening is not an achievement like building a house. When it happens there is nothing left to look at, there is only presence. Awakening happens when all layers slowly accumulated by the mind have collapsed, this is what spiritual awakening is all about, you walk out of the river of impermanence to embrace your real permanent naked nature as pure presence. It is also at that point that the real post-awakening work begins. It is a subject that I will largely cover in this little book.
Spiritual awakening is just a temporary milestone. The embodiment of the newfound vision after awakening is a gradual process that will unfold over time. Hence, awakening does not define, in any way, a man or woman of good character. Embodiment is an unpredictable process as it greatly depends on the nature of the personality, its specific lines of least resistance, the opening of the heart, and the history attached to its mental, emotional, and physical substance.
You wrote, “embrace your real permanent naked nature as pure presence”. But how do you know it is permanent? What is “pure presence” made of? It seems to me that spiritual people make big claims but with weak evidence. The evidence just seems to be just intuition or quotes from spiritual authorities. It would be nice if there is a permanent end to suffering, but I see no evidence.
Hi Martin, your remarks are completely valid.
Would any evidence of a possible end to suffering bring inner peace to you straight away? I know we like answers but would answers to the deepest mysteries bring inner peace to everyone ?
Essentially I am only sure of one thing is that I do experience the world and this person. If we call that experience my sphere of consciousness I then become aware of energies circulating within that sphere, some are pleasant some less pleasant.
If we honestly look at the cause of our pain and discomfort we will always find conflicting energies. If we ask ourselves « how are those energies put in motion » we will always come down to thoughts, emotions and actions put in motion based on what we see or think we see of ourselves and of the world.
What I am saying is that, thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions are only directly associated with what you see, what you believe, what you define as your reality.
What I called Presence is what I perceive as this unified field of consciousness shared by all and everything. That silent “space” from which emerge thoughts, feelings, actions, words and eventually what we call the world. What it is made of ? That would be a thing then wouldn’t it 🙂
An occultist called Helena Petrovna Blavatsky said that it’s not really necessary to try to understand the ultimate reality as it is not possible for finite perceptions, she use to call that the “circle pass not”.
This being said the Presence I am talking about is instantly perceivable…by itself…not by the mind. It’s nothing difficult in the end, it’s a bit like those 3D magic pictures, some people see it straight away, it will take longer for others but when you do see it you realise it was just a set of mind, a way to look at it.
That’s all fair enough as far as it goes. The problem is that I don’t see why people settle there. They like the positive feelings, and stop because they think they are enlightened or have reached the end of the road because it matches what the scriptures and gurus say. But the moment you question the conclusions, the whole thing is seen as unsatisfactory. If we are eternal, then it seems that suffering will recur. So any spiritual realisation/freedom is just a temporary rest. But if someone knows for sure that the end of suffering is permanent, then I’m looking for some kind of evidence, e.g. “I saw god and She explained to me how suffering can end for me forever, or She showed me how to never fall into suffering again. But there’s nothing even remotely close to that in everything I’ve read or experienced. So I would say that some kind of spiritual realisation is good for this lifetime, but there’s not proof that it’s the end of the road. Blavatsky saying that we are too limited to know is depressing. It means we could suffer miserably next life and over and over forever. Nightmare!
Chasing enlightenment is not the path of the seeker of truth, the seeker of truth is unconditionally dedicated to the unveiling of the essence, even if that means it’s complete annihilation in the process. There is a lot of spiritual tourism and fast food awakening out there nowadays, that was predictable in a world ruled but the non-self.
We all have our essentials and questioning I guess but for me, it stops at “how can I be at peace here and now” and I do proceed from there.
Over time I also did realise that being strongly and solely identified to a defined ego and individual Identity makes life incredibly difficult, especially with the difficult baggage that might comes with it or the self-inflating feeling that could come from beneficial circumstances.
Once you realise that that identity is just a thought, a trick of the mind and has no basis in reality life becomes a lot easier.
Once you realise you are that essentially that unified field of consciousness manifesting through a temporary specific form, life becomes a lot easier.
It also helps when dealing with the idea of death.
As I said in some of my posts we can’t escape our raw humanity but realising we are essentially not just that humanity makes things a bit sweeter.
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