Sacred Inquiry

In sacred inquiry we are looking to evoke experiential insight and wisdom, not merely to collect more information or form yet more beliefs with which to delude ourselves. Sacred inquiry is not simply about finding simplistic answers to life’s big questions; it is about transforming our consciousness so that we are living the answers,

not simply knowing them as pieces of information. The state of our consciousness determines our entire experience of being, as well as what we are capable of knowing and perceiving. Sacred inquiry aims at the transformation of consciousness, for consciousness is perhaps the biggest mystery of all. And yet we take consciousness for granted, rarely stopping to notice or acknowledge, much less appreciate, that consciousness is the one indispensable ingredient in our entire experience of being. Contrary to our most basic human assumption, we are not human beings who possess consciousness—we are consciousness having a very human experience, with all the ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies that this entails.

Your big life questions belong simultaneously to you and to the totality of existence functioning through and as you. The essence of your consciousness turns out to be the essence of all consciousness.

It is using inquiry as a tool to reveal and ultimately transcend our preconceived ideas and opinions so that our consciousness more accurately reflects truth and reality—every question we have arises from within a context of preconceived assumptions, beliefs, and opinions. This is to say that our questions reveal as much about ourselves and our point of view as they do about the subject of our inquiry. Sacred inquiry is not simply about looking for answers to life’s big questions; it is questioning the very assumptions and beliefs that comprise the foundation from which our questions and challenging life issues arise.

We must be willing to suspend the compulsive drive of the ego for quick and convenient answers to our deepest questions and be willing to live in the creative tension between the known and the unknown. This creative tension, when deeply relaxed into, reveals itself to be the source energy of insight and revelation. As counterintuitive as it sounds, we come to greater insight by a willingness to not know—the greatest light is always found in the darkest region of our silent confusion. To sink all the way down into the unknown within you is the way to awaken the greatest leaps of insight and clarity.

Ever since the modern technological revolution has unfolded over the last fifty years, we are all awash, even drowning, in a world of information. But while more information has allowed us to change the world for better and for worse, it has not transformed our consciousness at anything remotely like the speed with which it has transformed human culture and the visible world. This is because information helps one create better models and descriptions of things, allowing us to manipulate material reality, but it does not free consciousness from its own psychological prisons. Sacred inquiry is using the power of focused attention and curiosity in order to spark greater insight and experiential understanding. It is a way of using the mind in order to go beyond the mind.

My aim is not primarily to answer the question as much as it is an attempt to spark insight from within the questioner. For insight is not only the arising of useful information from a formerly unknown dimension of the psyche; it is also a visceral shift of perspective. It is this shift of perspective, or consciousness, that is the true well-source of insightful understanding.

What this means for me as a teacher is that whenever I am responding to a student’s question, I am both responding to where the student is, in their current level of understanding, as well as opening an avenue for them to take the next step to a new and deeper level of insight.

That is why, with the dawning of enlightenment, there is nothing to attain or grab hold of—there is only the truth as it appears and functions at each and every moment, both in and out of the game, serenely unattached yet fully and intimately engaged in the dynamic now. It is to see through the eyes of eternity while also being deeply and intimately present as the totality of life at each moment. In this sense, enlightenment is the ultimate paradox. It includes, transcends, and contains the dynamic opposites that comprise all of life.

This requires that you not simply be a passive spectator to the contents of this book, but rather be an active participant in the dynamic relationship of sacred inquiry itself. For inquiry is a relationship between your deepest and most heartfelt questions and the silent expanse of the unknown within you.

1 Transforming Emotions, Feelings of Unworthiness, and Physical Challenges

There is a thread of presence that runs through all, through sickness and health, through happiness and sorrow, through success and defeat. That thread is what you hold to and weave all through your human self, for it is a pure light of conscious being, ever shining and weaving its way through the forest of all of your days.

TRANSMUTING EMOTIONS Transmuting Suffering Q: Why does the mind return, time and time again, to negative experiences from the past? It seems there is energy there that is in need of being transmuted by allowing awareness to come in and illuminate the negative impressions left from negative experiences. Yet sometimes I get caught up in just trying to solve a past negative experience and it turns into a battle of “what ifs.” Is the…

A: The mind returns again and again to unresolved emotional issues for two basic reasons: First, the ego-mind is magnetically drawn to negativity because that is what sustains its point of view. Negativity by its very nature is magnetic; it pulls everything in toward itself much like physical mass creates gravity. Second, negativity is looking for resolution and release. All forms of suffering seek to be free from the grip of sorrow. Sometimes the ways suffering seeks release only create more sorrow, as when one succumbs to blame, shame, victimhood,…

The first and most important step is to remain fully conscious and present in the face of suffering. Because we experience our suffering deeply, we may think we are being fully conscious of it. But to be fully conscious means more than to simply experience suffering; it means to be fully accepting of it in the intimacy of the heart. It means to allow one’s sorrow (not only your own, but the sorrow of all beings) to crack open the heart. It means to stop defending yourself against your own pain and allow your point of view—your narrative story about your suffering—to open up to new and unexpected perspectives. Holding your suffering in the…

Q: I find that the deeper I go in experiencing “only awareness,” the respites of clear seeing and insight are often followed by more and more…

A: It is often the case that when beginning to open to the perspective of “only awareness,” old toxic emotions and thoughts will arise, sometimes vehemently, as the mind and body seek to release old, painful, and dysfunctional aspects of the emotional pain body. As these waves of destructive thinking and feeling begin to unload themselves into your conscious awareness, it is important to remain open to them, meaning to not go into resistance. This can, of course, be quite a challenge as whatever has been repressed and denied comes rushing up into the light of conscious awareness in an effort to be released. As this is happening, you will experience not only the chaos of repressed material arising but also your resistance to it, which originally caused it to become trapped in your system in the first place. So resistance is also part of…

Here is a concise method to unhook and embrace toxic thoughts and emotions. Keep in mind that one cannot simply read and understand this method; it must be applied each and every time you get a toxic emotion attack: 1. Identify the exact thought and emotion that is occurring. As an example: judging thoughts and unworthy emotions. 2. Once the thought and emotion have been identified, remind yourself, This thought and this emotion are not me, nor are they other than me. It is simply the current emotional weather pattern that is occurring. 3. Notice that the current emotional weather pattern is arising within conscious awareness, like storm clouds arising in the open space of sky. 4. Let go of focusing on the thoughts and emotions (which does not mean to deny or repress them) and notice the space-like quality of awareness. Take whatever time is necessary to acknowledge and get the feel for conscious awareness. 5. Notice how conscious awareness is not caught within the thoughts and emotions. Take a moment to really feel and know this. 6. Notice how conscious awareness is not separate from thoughts and…

8. Feel in your body the welcoming and the embrace of what has been repressed and resisted. 9. Allow yourself to feel the safe and quiet quality of conscious awareness. Repeat as needed as often as is needed. Remember that you are not trying to be perfect at this exercise, only consistent. And part of the resistance to what is arising will be to resist doing this…

One does not need to seek out one’s demons in an endless pursuit of self-improvement. We simply need to face whatever arises with an honest, open, and inquiring mind and heart. As always, we need to rely on our intuition to tell us if some aspect of our conditioning needs to be further resolved. But we don’t need to be meditating looking for our inner demons.

We meditate to realize the

source of our being. And the quickest way to do that is to be still, with a curious mind and an open heart.

Q: When wants arise in the mind, should I let them pass? If not, or if it’s relative, do you have any suggestions on how to tell if the wants are ego-driven or not?

A: Ego-wants contain the element of thirst, in the sense of wanting arising from a feeling of lack. They are the ego seeking to fill itself up and satisfy its sense of emptiness or endless hunger. These wants need to be met directly, meaning experienced directly, because they are covering over the emptiness that lies at the heart of the ego structure. That emptiness must be met directly, unmovingly, because the ego’s sense of lack and unreality is being experienced directly instead of being fed and placated. It can be like sitting in a fire at times—as Saint John called it, “the fire that burns me up but gives me no pain.”

However, there are wants that have more of a sense of inclination, like being inclined toward something or doing something. They do not feel like a thirst or the filling of an emptiness. They are simply life moving in a given direction, life being inclined toward something. They have no feeling of desperation, addiction, or demand. They are, however, a wanting without desire. These are natural and one of the ways our true nature navigates the world. We are, after all, welcome to enjoy our life. As for knowing with certainty what category a given want or desire falls into—certainty is the ego-mind’s game. As the saying goes, “There is nothing certain in this world other than death and taxes.” Let go of the mind’s looking for certainty (because it’s just another way that the ego seeks to gain advantage) and you will become far more intuitively sensitive to the ways of true nature—how it moves, speaks, and its inclinations. You will make mistakes, but that’s how the Way finds its way. Learning to walk begins with one insecure wobbly step, and then one day, you can run without even thinking about it.

Trust the Body’s Wisdom

It is just your body releasing emotions. You may or may not have any idea where the emotions originate from. Just allow whatever happens to happen, trusting that the wisdom of your body knows what it is doing. If there is something that your conscious mind needs to understand, it will arise on its own. Otherwise, try not to get your mind too involved in analyzing why the tears are arising. Trust the body’s wisdom.

A: The anger that you mentioned, which arose from the insight that “my entire life, as it is, is my doing,” is coming from your mind’s resistance (conscious or unconscious) and judgment of this very insight. Imagine having the exact same insight with absolutely no resistance and no judgment. Take a moment now to imagine it. To take full responsibility for your life (which is not judging yourself) is actually a key to being free, because it means that no one, and no past experience, can control or determine your current state of being. The keys to your life, and your freedom, are in

your hands. If you don’t judge yourself for past transgressions, you will then realize the great freedom that you possess. No one—and no past events in your life—needs to change (for there is no changing of the past anyway) in order for you to be happy. Every moment is, in fact, a new and fresh moment—a new beginning. We fail to realize this in exact proportion to how much of the present we filter through our current beliefs, judgments, and interpretations based on past experiences. But all of those beliefs and judgments are being imposed upon the present in the present. And they are all optional. It’s entirely up to you. That is the exact intersection of freedom and bondage.

As these more toxic emotions are allowed to be experienced and felt, your body can purify them from your system. And as your emotions are no longer being suppressed, and are allowed to be purified through your body, your spiritual depth will increase greatly, as will your capacity to embody, in your humanity, your deeper spiritual wisdom and love.

A: Guilt is often a combination of a learned response originating in childhood and a lack of self-forgiveness in the present. Reflect on where this feeling of guilt comes from. Maybe it comes from your parents, society, or religion. Often it comes from all three. See that your current guilt is a learned response, something that you acquired through your life.

A: I want to bring your attention to the fact that grief is itself a form of loving. Of course we grieve when we experience loss, but within the experience of grieving loss, there is love. After all, we grieve for what we love, and part of love is letting go. Even letting go can be an expression of your love. To let go is as much an expression of love as is cherishing someone or something.

Emotional bypassing is when you intentionally use the witnessing state as a means to purposefully avoid feeling or even noticing painful emotions. It’s a spiritual form of being in emotional denial. The true witnessing state is both a freedom from being held captive by whatever you are experiencing and a freedom to experience whatever experience you are having without being possessed by it.

The first and most essential point of deep spiritual inquiry and contemplation is to unhook awareness from being identified with, and possessed by, the flowing content of the body/mind. Only then will awareness naturally return to itself and awaken from the mind’s endless narrative.

The ego-mind is afraid of seeing God everywhere as everything. It makes no sense, but that’s what it does. It’s afraid of dying, but the ego-mind is just a convincing series of thoughts, images, and memories. Thoughts die all the time, from second to second. So you just face the fear until it’s gone, until it has lost its power. When you are no longer afraid of feeling fear, fear has no more hold on you. Please do not fear being afraid. You are just God experiencing itself as fear.

Unworthiness

Masks of the Ego Q: While I was working with the topic of unworthiness, a deep sense of pride came up, which seems as familiar as skin. I recognized in it an ancient need to be reflected through other people’s eyes, and I saw it as inverted unworthiness. The image of my father then came up, especially his constant pushing my life so that I’d be “the best” in everything I do. I wasn’t able to rise to his expectations, and this created sorrow and alienation in me. It ultimately led to a sustained and deep sense of unworthiness. In meditation there has been a lot of release—tears and sorrow—and also forgiveness for this insane and untrue way of seeing and projecting onto life. It was quite clear that it has led to aggression and comes with a deep sense of me against others; it also drives me into unconsciousness. I see lately that this sense of pride pervades everything, although in very subtle ways. I notice that I “report” to anyone around me, even when there’s no relating with them, that I imagine myself better than they are, more beautiful and worthy. I would even imagine people praising me in their

minds. This made me look at the relationship with my father again. I thought I had stopped trying to satisfy his expectations, and mainly I did stop almost a year ago, after I had my first awakening. But I see that I was still trying very subtly to be the best, even if only in my own head, or by resisting that. I’m working now with forgiving him. Although I often feel tenderness for him, it’s still difficult to open up to a full embracing of love, even though I feel this is somehow asked of me. How should I work with this sense of pride? I’m trying to look at it from different vantage points, but ultimately I’m rejecting it since I want it out of my system. Is this perhaps why it’s still sticking around?

A: Both pride and its opposite, unworthiness, are compensations for sorrow. Trying to get rid of either form of compensation simply sustains it. It is truth that liberates, and truth that frees us.

But here’s the thing: You already know that you are neither unworthy nor special (in the sense of pride). You know that neither of these identities signifies who you are, because ultimately both are unsatisfactory and lead to suffering. The problem is that behind both of these masks lies not another or better or more spiritual mask, but the direct experience of no mask. And the direct experience of no mask is something that most people avoid with great resolve, because the familiar and morbid comfort of a known identity is preferable to being stripped down to our unknown radiance.

Not wanting to suffer is understandable and natural, but not wanting to be you is violent. I may be overstating the case for some people, but with most people I meet (95 percent of them) I can viscerally feel their sense of inadequacy. And out of that felt sense of self-image arises an immense amount of human suffering. The circular thinking goes something like this: Because I suffer I must be inadequate, and because I am inadequate I suffer. The inadequacy runs the whole narrative and translates all experience through its filter. So you keep trying to escape being the you that you are. And if you are not careful, this sense and belief in inadequacy will control your whole spiritual quest, leading it in one circle after another. The beginning of the cure for this dreaded disease is to stop rejecting yourself and sink into the nature of your own experience. This is a simplification, of course, but nothing really changes until you stop running from yourself. Stop struggling against yourself! That is what it means to allow everything, yourself included, to be exactly as it is.

Relax into your being—that is the fundamental practice. Who are you beyond being worthy or unworthy? Let all self-image transform into loving presence.

A: So many of our emotional hang-ups, painful beliefs, and arguments with “what is” relate back to our core story. The core story is a bit like the basic dysfunctional programming structure of our ego, which colors all of our perceptions as long as it remains in place and unquestioned. It may be as simple as Life is not safe, or I am unworthy of love, or No one is to be trusted.

A: Having had plenty of experience with pain myself, I can say that the most important thing is to notice any resistance to the pain (mental and/or emotional) and ask if the resistance is necessary. Then ask, Can I let go of resisting this pain for this moment? Just for this moment. Only then can you begin to sense that there is a wider context (the sense of “I am”) that the pain exists within. What does this wider context feel like? The pain exists within the “I am,” but it is not itself the “I am.” How does noticing the context change how you feel about the pain? What does the “I am” feel like? This inquiry can help to unfuse the “I” from the pain—because pain has a tendency to make it feel as if your self and the pain are the same experience. By letting go of resistance to the pain and seeing that it is neither helpful nor necessary, you can then sense into the greater context of the “I am,” or the consciousness within which the pain arises. Pain arises within the greater presence of your being.

Meditation shows you again and again a very simple yet powerful reality—whatever you resist disturbs you, and whatever you accept cannot disturb you. Seeing this simple truth at work in an almost infinite variety of ways in your life can evoke a deeper letting go.

A: As you already know, in the past I have had long periods of exhaustion, coupled with massive amounts of pain. Of course, each of our experiences are unique, but living with physical challenges is so much more common than one might think. I’ll take it for granted that you have done, and continue to do, whatever you can to wisely and compassionately care for your body. With physical challenges, especially prolonged ones, the issue of letting go versus being in resistance is a profound one. What I did was to take time out of the equation. What I mean by this is that I rigorously kept my mind out of future thinking. The way I did that was to imagine that, somehow, I knew with total certainty that my condition would never change. How, then, would I deal with the present moment? Suddenly, resistance made no sense at all. I mean, where was it going to get me? Only to more suffering. (Note: Be careful with this imagining game because if you’re not careful, it can put you into despair. But if you get the real point to this imagining game, you see that even despair will get you nowhere.) In fact, any form of resistance is seen to be exactly what it is—toxic, a kind of psychological poison. And this includes seeing yourself as a victim, which is psychologically toxic.

Perhaps your health challenges are the one thing that will get you to rigorously question your thoughts and will show you that any form of resistance leads you to sorrow. I used to call my physical challenges my harsh spiritual teacher—you know, one of those kick-you-in-the-ass spiritual teachers—because there was no negotiating with that teacher. Resist and suffer, that was the equation. No exceptions. Strangely, when things are very black or white like this, we can come up with a response that is revolutionary. Your physical condition is asking you at every moment: Who are you going to be right now? Are you going to be resistance or despair or depression or anger? Or are you going to be an expression of your true nature? Because you are not your physical condition. You have to deal with it for sure, but it is not you yourself. Who you are is neither sick nor healthy, but rather something beyond them both. Who you are is neither resistance nor acceptance, but something beyond both resistance and acceptance. Who you are is neither healthy nor unhealthy, neither energetic nor energy-less. Who you are is prior to and ever-within healthy and unhealthy bodies.

A: You are obviously very open when working with clients. When you are open, you can be vulnerable to energetic overload if you do not let things (energies, emotions, etc.) go out of you as naturally as they come into you. You need to let go of as fully as you open to. I would also suggest that you practice having a strong inner presence. When the energy of your presence is strong enough, it burns up whatever comes into your energetic field. It almost instantly purifies whatever enters into your field of consciousness. So spend some time in deep silence every day and focus on a strong inner presence. I cannot overemphasize this important practice. Also do some form of energetic clearing and strengthening every day, perhaps two or three times a day. Think of it as energetic hygiene. Qi gong exercises for both clearing and strengthening your qi would be very helpful.

2 Meditation, Inquiry, and Spiritual Practice

Abiding in non-abidance is really the art of letting meditation happen instead of trying to make it happen.

gradually fall away. However, if you let all method go prematurely, you will simply become lost in the narrative of the mind. So first you stabilize the mind, then you gradually let go of the stabilizing method as the mind comes to rest. The meditator cannot bring about the falling away of the meditator; that can only happen spontaneously. The most you can do is to gradually minimize the experience of being the meditator by letting go of effort more and more as the mind becomes more stable, open, and spacious. Then who is the observer? There is simply observing without a center of observation. Finally, the observer and the observed collapse into a singularity.

A: Abiding in non-abiding means clinging to nothing, not even stillness. When there is no clinging onto any state of being, there is no self-centered activity going on. Stillness, in its most spontaneous and authentic sense, is a state of nonresistance. It is not stillness in the conventional sense of non-movement, but in the sense of non-interference by the ego-self.

I suggest you explore stillness arising as a result of nonresistance and non-clinging. Then it will be functional in your daily life and you can begin to see how stillness moves—how one moves as an expression of non-abiding, non-clinging stillness.

How to Meet Obsessive Thinking

A: Let’s start at the beginning. Obsessive thinking arises from fear, anxiety, and struggle—the “me” sustaining itself through the creation of endless narratives. These are the drivers of excessive thinking. So in addition to the meditation practice, you may want to begin to contemplate what you are afraid of, what you are running away from, or what you don’t want to deal with within yourself or your life. By contemplate I mean to identify exactly what fears are driving you. What assumptions are they based on? What are you running from? Rampant thinking is also your mind looking for peace—as if you could think enough or understand enough that your mind could be at peace. But the mind never thinks its way to a lasting peace. In fact, in the mind’s rush to find peace and security, it overlooks the peace that is already present within the presence of awareness. Contemplate what your mind is trying to run away from and what it is looking for. Begin to show your mind that peace is available in the present. Literally bring your mind’s attention to the greater peace of awareness.

A: There is no reason to be at war with your thoughts. They are only thoughts, after all. Even to wish you had no thoughts is still a thought. Imagine that the presence or absence of thoughts means nothing, is of no importance at all. You are not those thoughts. As soon as you allow thoughts to be there, they will have no power to bother you. It is your resistance to and indulgence in thought that creates so many thoughts. Be as you are. With thoughts or without thoughts, you are still pure being. Notice how everything arises and exists within awareness. Feel awareness as an opening, as the context within which thoughts arise and pass away. Rest as that awareness.

Remember that we are engaging in meditation in order to realize the source of all phenomena, including the phenomenon called “you.” Remembering this one simple principle can save you endless amounts of time being lost indulging in, or battling with, all manner of phenomena. It is really a matter of changing the mental habit of the mind from focusing on the endless display of phenomena (though there is nothing wrong with phenomena) to attending to the inner light of being, which for now let’s call “awareness.”

How Can I Go Deeper? Q: I have been meditating for over ten years, and what I have noticed is that my meditation has become quite flat and dull. I feel although I relax into awareness and experience stillness/silence, not much else is going on. I’m wondering what I am missing. How can I go deeper? How do I approach this period of “not much happening”? A: Contemplate the question: For whom is there dullness? Meditation is a means of returning to (or realizing) the truth of your being. Keeping this in mind will bring focus and vividness to your meditations. Being very clear about why one meditates is important because it helps to keep you focused on your deepest yearning and intention. This in turn evokes into living experience the ever-new revelation of reality.

Trying to do so only enhances the “me” and solidifies the very pseudo-entity that meditation endeavors to take you beyond. It is an act of surrender to let go of trying to reproduce the past, but a completely necessary one. Get all of yourself into the present and the doorways to the infinite will naturally open. Surrender is the name of the game. Always, and in all ways.

A: Most people are well served by spending some time in silence every day. It is common today to find people using nondual teaching to justify their avoidance of any type of spiritual practice. However, meditation does not need to be approached as a form of seeking. Rather, it can be viewed as an expression of being. If you go to the “Teachings” section of my website, you can find my description of what I call True Meditation. Read it over a few times and put it into practice each day for twenty or thirty minutes. You can also put it into practice during your everyday activities. The more you do it, the more you will come to understand it within yourself.

Meditation without the Meditator

A: Abiding in non-abiding is letting go of all grasping and attachment to states, and focusing on any single aspect of experience. It’s not that you’re not aware of experience in this state, but rather that you’re not directing the meditation. Essentially, it is meditation without the meditator, which is a very delicate and subtle state of being. Unless the mind is very settled, it is easy for the mind to get distracted and wander. In this form of non-abiding meditation, phenomena will continue to arise, but they do not hook attention into narrowing the focus of awareness down onto the passing phenomena. When it is spontaneously happening, abiding in non-abidance is meditation occurring without any sense of being the meditator, the one who is doing the meditation. This can deepen to the point of being completely absorbed into pure being, where it seems as though phenomena are no longer arising. There is just pure being, absorbed in being, which is a very purifying state of samadhi to enter into. By “purifying,” I mean that simply by being absorbed in such a state of being, many subtle attachments get unhooked at their very roots. Ironically, however, if one makes entering into such a state a goal to achieve, it makes it quite impossible for such a state to happen because the “me” will be activated by having a goal. Abiding in non-abidance is really the art of letting meditation happen instead of trying to make it happen. This kind of meditation occurs within the constraints of practice because it is where method matures into music. In the same way that great musicians take on the constraints of practicing their instruments so that they can completely let go of practice and allow beautiful music to spontaneously arise on its own, we practice meditative technique so that at some point meditation begins to happen spontaneously all on its own. Meditative method turns into music. It seems that you are starting to get the feel of this letting go and letting happen aspect of meditation. It reveals a breadth and depth of being that is breathtaking.

Allow the shadow to reveal itself without being moved by it, but don’t separate yourself from it either. As the shadow arises within consciousness, resist any temptation to either hide from it or act on it. When you get to the point where your shadow can neither scare you nor intimidate you, it will begin to liberate itself within the light of consciousness.

A: Bringing your inquiry into meditation is a great thing to do, as long as you have a question that relates to the ultimate nature of reality and is vitally relevant to you. If so, simply let your question arise, and let it go into the silence and be still. Then each time your question arises in your mind again, you let it go into the silence and be still. This way, your question leads you deeper into silence, and the silence leads you deeper into your question. Question and silence are then functioning as a dynamic whole, making way for revelation and awakening.

What are you when there is no “you” there? What are you then? Bring this type of investigation into your meditations. At this point it will be very helpful and revealing.

A: There are two aspects to inquiry, and both take courage. The first is to use inquiry to reveal what you are not. To let inquiry show you how you have identified yourself with a whole array of ideas, beliefs, judgments, personas, and opinions takes both intention and courage. It takes courage to clearly face the false self that we have clung to and the ways that we have become addicted to approval, acknowledgment, victimhood, judgmentalism, power, etc. The second aspect of inquiry is surrender. It also takes great courage to surrender into the abyss of silence beyond all knowing, to go to the very root of emptiness where we encounter the ground of all being. Go to the very root of the “I” and then beyond it. That is inquiry!

I am sometimes frustrated to see myself still thinking and acting in ways that are motivated by old, repetitive patterns of the false self. Actually, the stillness makes these happenings clearer and more painful for me. How can I use this abiding stillness to be fully awakened and see the divine in all things? A: The old repetitive mind states continue to arise due to both conscious and unconscious beliefs. Until those beliefs are acknowledged and uprooted, they will continue to operate. One must very clearly see the underlying beliefs that keep a particular piece of conditioning intact. This requires some real dedication and focus. And once a belief is uncovered, you must really inquire as to whether or not it is true, as well as seeing the ways it causes both separation and sorrow.

Your Cutting Edge of Realization

A: The question you raise about aspiration is a very important one. Let me take the first thing that you came up with, love. You have clarity about how important the reality of love is for you, but your question about exactly what love is is your cutting edge of realization. It is how your soul (or being) is calling you deeper into itself. Such a calling will always take you to the edge of your current knowing and beckon you beyond it to a deeper experiential knowing and an experience of the fullness of being. To know that love is a high value and aspiration to you helps gather and orient your energy and attention toward that aspiration. To further define what love is, is not only unnecessary but counterproductive—because you are not looking for a better definition of love but a deeper existential realization of love. Hold the question, What is love? in silent contemplation until love reveals itself in its fullness. This takes real patience and dedication, and an inclination to be open to the dimension of being that lies in the heart of stillness. It’s a very big question that deserves very big devotion.

Spiritual Practice

Do you see meditation as a needed practice for becoming completely whole in the human level? Right now it feels so to me; it lets me feel inner energies more clearly and strongly and helps me descend to inner and outer levels. A: Years of teaching have shown me that the vast majority of people would be well served by doing some consistent meditation. Meditation should not be viewed as an exercise in seeking (although many people see it that way); rather, it should be seen as a time to rest the mind and abide in stillness. Such abiding has great benefits—mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The ability to be still opens the doorway to the infinite.

When Are Exercises No Longer Necessary? Q: Your exercises have been very enjoyable and powerful. I go on “blessing walks” freely, silently offering blessings to people, dogs, and birds that I encounter along the way. The smile on my face gets bigger and bigger with each blessing on the walk. It feels like I am filling myself with love. The heart lights up with a great brightness. The experience is one of everything being love.

A: Yes, at some point exercises are no longer necessary when they have evoked the quiet and silent current of love, which is always there. We all need to be aware of when an exercise or practice has done its job, and when what it is trying to evoke has come to life and begins to live within us in its own spontaneous way. Then the exercise or practice can be put down, and we can allow the living reality of love to reveal itself all by itself. Exercises will always be there to use as needed to reestablish connection if it should become clouded over by circumstance. I thank you for sharing your experience and was touched by your sensitivity and trust of the spontaneous, revealing, and subtle ways that love revealed itself to you.

A: At a certain point, meditation is no longer a goal-centered activity, meaning that it is no longer experienced as a form of seeking. After a profound awakening, the seeking energy and drive will naturally fade away, so there may seem to no longer be a reason to meditate. I am not going to suggest that you either should or should not be meditating, or that you even need to be meditating. However, I will say that in my experience, even when there is no longer any seeking or drive to attain awakening, meditation is a wonderful and powerful means of engaging in the ever-unfolding and constantly revealing implications of the awakened state. That is to say that a whole lot of further clarification can arise simply by being dedicated to some silent time each day. Whether or not that needs to take the form of formal meditation is up to each of us.

A: It’s important to remember that when doing any good spiritual practice, you are going against the grain of much of your conditioning, so it takes some real patience and consistency to establish new ways of being and responding. The mind only knows its old and familiar patterns of conditioning, and although painful, the mind will reflexively return to these old patterns until at least two things happen. The first is that you come to see with clarity and understanding just how conditioned, untrue, and dysfunctional much of the mind is. To see this without judgment, guilt, or blame is essential, because indulging in any one of these will tie you right back into the conditioned view of ego. The second is to practice realizing and/or establishing an internal point of reference which is independent of the mind’s conditioned point of view. Ideally you would simply do the practice without indulging in the mind’s conditioned self-talk and evaluation. This is easier said than done, but it can be done if one is very patient and consistent. The key is to simply do the practice without taking the fluctuations of the mind too seriously. Of course, this can all be done for you to varying degrees by the grace of realization, but realization tends to come (with occasional exceptions) to those who are committed and serious about their spiritual lives. And even with realization, more often than not, there is still much housecleaning of old, conditioned views to be done. No one should be waiting for grace to do everything for them. The greatest grace is your capacity to be open, committed, and patient. The inner peace of awareness is always there, even when it seems to be absent. With experience you will take the fluctuations of your mind less and less seriously—not because you are trying to control or deny them, but because an inner silence has become your new orientation and nucleus of attention. Always remember that spiritual practice is not about doing it perfectly, but about the openness and sincerity with which you apply it.

A: While each person will have their own personal spiritual motivations (at least for a while), the ultimate spiritual impulse belongs to the totality of life. The spiritual impulse is life’s, or the totality’s, drive to become fully self-aware. Life is seeking to know itself ever more fully, to experience itself more fully, to become self-aware. So the ultimate desire to awaken belongs not to the individual but to life (or the totality, by whatever name you call it). What you feel in your humanity as a desire for freedom is a reflection of the totality’s desire for ever more freedom. In theistic terms, your desire to awaken is God’s desire to become more and more conscious of God. The spiritual impulse completely transcends the “me” even as it is reflected in the “me.” When the me-sense is no longer distorting the awakening process, the process becomes exponentially more efficient and beautiful.

3 The Illusion of Ego and Separation

When self drops in all its gross and subtle forms there is only that which is—neither existing nor not existing, but ever-present always everywhere. It is the nothingness in everything, and the everythingness in nothingness. It perceives itself from itself. It is here, now, full-on reality. It is the ground…

THE ILLUSION OF MIND What Is the World? Q: Several years ago, while on retreat with you, the insight suddenly hit that what I had thought of as “me” was just an illusory boundary. I laughed and cried as beliefs seemed to pop and dissolve like soap bubbles. Awareness or presence, well, just simply is. A lot of seeking has fallen away, but I’ve still not really experienced the perception of unity or “Everything is one.” Any pointers or inquiries you would suggest for unity to move beyond intellectual understanding? I somehow intuit that it’s another layer of “illusory boundary” that hasn’t been seen through. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to crack an unsolvable riddle! A: Here is the direct answer to your question: Simply contemplate the question, What is the world? By contemplate, I mean to simply form the question in your mind. Don’t think about it. Just present the question and relax your awareness as much as possible. That’s the “how.” Experiencing unity is a bit like getting a joke. The “getting” of a joke is what causes the laughter. In a sense, the getting is the laughter. But we don’t laugh because we have analyzed the joke and come to understand it—we laugh because the joke exposes something about ourselves. It removes the seriousness of the boundaries that we believe in and live by. It reveals that they are absurd and therefore funny. The same is true of the beliefs that cause us to experience boundaries…

Words imply that these opposites exist separately from one another, but they do not. They are simply different ways of looking at the same thing. You cannot have the crest of a wave without also having…

tree does not exist independently of its environment; it is its total environment. It takes a cosmos to produce a tree—no cosmos, no tree. To say “tree” implies…

Even to say that we are presence or awareness mistakenly implies that we are not what we are aware of. It is an intermediate level of realization, and is much more freeing than experiencing ourselves to be a separate someone, but it is still defined and experienced as its own form of formless separateness. It is formless presence as opposed to the world of forms. But formlessness and form appear together, and not even together—they are ways of looking at one dynamic process. They are simply two different points of view from within that process. When we drop whatever point of view we are entertaining, the illusory experience of separateness and having conceptually imposed boundaries disappears. Concepts, names, descriptions, beliefs, and…

when we forget that the boundaries they impose upon our perception are an illusion, we take the conceptual game of naming and believing far too seriously and lose not only our sense of humor, but also any deep sense of freedom and love. We stop taking ourselves lightly and become like an…

cannot be known in the conventional sense, because all that is known is an idea, an object within consciousness. And by the way, ideas are it too. But it…

After observing and discovering a conditioned belief, are you suggesting that we then choose to replace that belief with a different belief that is hopefully closer to the truth than the old conditioned beliefs—i.e., a wiser, more loving, and harmonious belief? Or are you saying that it is always most helpful, instead, to refrain from putting attention on any new beliefs/perspectives and go directly to putting attention back on just sensing into being awareness, without any beliefs? A: You put the belief aside, or see through it, so that you can experience what is deeper than belief. For instance, What are you if you do not refer to a single thought, feeling, or memory to tell you who you are? Your mind does not know. So instead, become aware of what is not a thought, not a feeling, not a memory. Just be aware. There is then just awareness. What is it like to be just aware, to be awareness? Be patient with this series of questions. Hold them easily. So, as you can see, we are not replacing one belief with another. That’s what we usually do—hop from one belief to another, one idea to another. I do not want to indoctrinate you into a new belief. What’s beyond all beliefs? For example: I am good, just a belief. I am unworthy, just a belief. I am the best, just a belief. I am the worst, just a belief. This is to live in the prison of belief—to live in a sort of virtual reality created by your mind and then felt in your body.

This isn’t necessarily so you never form a belief again, but so you are not held captive by the abstract world of beliefs and the painful emotions those beliefs elicit, as well as the often distorted thinking they generate. Behind the world of beliefs is the experience of profound freedom, love, and joy.

A: The experiences that you describe are not uncommon. First let me say that the dark states often have an important message for you. Within the heart of illusion is often a kernel of truth, something that you are resisting seeing, something that may be painful to acknowledge but nonetheless has the power to free you from the very darkness from which it came. The darker (meaning difficult) aspects of one’s conditioning are often triggered by experiences of deeper truth. This can be both painful and difficult at times, and it is important to have some trust or faith in something beyond the turmoil. This is when one really needs to establish an inner resource of surrender. By surrender I mean to open up to an intelligence and love that is beyond your capacity to create. This is the true meaning of faith. This may sound rather simplistic, but I can assure you that the results are not simplistic. You are also being called beyond the opposites of light and dark, truth and illusion. There is a truth beyond truth that resolves this swinging between being open and closed. To go to the very seat of consciousness, prior to open and closed, truth and illusion, awakened and unawakened, is what is now called for.

How Can I Know What’s Real?

A: The reality that spirituality points to (and certainly these teachings) is beyond thought, belief, and feeling. It is a direct perception of reality. The great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart called it divine knowledge. Divine knowledge is a latent

capacity within all human beings that transcends all conceptual knowledge, all beliefs, and all feeling states. The entire Way of Liberation teachings are a means to awaken divine knowledge within you.

A: Specialness is the ego-mind’s great hidden desire. Even awakening can become incorporated into this desire and, before you know it, you feel special because you have awakened. Of course, “you” are not what awakens. What consciousness wakes up from is you, either as an unworthy “you” or as a special awakened “you.”

A: Yes, forms of self, both necessary and unnecessary, are temporary, empty of lasting substance, and fluid. At any moment you may need to act, decide, discriminate, make a judgment, etc. Any of these actions may seem to come from a solid self, but upon deeper investigation, any self-sense is but a temporary, changing, and fluid form of consciousness.

A: We often imagine that the solution to a problem is to experience its opposite—like going from not trusting life to trusting it. But can you see that both trusting and not trusting life are means of protecting oneself, of giving oneself comfort? What happens when you neither trust nor do not trust life? What is life like when you are not experiencing it through your story of trusting or mistrusting it? Then there is only life, with nothing between you and life.

They perpetuate the ultimate myth, which is who I think I am—the imagined ego. Can life be experienced without any conclusion, any judgment, any story? What is life then? Dare we experience life with such directness and simplicity? Who are we without our personal myth about ourselves and life in general?

Breaking the Addiction to the Next Moment Q: I have recognized more deeply than ever before that I am propelled by an addictive sort of energy. I feel addicted to the next moment and have discovered that there is a perpetual energetic experience of leaning into the next moment—a moment which is presumed to hold more potential, fulfillment, or stimulation than this one.

In spite of seeing this, I am still having a difficult time slowing down and coming into the experience of this moment rather than leaning energetically into the next moment. I have also been avoiding meditation completely, despite some part of me really wanting to meditate.

Like all forms of addiction, the addiction to the egocentric orientation is kept in place through denial—primarily denial of exactly how dissatisfying and destructive it is. Can you see this without guilt or judgment and just face the ego-addicted condition in all its horror? Just see it—not only within yourself but also in the world all around you: a whole world filled with human beings constantly dissatisfied and struggling toward a future that promises relief but never ultimately delivers. What begins to break the addiction to the imagined future is profound dissatisfaction and a willingness to take full responsibility for one’s own life—not blame, but responsibility. We just stop colluding with illusion, not because we should, but because we are done with feeding it. We are done with indulging and supporting the cause of suffering. We are done with it because we do in fact care and we do in fact love, and we begin to act on the care and love. See your spiritual practice as an act of love, both for yourself and for all beings.

Who Are You without Doing or Not-Doing?

The concept of emptiness that you mentioned could be seen to refer not to doing or not-doing, but to flow and spontaneity. In this context, emptiness is nonresistance to whatever is called for (doing or not-doing) in each moment. If your ego identity is centered around doing, then not-doing will evoke feelings of being bad, wrong, or deficient in some way, as you mentioned in your email. In our culture, not-doing is very undervalued. It’s as if one has to always be doing something in order to justify one’s existence. But such compulsive doing is an avoidance of being, literally, one’s true nature. What if you just stopped trying to justify your existence by either compulsively doing or attaching to not-doing? Who are you then?

If we stop fighting with ourselves, we come to see and experience that the ego is insubstantial. And it is the insubstantial nature of the ego that we are afraid of, because who are we if not this insubstantial and learned ego identity? This question lives in the quiet and empty spaces in our mind. But we keep filling the empty spaces up with answers and ideas and new identities. What if we don’t fill the space? What then? Without conflict and opposition, the ego meets its own emptiness—not in the sense of being bad or deficient, but in the sense of being only an image in opposition with itself. In the willingness to stop asserting and/or denying the ego, you come to see that the ego has no fundamental substance to it, that it is empty of true nature. But be very careful, because the ego will quickly identify with being a flat, lifeless, and uninspired nothing. This is how the ego turns the pure openness of freedom into yet another uninspired and meaningless identity. This is a form of false emptiness, an imitation of true freedom. Your true being is empty in the sense of being intangible, ungraspable conscious aliveness. It is always and already there. Just stop. Really just stop. In this stopping, the ego identity has nothing to oppose and nothing to grasp. This is the fire of emptiness, the fire of true stopping. And this fire of stillness reveals what cannot be consumed, affirmed, or denied. It reveals what is always and already there, the presence of being. Not being this or that, but simply being. This being is the consciousness of existence looking out through your eyes and hearing through your ears and feeling through your senses—now, always, and already.

Could you please speak to this? It seems as though these stories describe a complete shift of perception that is very different from what most of us live with. In my case, this is the recognition of beingness and emptiness always there shining at the core, and also the resurfacing of ego, over and over again, even though “I” don’t believe in it and am not very interested in it.

Awareness is independent of, but not separate from, the ego because it is the more fundamental reality. Therefore it is only awareness that recognizes awareness, not ego that recognizes awareness.

A: What is that which all states of consciousness arise and pass away within? That is ultimately the question. What is awake and aware of them all? What is common to all states? And remember that you are not looking simply for the correct conceptual answer, but for the revelatory insight. Simply and silently observe all of the changing states of consciousness and mind. Any and all grasping is for a changing and temporary state. That which you ultimately are cannot be objectified as any state of consciousness or conceptual understanding, and yet it is always present in all states of consciousness. Simply rest as awareness as such, without objectifying it in any way. Take no position within that awareness, such as trying to be the witness.

4 Awakening to the Nature of Awareness You are the total environment, and the total environment is you. You are the totality of everything, and the totality of nothing, and a particular human being, all at once, without contradiction.

It is only our definitions that cause us to see things as separate from everything else. But nothing is separate from anything else. Everything goes together and is a part of everything else. To actually perceive this as a self-evident reality, we need to look at the world while suspending our definitions and assumptions. We need to perceive with a still mind—then suddenly everything becomes clear. This is universal consciousness.

A: Divine knowledge does organically unfold by the continual abiding in being. Divine knowledge is the coming together of unconditioned intuitive wisdom and direct perception. Devotion to being is also extremely important because devotion is having a heartfelt dedication and faithful fidelity to truth above all else. What we are devoted to will always be reflected in our actions and our relationship with all beings. Just abide in the immediate sense of being, or “I am,” without any defining quality. This will silently open the doorway to unity and beyond to its source, the ground of being.

The second dynamic is that of awareness. Awareness in its most fundamental sense is neither focused nor scattered. It simply is. Because it simply is, it is not graspable. Fundamental awareness can be recognized but not manipulated in any way.

A: Strictly speaking, you cannot do anything that will make you realize the absolute. You cannot become what you already are; all you can do is to remove the false constructs of identification that obscure your true nature. By dwelling as the “I am,” you realize the formless presence of consciousness. Abide as that consciousness while questioning its source. As the absolute, you are prior to all experiences and all perceptions. Even to say “I am” or “I am not” does not arise in the absolute. It is pure infinite potential. There is no going toward it or away from it. It arises into conscious recognition in complete stillness and silence of mind.

A: In my experience, the void is void—pure unmanifest potential. Although consciousness, love, unity, etc., arise directly from the void, the void is, in and of itself, completely without qualities. Experienced from the viewpoint of self, the void is a pitiful immensity that threatens one’s very existence. Experienced from the perspective of the void itself, the void is the ultimate non-experience of a lifetime—far surpassing anything that ever can or ever will happen in the world of time.

The ego leaves us feeling terribly vulnerable because those who have a good image of us can always change their minds about us, and frequently do. Your true being, however, is in no way defined by your ego’s image of itself, nor is it found in the image others have of you. Who knows, maybe not having your parents acknowledge you as much as you wanted them to when you were a child gave you the inclination to look inside, beyond all self-images, whether they be yours or others’. In the end, it is actual life, whether easy or difficult, that provides the opportunities to awaken from the dream of self to our true being.

This foundation is really about not using spirituality to hide from challenging aspects of your life; it is a means of bringing the light of consciousness to bear upon all aspects of your life. It is about being awake, always and in all ways, as well as taking good care of this precious life. It is also about living honestly and not using spirituality to avoid any aspect of your human incarnation. To be truly conscious is to assume total responsibility, not blame or judgment, for every aspect of your life, and to care for it with great love and attention.

To disidentify is to let go of both grasping and involvement with thought, but not to try to escape it or push it away. When you no longer derive any identity from either thought or feeling, then quite naturally they fall into their natural rhythm and function and no longer imprison or disturb you.

5 Levels of Awakening: Head, Heart, Gut, and No-Self

One way of looking at enlightenment is to see it as perceiving through a completely unified body and mind; that is, perceiving as a whole instead of perceiving through one of the five senses. The entire body-mind is actually a sensory organ for the infinite.

Presence is also intimacy and closeness and warmth. To be in presence is to be both vulnerable and invulnerable simultaneously. Residing in presence can also evoke the heart’s latent capacity as an organ of perception of unity. The heart both perceives unity and naturally brings what seems like opposing experiences into unity, while also respecting their differences.

is experienced as an existential grasping in the gut. It is self—defending itself against death as well as life. It is an energetic, existential no. This grip in the gut is how self, which at this level is only a grip, a contraction, instinctually contracts away from the self-less void of infinity. This grip, or self, will do nearly anything to avoid the void—including experiencing itself as isolated or separate, or conversely, being unified with God, being the universal “I am,” etc. Because self cannot ultimately be separate from the absolute truth, it contains within it an unreserved yearning for truth which transcends the survival instinct as well as the pleasure principle—which only wants to feel better (preferably much, much better). Accessing this unreserved yearning for truth is what life helps to bring about. Finally, through much life experience, we realize that nothing but truth will satisfy this yearning. When this realization comes to maturity within us, the letting go of self happens by grace. And a new life begins.

The letting go will happen naturally when you are ready to leave all that is known behind, and there will be no way back. All will be well, and more well than can be imagined. Nothing will have changed, except everything. And you will then simply go on about your

Even Jesus experienced fear and sorrow in his humanity, but his love of God was always what he acted from and was his key message to all of us. Love is the strongest force in life, much stronger than courage and all the other human characteristics combined.

The soul values that are representative of the gut are intimate detachment, courage, spontaneity, selflessness, and a profound groundedness. It is as if the entire cosmos has taken up residence within your body. You are somehow intimately one with and profoundly detached from it at the same time. So exercising the most profound and intimate agape love with no attachment at all is the activity of gut-level selflessness. It is a doing without any doing.

Imagine at your core a pregnant void of infinite potentiality, beyond all identity of any kind and yet fully present—grounded like a mountain, immovable yet moving, detached yet lovingly responding, unselfconscious yet present like never before. Breathe, act, respond, and meditate from this silent ground of being. Reside in the empty mountain until it begins to dance.

A: Getting stuck in this sort of emptiness is not an uncommon experience. By continuing to access the “thoughtless space” aspect of your true nature, you will only increase the feeling of dryness inside. What you need now is to begin to experience that emptiness through the heart center. The heart center is where we perceive the great unity and intimacy of all of existence. It fills the emptiness with warmth and texture. Our true nature has many aspects and many ways of being experienced. It is not simply one static state of being; it has many facets and many perspectives available to it. All of the facets of our true nature work together and complete one another. Whenever you get stuck in one facet or view of true nature, you will eventually experience its limitation. Then it’s time to move on to deeper and more inclusive perspectives of reality. For now, I suggest you begin to meditate on emptiness perceived through the heart.

Experiencing emptiness through the heart center is the experience of presence. A subtle form of presence or radiance issues forth from the heart center and fills the thoughtless space of emptiness with intimacy and love. It also gives rise to the perception of unity and unbroken intimacy with all things and beings. So as a practice, just be awareness perceiving from and through the heart center. I hope that this will be helpful.

Self experiences everything through the medium of itself. To go beyond self is to go beyond experiencing life through the medium of self, in the same way that going beyond the ego is to no longer experience life through the medium of ego. Absolute reality (the Godhead beyond God) is the source and substance of all, but it cannot be described as any particular expression it may take, not even love or bliss or being or any other expression of the divine. That is why I say that no one can desire what the absolute actually is, only what they think or imagine that it is. Nonetheless, at the very depth of our being, we are inescapably drawn to the absolute, even though there is nothing for either the ego or the self in it. That is why I say that the true impulse for liberation is an irrational impulse—irrational to both the ego and self, because it will eventually mean the end of both of them.

Q: I was at your Jesus retreat last March and found it really transformative. You made the point that the movement of spirit in our time is down-and-in (as exemplified by Jesus’ life) as opposed to up-and-out (which was Buddha’s path.) For me, this was transformative because I realized that I had been thinking that the point of the spiritual path had to do with minimizing or getting rid of one’s humanity. Now I have instead been embracing my humanity and looking into how consciousness wants to express itself through me, my body, and my life.

As an example: In the Jesus story, the birth of Christ symbolizes the descent of spirit, the death on the cross symbolizes the sacrificial death of self, and resurrection symbolizes the living state of no-self. The resurrected state is the no-self state. One can glimpse, taste, and experience the resurrected state before self falls, but one can only be in the resurrected state when self has died, or fallen away. It is important to understand that the death of self is a sacrificial act of love. One lets go out of love for truth or reality.

As the poet Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am vast; I contain multitudes.”

6 Relating from a New Way of Being If we are to live truly free and awake lives, all of our ways of relating will eventually come up to be reexamined in the light of sincere awareness.

In many ways, silence is the greatest teacher and most wise teaching. The call of the heart never confines itself to the mind’s ideas of whether effort is necessary or not—it follows the impulse of silent intuition which is so much more aligned with what the moment dictates. Leave the mind to do what it is best at, namely calculating and describing things, and look to the wisdom born of silence for inner guidance relating to things of the spirit.

A: Personal will is the raw driving energy of egoic consciousness. It is very difficult to understand exactly what personal will is until it has diminished to a certain extent. This being said, it is important to understand that ego is a state of consciousness, not an entity. There is a type of egoic autonomy that makes life much more sane and satisfying in the egoic state.

Nonpersonal will is the will-directing energy of the One (truth, reality, or God) moving through and as one’s humanity—not being distorted, owned, or possessed by the ego. Nonpersonal will or life force is the universal activity of reality.

Q: I have had experiences of no-self—some momentary, some lasting a week or more. With each occurrence, there follows increasingly less interest in being involved in the worldly drama, less outward ambition, and a strong inward pull to the silence. Adding this to a personality that was already strongly introverted, a sort of inertia sets in. This is problematic regarding work and the practicalities of physical life. How can one function well and responsibly in the physical realm while simultaneously giving up into the silence, when one’s attention is irresistibly pulled inward?

A: There is a phase where we transition from a “personal” viewpoint—with all its personal will, motivations, and driving energy—to a way of being moved by the wholeness of life which lacks the personal will, personal motivations, and personal energy. This is a massive transition, and part of this transition involves going through a plateau phase where the personal viewpoint is mostly dead, and the wholeness of life has not yet started to function through/as you in an obvious way. During this plateau phase it can be very challenging to engage in life in the ways that are necessary. However, it is important to do the things that are necessary even though there is no personal energy or motivation to draw upon. As strange as this may sound, you function from a place of no energy and no drive. You simply do what you truly need to do without drawing upon any inner source of will or motivation. During this phase you are literally being weaned off of all forms of self-consciousness and the various forms of motivation and energy that self sustains itself with. The danger is that some people become stuck in this no-man’s-land. They keep reaching back for something that is no longer there and never learn to function from a place beyond self. They have unknowingly grasped onto and become stuck in the limbo state between self hollowed-out and self fallen-away. Either that happens, or what is left of self can hide away in a false rejection of society and life as a subtle means of sustaining itself.

While it is important to give yourself time to be still and silent (and unproductive) during this phase, it is also important not to become stuck in a nonfunctional state. The key is to stop looking at what is no longer there, which is a subtle form of self-consciousness, and experience life from life’s point of view—which is neither an inner experience nor an outer expression, but a non-relative knowing of eternity, here and now. This is, of course, completely nonconceptual, nongraspable,…

Then there is an adaptation to a new way of being, and life goes on with great simplicity and beauty, and is lived by a totality that the mind can never know. While this may not sound compelling to the ego, it is, quite literally, eternity experiencing itself—timelessly. And still, one’s…

You awoke from the dream of Amy. Just that is a titanic reorientation for your entire being. Every aspect of life unconsciously orients itself around who and what we experience ourselves to be. So to have a fundamental shift away from a conceptual identity (Amy) is a major shift, not only of identity but also of physical, mental, and emotional orientation. The background anxiety and restlessness that melted away is the somatic feeling of separation that was Amy. To feel somewhat disoriented for a while (weeks, months, or years) is common and to be expected. The more you let the whole process happen of its own accord, the more quickly your system will adapt. You mentioned that the intensity of the newness of the experience has melted away, and this also is to be expected. Whatever is new only feels new for a short period of time. Of course, this is where doubt often comes into the picture, questioning the validity of what happened. This level of doubt is simply the old sense of separation trying to reconstruct itself again and has nothing to do with the validity of the initial experience of awakening.