One of the greatest myths is that spiritual awakening involves reaching, maintaining, or recreating a particular state, whether it’s a state of peace, bliss, non-conceptualization, silence, or some other state. Continuing to view spiritual awakening in this way perpetuates seeking as the mind attempts to seek comfortable states and avoid uncomfortable states.
Living Realization is the recognition that your primary identity is present awareness. Awareness is the permanent, unchanging, unmoving opening through which each and every temporary state comes and goes. The key here is that every state is temporary, no matter how spiritual or unspiritual the state appears to be.
States are appearances. We suffer and seek when there is identification with and emphasis on certain states and avoidance, dismissal, or escape from other states. This results in a time-bound cycle of dualistic seeking. In this cycle, our happiness seems so elusive. We always want to feel different, better, freer, or more at peace. We don’t see that the very seeking after future states makes the present moment feel as though it is lacking.
Living Realization defines the spiritual search very simply as wanting something to happen other than what is happening now. Virtually everyone in the world is on a spiritual search, whether they realize it or not. One definition of the simulated self is “the constant movement towards future for a sense of completion.” Regardless of whether we have been seeking spiritual awakening for years or have been engaged in seeking happiness in material items, career, attention, fame, relationships, food, sex, drugs, or anything else, this basic fact remains: to seek any state other than the one that is appearing now is to continue in the story of the time-bound, thought-based simulated self.
As we stated earlier, there are many different kinds of temporary states including but not limited to the following: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, drug-induced or altered state, witnessing, emptiness, fullness, conflict, confusion, doubt, calmness, agitation, enthusiasm, uncertainty, certainty, relaxation, nervousness, peace, elation, frustration, freedom, bondage, depression, excessive thinking, non-conceptualization, illness, boredom, and any other temporary mode or condition of being.
As with all appearances, there is nothing to manipulate, get rid of, maintain, seek, recreate or do with regard to any state that appears. States are temporary appearances of awareness. They are not separate from awareness. To say that they are not separate just means that it is impossible to experience a state without awareness.
Living Realization is not about merely witnessing states in some detached way. To be detached, there must be a person who is separate from the state and who feels detached from the state. In recognizing awareness as your real identity, the division between the space and what is happening in the space is seen to be non-existent. There is no separate you bringing the state about. It simply appears. There is also no separate you who can control or bring about the end of the state. It simply disappears. In this seeing, every state is allowed to be by no one.
In this recognition, there is only the state that is happening. There is no movement to resist what is happening. And if a movement to resist a state arises, that movement is also completely seen and allowed to be. To want to suppress or escape a presently-arising state or seek or recreate a future state is to try to block the natural, effortless, creative, and loving movement of life itself.
One of the most common traps in the spiritual search is what Living Realization calls the “oscillation.” In seeing through the simulated self, we experience moments, even sustained periods, of peace, joy, freedom, calmness, love, or bliss. During these states there is a sense of “I’ve got it.” The mind unconsciously associates these states with spiritual awakening. Whenever the mind dualistically labels anything in this way, it polarizes the opposite states. Therefore, in the moment a painful or less desirable state arises such as frustration, confusion, doubt, or boredom, there is a sense of “I’ve lost it.” There is a movement to recreate or seek the previous, desirable state. We then go looking for our lost freedom or peace. The spiritual search continues as an oscillation between moments of peace or freedom and moments of confusion, doubt, or separation.
As with all appearances, the invitation here is to recognize present awareness as your real identity. Positive and negative, and spiritual and unspiritual, states appear in what you are. They are not what you are. In this recognition, it is seen that the oscillation is happening in awareness. It is not true that we are moving in and out of enlightenment or awakening. All that is happening is that states are appearing and disappearing in what we are — present awareness. That recognition tends to quiet the oscillation.
Remember, keep it simple! Above all else, recognize present awareness right now. Don’t move to manipulate states. Don’t go chasing future states. Don’t try to recreate past states. Don’t escape present, uncomfortable states. See that states are not separate from awareness. They effortlessly come and go within unmoving, unchanging awareness.