Last week I held a session at the Club about spiritual awakening and recommended a book, an excerpt from which you will find just below.
The most heated discussion was sparked by the author’s position that one of the signs of spiritual awakening is the cessation of seeking. Any seeking.
In other words, all questions on the topics of “who am I”, “where am I going”, “what should I do”, “what is my purpose”, and so on disappear.
I would be happy to hear your opinion. But first, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the excerpts from the book on this page or download the entire passage via the link at the end of the page.
Alena
From the book “The End of Your World: Uncensored Conversations on the Nature of Enlightenment” by Adyashanti
All over the world right now, one phenomenon is being observed: more and more people are beginning to awaken, receiving genuine, authentic glimpses of reality.
I mean those moments when a person loses their usual sense of self and the world, and a much vaster reality opens up before them, surpassing all their previous knowledge.
The experience of awakening happens differently for different people. For some, the awakened state may persist, while for others it is merely fleeting glimpses that last only a fraction of a second.
But in such an instant, a person completely loses the sense of “I” — their entire perception of the world suddenly changes, they stop feeling separate from the rest of the world. This can be compared to waking up from a dream — you don’t even realize you are asleep until something wakes you up.
The Beginning of Awakening
Self-disclosure, as I speak of it, is traditionally called spiritual awakening, because a person awakens from the sleep of separation generated by the egoistic mind.
We realize — often quite suddenly — that our sense of self, formed and composed of our ideas, beliefs, and perceptions, does not correspond to who we truly are.
With the beginning of awakening, this entire world begins to crumble. When we lose the sense of our “I,” the entire world we knew before also disappears.
At such a moment — whether it is just a glimpse or a more prolonged experience — we suddenly realize with extraordinary clarity that what we truly are is by no means limited to the small “I” we previously believed ourselves to be.
Here is the simplest thing that can be said about the experience of awakening: a change in a person’s perception occurs. This is the essence of awakening. A person stops perceiving themselves as a separate individuality and begins to feel themselves — if one can speak of any sense of “I” after such a change in perception — as something far more universal, as everything and everyone simultaneously.
In genuine awakening, there is a clear realization that awakening has nothing to do with the personality. It is the universal Spirit or universal consciousness that awakens and begins to become aware of itself.
Rather, it is not the “I” that awakens, but we awaken from the dream of the “I.” We, as we truly are, awaken from the dream of the seeker. We awaken from the dream of seeking.
Upon awakening, we discover that we are not a thing, not a person, not a separate entity at all. We are that which manifests in all things, in all experiences, in all personalities. We are that which, through its own dreaming, generates an entire world. In spiritual awakening, it is revealed to us that the inexpressible and indescribable is who we are.
Read about the difference between spiritual development, evolution, and imitation of development
Awakening is not what you imagine
In reality, when it comes to awakening, it is much more accurate to speak about what we lose, rather than what we gain. We not only lose ourselves — that idea of ourselves that we had — but also our entire former perception of the world.
And this is truly an astonishing experience: it is completely unlike what you imagine.
In fact, if the awakening is genuine, it must differ from what we expect. This is because all our ideas about awakening lie within the sphere of the “sleep state.” As long as our consciousness remains in this state, we cannot imagine anything else that would go beyond its boundaries.
How does life change after awakening?
With awakening also comes a complete transformation of our entire perception of life — or at least, it begins.
The thing is, awakening, no matter how beautiful and amazing this experience may be, often brings with it a feeling of disorientation. You awaken as the One, but you still have your entire human structure — body, mind, personality. And for this human structure, awakening often turns out to be very disorienting.
In reality, the spiritual process before and after awakening is no different. It’s just that after awakening, the vision of this process changes — like a bird’s-eye view compared to the perspective of someone on the ground.
Before awakening, we don’t know who we are. We consider ourselves a separate person, with our own separate body, living in a world distinct from us.
After awakening, we continue to live in the same world, but we already know that we are not limited by this body and this personality and, in reality, are not separate from the world around us.
One of the signs of genuine awakening is the end of seeking
When genuine awakening occurs, it becomes perfectly clear to us who and what we are. Such a question no longer stands before us; it is resolved.
And therefore, one of the signs of genuine awakening is the end of seeking. The inner impulse, urge, or drive no longer arises. We have seen that the seeker possesses only relative reality, and they have disappeared.
In a sense, the seeker has fulfilled their task. They provided the necessary impulse, the driving force that helped consciousness or Spirit to come out of identification with the state of sleep and return to its natural state of being.
>> Download an excerpt from the book