Wake Up Now (2 page)

Under this teacher’s guidance, I had a profound and unmistakable awakening to the living truth of who I really am. But instead of the awakening being complete and irreversible, as I had expected, for days I found myself oscillating between vast spaciousness and peace and overwhelming fear bordering on panic. I felt as if the bottom had dropped out of my familiar, albeit unsatisfactory, life, and I had no place to land—and I experienced this groundlessness as alternately exhilarating and terrifying.

Over time, the awakening receded into the background of my awareness, but whenever it reasserted itself, I would feel a renewed rush of anxiety. I knew I had experienced a genuine, profound, life-altering recognition of the reality that underlies all appearance, yet I couldn’t figure out why I was still so afraid so much of the time. Had I done something wrong? Was I mistaken in my assessment? Was the awakening misguided or incomplete in some way? These questions haunted me in my years with this teacher, and instead of putting an end to my search, my experience just fueled further doubts about my spiritual maturity—and my relative sanity. From my reading and the teachings I’d
received, I had come to believe that true awakening should be complete and irreversible. Then why did I seem to keep forgetting who I was and lapsing back into identification with the me, the “small self”?

Unfortunately, I never felt comfortable asking these questions of my teacher, perhaps because he seemed reluctant to address such psychological issues and perhaps also because I wanted to appear more confident of my understanding than I actually was. Besides, in his presence such questions inevitably dropped away, my fears evaporated, my mind quieted down, and I joined him in the profound stillness and silence that he embodied and transmitted.

Eventually, I met a woman who helped me assuage my doubts because her journey had been similar to mine. After a sudden, explosive awakening to the illusory nature of the separate self, she spent years in constant fear before opening to an even deeper realization in which all fear dropped away. Trained as a psychologist, she had the sophistication necessary to bridge the two worlds and say, with the conviction and authority born of personal experience, that fear by no means undermines the validity of awakening, but is rather just another arising among many in the vastness of who we are. This subtle shift in perception allowed me to reframe my fear, and it gradually began losing its hold over me. Finally, some years later, soon after the death of my Advaita master of ten years, I met the teacher who confirmed and helped me clarify and deepen my realization and ultimately asked me to teach.

In my own years as a spiritual teacher and psychotherapist, I’ve discovered that my circuitous journey was by no means unique. Many people are drawn to spiritual awakening but have difficulty locating teachings or teachers that speak directly to their experience in language they can understand. Some have discovered the possibility of waking up and seek clear guidance that points them toward the awakening experience without religious jargon or dogma. Others awaken suddenly and unexpectedly to a reality they don’t have the conceptual framework to handle or have experiences along the way that don’t fit the descriptions in traditional texts. They may have no interest in or contact with Buddhism or Hinduism, the religions most often associated with spiritual awakening, and therefore have no access to guidance in making sense of their experiences. Or they may be practitioners within these traditions but find that their teachers can’t help because the teachers haven’t had the same experiences themselves.

One student of mine, for example, had practiced Transcendental Meditation for many years and had come to expect that spiritual awakening would take the form of “cosmic consciousness” as described by the founder of that technique. Instead, she had a profound experience of no-self that felt more like a bad dream or psychotic break than a fortuitous cosmic event because she didn’t have a teacher who could guide her through it. Another student, who had been told by his Tibetan Buddhist teachers that enlightenment
took lifetimes to achieve, came to me to help him come to terms with the powerful shift in identity he had experienced one day while walking in the woods.

Other people awaken without any prior preparation or even any interest in spiritual matters. They don’t have access to the guidelines and pointers found in traditional spiritual texts, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have the language or the philosophical context to interpret what they read. Still others, longtime spiritual seekers, have no problem identifying their awakening as authentic, but they find themselves surprised and confused when the “awakeness” they’ve spent so long pursuing keeps wavering or fading, and their life seems to become even more challenging and tumultuous, rather than more reliably peaceful and joyful, as they were led to expect.

I’ve written this book for seekers like these who are looking for direct guidance in plain language on the often prolonged and complex journey of spiritual awakening. If you aspire to awaken or have already experienced an initial awakening, then this book is definitely intended for you. As I’ve discovered, awakening doesn’t belong to one teaching or tradition, and in any case, once you wake up, you actually awaken out of traditional frameworks. After all, if you’re awakening to your true nature, the one you’ve always already been deep down inside, how could one tradition or approach have a monopoly on it? This precious spiritual nature has always belonged to you, and, like one version of the proverbial prodigal son, you’re merely discovering the diamond that’s been hidden in your pocket all along.

In fact, more and more people appear to be awakening to their inherent spiritual nature, whether or not they’ve been practicing meditation or some other prescribed technique. Perhaps it’s just our technological times, when experiences are shared so much more globally through cell phones, e-mails, websites, and blogs, but awakening seems to have shed the garments of religion and revealed itself for what it is—a universal human experience available to everyone right here and now. Despite what you may have been led to believe, enlightenment is your birthright, your natural state—you merely need to reclaim and learn to embody it.

In this book, I offer a direct approach to enlightenment that circumvents the elaborate rituals, practices, and teachings of traditional religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Instead of requiring you to pledge allegiance to certain beliefs or adhere to preestablished spiritual practices, I point directly, again and again, to the truth of who you are and invite you to resonate with the source from which the words arise, allowing it to awaken to itself inside you. Instead of helping you to construct a new and more comforting belief system, I encourage you to investigate and penetrate the many ideas and preconceptions you already hold in order to reach the living truth that lies beneath. This approach to spirituality is actually quite radical, because it goes right to the root or source from which all spirituality springs and invites you to abide there, rather than hanging out in the leaves and branches.

At the same time, this approach is definitely not “awakening lite,” a quick little shortcut to enjoyable experiences that
you can add to your spiritual résumé. Quite the contrary, these teachings are potent and subversive, and once received and considered, they have the power to transform your life in unexpected and possibly uncomfortable ways. They’re like spiritual computer viruses with the power to wipe your hard drive clean of concepts and fill it with the clarity and wisdom of truth. Or if you prefer nature metaphors, they’re like seeds that, once planted, have the potential to grow into radiant flowers that crowd out the old weeds in your yard. Whatever image resonates for you, just know that you read this book at your own peril, for you may not be able to return to your old way of seeing things again.

In the broadest sense, the term
awakening
is merely an evocative metaphor that’s been bandied about in spiritual books for years to cover a range of experiences. Any experience can be considered an awakening if it opens you to a new, previously unrecognized dimension of being. For example, you can awaken to your sexuality, to the energy fields of the body, or to the mythic gods and goddesses of the archetypal realm.

But the awakening I’m talking about in this book is deeper, more essential, and more transformative—it’s a fundamental recognition of the inherent insubstantiality or emptiness of the person you take yourself to be and a radical shift in your identity from being the suffering separate self to being the eternal witness, the limitless space or ground in which all experiences arise. In other words, you awaken
from
the dream of suffering and separation
to
the radiance and joy of your true nature. More than being merely one spiritual experience among many, this awakening (often called enlightenment) is the essential realization at the heart of the Eastern spiritual traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, and it can also be found as a more subterranean current in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—though mystics have been excommunicated, ostracized, or burned at the stake for making such pronouncements.

When you awaken, you realize that the separate person you took yourself to be is just a construct, a mental fabrication—a collection of thoughts, feelings, memories, beliefs, and stories that have been woven together by the mind into the appearance of a substantial, continuous someone with certain abiding qualities and characteristics. By freeing you from your identification with the separate self, awakening liberates you from the burdens and concerns, worries and regrets, limitations and preoccupations that the person bearing your name has accumulated over a lifetime. But this construct has extraordinary tenacity, and it generally won’t give up without a prolonged struggle to stay in control.

After all, if you’re like most people, you’ve devoted your life to enhancing, developing, improving, and promoting this apparently separate someone in order to win love, succeed, get ahead, and finally achieve more happiness and fulfillment. You’re not about to give it up lightly. Besides, your family, friends, teachers, and colleagues have encouraged you in your identity because they’re equally committed to their own dream of separate personhood. As a result, you
live your life believing that you’re just a limited character in the dream and may never realize that there’s an alternative, another way to experience yourself: you can awaken out of the dream and discover that you’re the dreamer, the observer, the source of the dream itself.

Then one day, you have an unexpected glimpse behind the veil of conventional reality to a mysterious perspective you never knew existed. Maybe you’re driving your car along a familiar street when time seems to stand still and the shops and people lose their usual solidity and become like figures projected on a screen. Or you’re walking in nature when suddenly you sense a deeper energy or radiance behind the flowers and trees. Or you’re lying in bed when the boundaries of your body dissolve and you expand to include the entire universe. Such provocative experiences, though not awakening itself, open you to the possibility of seeing life in a completely new way and set you on a search for the deeper truth that lurks unrecognized behind the dream of ordinary life.

Alternatively, you may be introduced to the possibility of awakening by reading the words of the great enlightened masters and sages, who point directly to the greater reality beyond the dream and lovingly encourage you to join them in the peace and joy they’ve discovered there. “You’re not the person you imagine yourself to be,” they keep repeating, “not this limited physical body or this obsessed and worried mind, but unlimited space, unconditioned presence, the essence and spirit at the heart of life itself. Just wake up and realize it!” You don’t have to go off to India or read scores
of books to ignite a yearning to discover this truth. Even a single phrase or teaching can capture your attention and refuse to let you go, gradually challenging and undermining your limited view.

You may even have a complete awakening, in which the locus of your identity shifts from being the body, mind, and personality to being the eternal witness, the limitless space. Now what? What do you do if the experience begins to fade or strong feelings or old patterns intrude? What do you make of the experience, and how can you relate to it in order to nurture and deepen it?

No matter how you’re ambushed or seduced by awakening, you’ve stumbled on a path that’s been hidden from view until now—a path that’s been traveled by countless people before you and continues to be traveled now by kindred spirits everywhere. In fact, it’s a pathless path because it’s unique to each seeker and keeps changing as the journey unfolds. Even more essentially, it isn’t really a path at all, because there’s nowhere to go and nothing to discover; everything you need to know and be is right here and now—indeed, it is the very here and now that you are. But until you fully understand the truth of these words, you’ve embarked on a journey that eventually meanders its way back home. It’s the journey of awakening, the journey to free yourself from the dream of separation and wake up to who you really are—and once you’ve awakened, to stay that way and allow the awakeness to inform and transform you. This book is intended as a guidebook on your journey home, a road map for the pathless path.

Once you penetrate the illusory nature of the separate self, you discover that what really lives this life, peers out through these eyes, thinks these thoughts, and animates these arms and legs is not the personality, which is just a lifeless construct, but being itself, which can’t be located or grasped with the hands or mind but can be directly intuited or apperceived. In other words, you can know with certainty what you are, but you may not quite be able to describe how you know.

The various terms used to delineate being—
spirit, soul, true self, Buddha nature, God within
—are like so many labels pinned on empty space. Pure being can’t be pinned down because it has no characteristics in itself; rather, it’s the ever-present witness of all characteristics, the unchanging space in which all experiences come and go, the unmoved mover behind all activity, the limitless source of all things.