There is a tendency amongst speakers on non duality to say that once you have “got it” then that’s it. You are liberated, awakened and have reached the final frontier as far as spirituality is concerned.

I disagree. Once you have realized the oneness, seen that there is no separation, no duality of you and the rest of the universe; then you have certainly reached the end of seeking.  You then have the opportunity to embark on another journey – the journey to enlightenment.

What! You may exclaim. Isn’t the seeing of non-duality enlightenment? No, it is an awakening certainly, but it is only a stage. The trap that many people fall into is to think that non-duality is the end. The end of seeking is such a relief that it is understandable that you would want to just rest and be where you are. What has not happened is the integration of non-duality into your life.

I’ve heard non-duality speakers talk about there being no separate self. Nobody is in to experience anything. No person, no choices, nothing to strive for. Time and time again I’ve seen these people act from a very egotistical perspective. There is selfishness, jealousy, anger, resentment, insecurity – all the traits of someone acting from the separate ego perspective.

If you are truly grounded in non-duality then this is how you operate 24 hours of the day.  It is the essence that informs your every action.

I am not there. How do you get there? Part of the answer to this question is having the awareness of the whole. Right now there is:

• Typing on a keyboard
• The words entering my mind
• The computer screen
• The birds outside
• The noise of the computer fan
• The sound of the wind
• and many many more things…

Normally I focus on one or two elements – the typing and the words perhaps. Awareness of the whole is when attention is not focused. All the above elements are experienced as one without singling out  a particular item.

This is the beginning of the integration. It is a journey of awareness. In this journey there is no seeking, but there is curiosity and a sense of adventure.

As Buzz Lightyear says in Toy Story:

“To infinity and beyond.”

I’m  spending a day with my family: eating good food, drinking fine wine, opening presents, taking the dog for a walk in the snow, playing silly board games. A normal Christmas I suppose.

What is the meaning of Christmas?

As I am not a Christian then I do not have religious feelings about Christmas. For me, Christmas has no meaning. It is there to be enjoyed. Indulging in pleasurable experiences needs no reason.

Being awake means that a lot of things that I do in life are no different from people around me. The only thing that changes is the interpretation of events and actions. There is less clinging, less identifying with my actions as being who I am.

Yes, eat, drink and be merry. Feel love and peace for the world. Reflect on the year that’s been and the year that lies ahead. With purpose and meaning removed from all this, then everything just is as it is.

Let everything be as it is.

But also leave room for mystery.

I used to be dissatisfied with my life so I became a spiritual seeker. I thought that enlightenment was the missing jigsaw piece that would complete my life. Most spiritual seekers come from a point of dissatisfaction. This can take the form of low self esteem, feeling like an outsider, or somehow knowing that there is something missing from life.

If you become awakened, then the dissatisfaction goes, the spiritual seeker has gone. Now what do you do?

Most spiritual seeking is done out of self interest. You have pain and you want spirituality to take it away. An element of the awakening experience is that you see that you are not an isolated individual. You are the whole. In non-separation there is only the whole, and your ego has gone. However, in order to function again in the world a sense of a separate identity has to come back, otherwise you could not function.

You have had a sense of transcending your life, of seeing the whole rather than the individual parts, and yet here you are having to engage in the world. You still need to earn a living, deal with your family commitments, pay the bills, communicate with your neighbours.

How do you engage in the world? Having seen that you do not have a separate self and that all humanity is one, do you still operate out of self interest? Or do you engage in actions that help your fellow humans? Do you become socially or politically active?

In the traditional model, enlightenment is above moral and ethical considerations. You can do exactly what you want to do. This is correct from a absolute point of view.

A new model is emerging  in which enlightenment is seen as an evolutionary force leading mankind to a sort of new global consciousness. In this model you have an obligation to join forces with others to hasten the next evolutionary step of mankind.  This global consciousness is a movement away from the emphasis on the individual to what some have called the Higher We.

I am just asking questions here, speculating, pondering. Do I rest in the transcendent space of emptiness, where the notion of me and you does not exist and no actions are required of me? Or do I engage  fully in the world in order to help others awaken?

Andrew Cohen says:

“If a group of people can sublimate their egos enough to allow Spirit to emerge through them, a higher matrix will arise that expresses something more profound and more significant than any single Buddha could.”

Is he right?

Are you a spiritual seeker? If you are then it is a strange state to be in.

I used to be a spiritual seeker. I cannot remember making a choice to be one. Spiritual seeking appeared to be an instinct that started when I was a teenager.

I was bought up a Christian and became a bell ringer at my local church when I was 14 years old. After I rang the bells on Sunday morning, I used to sit in the church and listen to the sermons.  I often heard the words soul and spirit in the sermons, the prayers and the hymns. I began to ask myself the questions:

• What is the soul?
• What is the spirit

I suppose this was the start of spiritual seeking. The church did not seem to have the answers to these questions, so I left Christianity and turned to the East whose message was:

‘You have a soul and a spirit and through spiritual practices you can experience what they are.’

This promised to be what I was looking for. So I joined the Theosophical Society, the Esoteric School, followed Guru’s, meditated, chanted and all the other paraphernalia that the Eastern teachers deal with.

The only person who promised nothing was Jiddu Krishnamurti. His message was simple:

‘Truth is a pathless land’. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a sense of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man’s thinking, relationships and his daily life. These are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man in every relationship.’

I saw Krishnamurti on several occasions and in his presence I thought that I had glimpsed the truth. This glimpse would then dissolve as soon the lecture was over and it was time for lunch.

I remember standing in a marquee where lunch was being served. Krishnamurti was standing a few feet away from me. He was smartly dressed  and  held a black umbrella. In the crowd of people he stood alone, no one talking to him. He looked small, frail and serious. He was simply standing, just being, not needing to engage with the world.

His message was too simple for me at that time. I needed the fancy guru clothes, the devotional music, the Satsang – all the show and glitz that Indian Gurus attract. This lasted several years. If I had really listened to Krishnamurti I would not have bothered with any of this.

Now, having come to the end of seeking, I understand what seeing Krishnamurti standing alone means:

“We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young — not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age — and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Can awakening be lost?

I was in my bed reading a spiritual book when suddenly it felt that I knew exactly what the teacher was communicating. I had got ‘it’. I was in an altered state of consciousness and I experienced such happiness. I emailed my spiritual teacher who declared that I was awake. After years of spiritual seeking I had ‘arrived’.

This experience lasted a few weeks then was ‘lost’ somewhere. This caused considerable conflict in me because I desired to get back to that beautiful lost state.

This type of awakening is called  a lollipop  by the teacher Papa Ji. They are treats to be savoured, delicious insights into who you are, but as in the case of the lollipop, they end after the last lick.

Several years later I awoke permanently. This awakening cannot be lost. Once you have seen who you are you cannot unsee this. Typically, when you awake there are strong emotions, the minds reaction to seeing who you are. These euphoric emotions do end and there can be a period where awakening almost seems ordinary, almost an anti climax because it is not the constant bliss that you thought would arrive.

Awakening is the end of seeking. For years I defined myself as a seeker. When seeking was let go of, it was like my very identity left.  It was such a relief to find that I did not need this identity any more and like a rusty old overcoat it was discarded.

Awakening is knowing who I am – which is oneness and non duality. And this knowing cannot be unknown, cannot be lost.

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Do you have to be a saint to awaken?

Many people believe that to awaken you need to be some sort of saint. In preparation for awakening some sort of purification is necessary. You follow rules of conduct in the hope that they will get you closer to enlightenment. Usually these rules involve abstinence:

• No alcohol
• No sex
• No meat
• No going down the pub with your friends
• No wild parties
• No cheating or lying

This is the image of the enlightened person that is portrayed a lot in the East where gurus are seen as holy saints whose morality is beyond reproach. Sometimes these gurus perform questionable acts such as having sex with a devotee, or amassing great  wealth whilst their followers live impoverished lives.

Some followers believe that these gurus live some type of superior god given morality where, for example, the sex act with an underage follower is seen as OK as it somehow is a divine act that cannot be judged in the same as we judge mere mortals acting this way. It is an act teaching us something, but we are not at that level where we know what it is that the guru’s act is teaching.

As you purify yourself, little by little, you hope that you are getting nearer your goal of enlightenment. It is such a struggle, but it is OK, you don’t have to complete the purification this lifetime. There are lots more lifetimes to come, so you can take your time!

OK, enough, all this is nonsense.

The truth is that you do not have to be a saint to awaken. So put aside your celibacy and abstinence life and relax. Enjoy life. Take pleasure in hedonism.  Awakening can happen at anytime – it is always potentially a heartbeat away and never dependant on your morality.

I once spent some time with a teacher who, on the teaching platform, appeared to be some kind of enlightened soul who, if not a saint, was  vey near. Spending time with her away from the teaching platform, I realised that she was just a human being, with strengths as well as weaknesses. She was a good person, but definitely not a saint.  This could have put me off, but it encouraged me. I thought to myself, if she can be awakened with all her hang ups, then what is stopping me? The whole idea that enlightenment involves morality dropped.

I am not suggesting that awakened people go around committing horrendous crimes, but there is no need to look up to them as being examples of purity and virtue. After awakening, my mind still lingers, issues arise, I may worry. There is a certain dissociation from the ramblings of my mind, and less attachment  to what my mind tells me.  But I  am still a human operating in this physical realm. Because the ego has less a hold of me, I have less interest in feeling superior, less interest in being angry or cruel, but the potential to be negative or angry still exists.

One of the most highly regarded teachers of non-duality, Nisgardatta, smoked all his life and famously had a sharp temper. None of this diluted or discredited the central message of his teaching.

Image by Bindaas Madhavi via Flickr

Can spiritual practices enlighten you?

A long time ago I followed a guru who taught me that the spiritual practices that he prescribed would take me to enlightenment. These practices consisted of:

• Meditation first thing in the morning and last thing at night
• Satsang – attending spiritual talks every evening
• Service – Usually fund raising for his organisation or cleaning the already spotless ashram
• Darshan – Spending vast amounts of money on flights and hotels in order to see the guru, bow down before him, and give him an envelope with as much money as I could afford.

After several years of this spiritual practice I was not enlightened and gave it all up!

So is there any advantage to  spiritual practices?

I have many ‘spiritual’ friends who love doing things to be spiritual. They meditate, peace dance, chant, drum, spend time in tepees, travel to sacred sites. There are a lot of things out there to do.

There is nothing wrong with any of this. Dancing and singing songs of peace makes you feel good, meditation relaxes you, drumming makes you happy. Where the problem lies is in relying on such methods to get you closer to God or to enlighten you.

I once had a conversation with a friend who had been meditating for over thirty years. I floated the suggestion that, just perhaps, meditation is not the vehicle that leads you to enlightenment.  To her, this idea was absolutely ridiculous. In meditation she felt peace and stillness and this is what she needed. Nothing wrong with peace and stillness – but is this what awakening or enlightenment is all about? A constant state of stillness.

My answer to this is no, awakening is much more than peace,stillness or bliss. For me it was a fundamental shift in how I saw myself  and how I related to the world. There was vibrancy and power.  At times I do experience profound stillness,  but often there is dynamic, moving energy in my body which is like some electric charge. Compared to all this, constant peace and stillness could get tiresome.

Awakening does not happen through doing things. Awakening is the opposite of doing. It is being. It is being aware of the oneness and essential non-duality of consciousness. Awakening happens when doing stops.

There may be some merit in mindfulness meditation and other practices as a preparation for awakening, but they cannot be the vehicle that takes you there. Spiritual practices do not lead to enlightenment. Nothing takes you there. There is no journey. How can you travel to where you already are?

Looking for myself, I went out.

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I have listened to and met lots of spiritual teachers. There are a many of them out there. Although they say that they have the ‘truth’, they do not all agree on what the truth is.

So how do you decide which spirtual  teacher is for you?

I classify teachers into 4 groups:

• The theorists
• The half-way-up-the-mountainists
• The authoritarians
• The gotits

Let me explain:

The theorists are teachers who have read a lot,  attended lots of discourses, spent thousands of pounds on retreats and then decide that they are experts. Their teachings are based mainly on their intellectual understanding and some insights that they have had along the way. They talk very eloquently, but  they are not awakened and can confuse you.

The half-way-up-the-mountainists have had an awakening which they mistake for full liberation. Believing that they have reached the top of the spiritual mountain, they talk as if they have. Their words probably have more value than the theorists.

The authoritarianists may or may not be awake, but what distinguishes their teachings is that they tell you what to do. Often they make rules for you to follow. Most of these rules are expressed as don’ts:

• don’t eat meat
• don’t drink alcohol
• don’t watch violent films
• don’t have sex

Avoid these teachers like the plague! Do not give away the authority over your life to someone else – no matter how spiritual or saintly they appear.

The gotits have awakened. How do you tell the difference between the half-way-up-the-mountainsts and the gotits? This is difficult as, on the surface, both teachers may sound the same. There is a certain energy, a certain indefinable something that the gotits have, but it takes great discernment to see this.

Even amongst the gotits the teachings may appear to vary. The awakening is the seeing of the oneness of consciousness , and that is I believe, identical for all that awaken. What then happens is that the mind  interprets the awakening. Because the awakening is beyond words, and in fact indescribable, any description of it will fail. The words are never the actuality. The map is not the territory.

Imagine only a few people in the world have tasted pineapple. You, as a seeker of the pineapple awakening ask what the taste of pineapple is. The pineapple taster talks about the sweetness, the texture, the shape, the hint of acidity on the tongue and so on. What they see is accurate, but cannot convey what the taste is like. The only way you will know about the pineapple taste is to take a bite yourself.

How do you tell a genuine teacher? The only way is to feel what resonates with you. A particular awakened teacher may not resonate with you. That does not make he or she a bad teacher, just not the one for you. When you meet the right teacher for you there will be a feeling in the heart, an intuitive sense of rightness when you meet them.

I have had many teachers in my life and have learnt from all of them. Eventually I realised that I had to give up all teachers and truly stand on my own two feet.  I believe that a genuine teacher whom you spend a lot of time with, should tell you to leave them after a while. There is a danger of becoming too dependant on the teacher. You can take on the belief that a teacher will do it for you. Some teachers even promise this.

Awakening happens with no reference to teachers, teachings or beliefs. In the awakening you just are. There is no past, no identity, no teacher.

What kind of teacher am I? I do not claim to be a teacher. I am someone who spouts forth on this blog and perhaps someone somewhere will resonate with what I say. I need no followers, no disciples to validate my state of awareness. I cannot promise to give you anything or take you anywhere.

Maybe all I can do is entertain you for a while…

I used to be unhappy and dissatisfied with life and thought that enlightenment was an escape route to being happy all the time. I spent much time with spiritual teachers and found that they were not always happy and had many concerns. They could:

• worry about money
• get mad
• be impatient
• be disappointed if not many turned up for their spiritual discourses

Awakening is not an escape from unhappiness. It is a shift in the relationship to thoughts and feelings.

Sadness, happiness, irritability, love – all shades of emotions arise in me.  I no longer see these emotions as who I am. Emotions arise, stay for a while, then leave. I accept what happens and do not cling to any state, be that bliss or anger.

Liberation is being at ease with whatever is happening. I am recovering from Shingles, an illness that drained me of energy and caused painful blisters to appear.  Was I suffering? No, illness stuff was just happening. There was an acceptance that this is where I was, immersed in Shingles world.  Do I want to have shingles again? Well, no thanks. If I am given a preference then I choose is to be well and happy. Do I seek wellness and happiness? Not really. I eat good food, exercise every day in order to be healthy. I take practical steps in life to look after myself but there is not the seeking and searching that I once had.

Does awakening make you happy? Maybe yes, maybe no, but what it does give you is an ease in life an acceptance of what is. Things that were once very important lose their importance. There is a flowing, a floating on the river of life, an adventure in which you do not really know where you are heading.

I embrace this mystery.

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Is enlightenment a myth or reality?

Many years ago I met a guru called Maharaj Ji who introduced me to the idea of enlightenment which I understood was:

• A state of permanent bliss
• A state with no mental problems
• A state where no karma is created

This concept of enlightenment appealed to me. Who would not want permanent bliss?

I was told that if I practised the spiritual discipline known as ‘Knowledge” I could reach this state within a few years.

So I commenced a life of meditation, attending spiritual discourses known as Satsang and serving the community of Guru Maharji followers who called themselves premies (which means lovers of God).

After a few years of this life I reviewed where I was. How close was I to this state called enlightenment?

I was clearly not enlightened. I did have some mystical experiences which involved an euphoric state of mind – but these experiences only happened occasionally and were short lived. Often, after a hour or two of bliss, I would then feel flat and down.

As far as I could tell none of the other premies I met were enlightened either.

Eventually I parted company with Guru Maharaj Ji and left spirituality for about five years.

Then one day I found myself sitting in my apartment feeling very low and miserable. My girlfriend had finished with me and I felt as if I was about to sink into a dark pit of depression. Being a stubborn person I was determined that I needed to get myself out of this dark space. After five years of not meditating I decided that meditation might help.

I sat cross legged for a few minutes. A huge surge of will power arrived, a sense of utter determination. Suddenly there was an explosion in my head and I felt incredibly high and blissful.

This state lasted for several days and I was convinced that I had at last reached enlightenment. But then the experience faded. After this I became convinced that enlightenment was this blisful experience, but experienced all the time.

Spurred on by my experience I re-commenced the spiritual journey towards enlightenment – meeting and studying with many teachers, gurus, masters.

I had many mystical experiences  which I thought were samples of enlightenment.

I was wrong. I was addicted to the myth of enlightenment, mistaking mystical experiences for full blown enlightenment. Mystical experiences come and go. They arise, last a while, then subside. They are not enlightenment.

Then one day I found myself in the garden of a small Indian ashram, just outside Rishikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas. The sound of the Ganges river was in the background as I and a handful of people listened to Mira – a Belgium non-duality teacher.

I found myself spontaneously saying:

“So the only problem is wanting to be in some place or some state other than where I am.”

She looked at me and her face broke out into a huge smile. We sat looking into each others eyes for a few minutes. She placed her hand over her heart in a gesture of love.

I arose to walk back to my hotel, my senses alert, laughing at the beauty of the small clouds as they drifted above me, marveling at the flowing Ganges River. Even though I had seen ‘IT’, I still was in the grip of the enlightenment myth, focusing on my heightened state of awareness and feelings of joy. I missed the central simple but subtle realisation.

“The only problem is wanting to be in some place or some state other than where I am.”

It was a few years later that the true impact of this statement was felt, a few years before it became fully integrated into my life.

What is shown by this statement is the need to be in perfect acceptance of the present moment. You can only be in the present moment. Even when you are remembering things past or anticipating the future, everything happens completely in this moment. To want to be in another place or state is trying to move away from the  moment, and this creates conflict and tension.

Seeing enlightenment as bliss means that you tend to reject moments that are not blissful, which is, of course most of the time.  And when I was in bliss, there  was the accompanying fear that the bliss would end soon, and of course it did!

I saw enlightenment as some state in the future which contrasted with where I was at the time. Psychologically I was constantly rejecting the present and striving and struggling to go forward to some future time when I would reach enlightenment.

Enlightenment as I perceived it, with its permanent blissful state, and no problems, does not exist. This is the myth of enlightenment.

Real enlightenment is the seeing through of the illusion of life – the illusion of separation and duality. It is the stripping away of the veneer of the self – the thoughts, concepts, identity, ideas that make up the self. What is left is the flowing stream of pure consciousness that is now. No gurus, no teaching, no meditation, no authority touches this state of pure being, the zero point field of consciousness.

The more I go into this, the more difficult language is to describe it. Leave behind the concepts, the ideas, the analysis and just feel it, just be!

BE HERE.