by Ric Weinman
Printed in
Paradigm Shift, Issue 44, Oct 2009,
In The Nature of Awakening Part I, in the last issue
of Paradigm Shift, I wrote, “Awakening, by definition, only
happens as some core sense of the ego actually disappears.” The question for this article
is, how can you facilitate that?
Since the ego is the personal, separate sense of ‘I’ and ‘me’ it might be helpful to start by looking at why you want that to disappear.
1)
Why do you want to wake up? The most common answer to this is that in some way you want to
have an end to your suffering. This is an answer that comes from the ego, with
that ego wanting to get rid of its own pain. It doesn’t want to get rid of itself;
it wants to be there to enjoy the loss of pain that it expects with awakening.
Most people first get interested in awakening in the hope that they will be
able to get out of their pain and then still be around to enjoy the show. And
some of these people awaken in spite of this orientation, but to get a head
start on the process, it’s best to see this for what it is. The Truth will set
you free. Recognize, if this is where you are coming from, that this kind of
desire for awakening is an ego-desire; it is something the ego wants for
itself. And the ego wanting and getting things for itself has absolutely
nothing to do with awakening. Although the inner movement that is taking you
towards awakening may use this kind of ego-desire to keep the ego interested
and involved in the process (until that kind of desire is no longer needed),
awakening will happen in spite of this desire, not because of it. So, don’t
clutter your clarity with this kind of desire to awaken. Let’s be more clear
than that. If you do feel a pull towards awakening, then you are in fact being
pulled towards awakening. But since the desire to end your suffering cannot
really take you closer to awakening (although the awakening process may use
that desire), recognize that whatever is pulling towards awakening MUST be
coming from some place else. So, meditate on what that place is that is
actually pulling you towards awakening. If you have felt that it was the desire
to end your suffering (or have peace, or transcend, or be in bliss—all just
different ways to avoid suffering) then see that as simply a struggle within
the ego, and then sense underneath that. Where is the pull to awaken really
coming from? Notice that while the desire to end your suffering takes you out
of yourself, the true pull to awakening takes you deeper into your heart. In
fact, notice that this pull is actually arising from your heart, not from your
suffering. It is the Self calling Itself home. It has nothing to do with the
ego; the ego is simply the obstacle; it is not part of the goal. Since the
movement to awaken actually originates in Self, in that which is always already
Awake, one technique to facilitate your awakening is to simply follow that
movement inside, follow it until it takes you to its origin.
2)
Spend time in the company of beings who have awakened. This is the easiest method. We
tend to align our consciousness with others around us. If we meet someone who
is very angry, we start to align with that and start to feel defensive and
angry ourselves. So, if you want to wake up, align yourself with someone who
already has. By that, I don’t mean to align with their personality or their
emotions. But try to sense what is different about them in the core and align
with that. Notice what is in the way, within yourself, from aligning with that.
See if you can relax that. This is different from co-dependently merging with
the awake person. Co-dependent merging is just another way that the ego avoids
its own pain, and it will not help you to wake up. You are not co-dependently
merging, but rather aligning your consciousness with consciousness that
has become awake. Sense for the place in their heart where ‘I’ has disappeared.
That is what you want to align with. As I wrote in Part 1, some awake teachers
are better at helping you with this by bridging their own awakenenss into your
consciousness. This doesn’t alleviate you of the responsibility to stay present
and align with the teacher, but it makes the process much easier and much
faster.
Be aware of a danger here: as you get closer to awakening,
you may start to feel uncomfortable. The discomfort is because the movement
towards awakening is pulling on you to let go of the core of your sense of
personal, separate self. Your ego will not be happy about this, and if the pull
to awaken were really based on your desire to end suffering and then enjoy that
space, you would always leave at this point. And many do. And many of these
then go to another teacher and go through the process over again and then leave
just when the fire gets a little hotter. But many stay through the discomfort,
because what is holding them there is deeper than the ego’s desire to seek
pleasure and to avoid pain. Your job here is to be clear and follow the Truth,
which has forever promised to set you free. The Truth may be that the teacher,
whether awake or not, has his or her own agenda, and that you need to find a
‘cleaner’ teacher. And the Truth may be that all your buttons are being pushed
but you need to stay. Only you can know the Truth for yourself here. Just be
willing to not hide from it and it will find you.
3)
A picture is worth a thousand words. To spend time with an awake teacher, it is not necessary to
be in their physical presence. You can hang out with a photo. The awake
consciousness will be present in the photo and you can practice aligning with
that. And many teachers will bridge back, even through the photo, making your
process easier and faster. Again, sense for the place in their heart where ‘I’
has disappeared.
4)
Devotion without the devotee. This kind of practice usually requires a teacher, although
the teacher does not need to be alive. This is the traditional devotional
practice, which deeply evolves and ripens the heart, moving it towards
awakening. Where people get stuck in devotional practice, though, is that they
become identified with the emotional position of devotion. They become ‘a
devotee’. Being a devotee is no better than basing your identity on being a
baker or a teacher or anything else. It is just another something that the ego
has identified with. You don’t want to become a devotee; you want to be the
devotion itself. The practice is to surrender into the devotion so that it just
unfolds naturally, by itself. Devotion really doesn’t need you directing it. If
you are directing or controlling the devotion then it is something you are
doing, which is just another ego activity. Devotion is a process of
surrendering your heart and the sense of ‘I’ that keeps it tight. You don’t want devotion to become another ego
game. You want to practice devotion without the devotee. You need to let your
heart be moved by that deeper presence which already resides in your heart,
reflected in the heart of the awake teacher. Just let your heart move and
surrender into the movement. You cannot force or control this kind of
surrender. Either it is arising through you or it is not. And if it isn’t, no
bother, just pick another path.
5)
Who wants to wake up? If you are not awake, the only honest answer you can give is, “I
do.” So find out who this ‘I’ is that wants to wake up. This process isn’t an
intellectual one. It’s not like filling out a dating service questionnaire. The
idea isn’t to figure out your personality but to discover the true nature of
this ‘I’ that you experience yourself as. As you investigate, you will sense it
as some kind of I-sense in your heart. That is the where ‘I’ resides. But you
can’t stop there; you have to keep going deeper into this I-sense in your heart
until you come to its very essence, to its root. In this kind of process, you
become free of ‘I’ by discovering what it is, by discovering its true nature.
Again, the Truth shall set you free. When you find the Truth of ‘I’ you will be
free of it. And although the ego will fear losing this sense of ‘I’, because
that is the very heart of the ego, what you are functions very nicely without
it. It can actually be very funny, after awakening, to realize that you had
always believed that you were this ‘I’, when this ‘I’ has nothing to do with
what you really are. This ‘I’ was always just a ‘thing’ in your awareness that
you identified with. But you are the awareness, not the thing it is aware of.
6)
Do good deeds & save the world. This was traditionally called karma yoga. But most people
who practice it do so from the wrong understanding and get nowhere with it, in
terms of their own awakening. Typically, karma yoga is practiced from the point
of view of ‘what can I do?’ Every action is taken based on ‘what can I do?’ and
so every action reinforces the position that it was generated from, which has
‘I’ at the center of it. ‘What can I do?’ is centered on the ‘I’. True karma
yoga asks, “What needs to be done?” Notice that there is no ‘I’ here at all.
One has already surrendered the ‘I’ for the sake of the larger need. This kind
of karma yoga becomes a practice of ‘not-I’ and develops the sense of not-I.
Done long enough with enough sincerity, the sense of not-I will keep going
deeper until it becomes the living reality in the core of that being.
7)
Getting out of quicksand. We all know there is only one thing to do if one finds oneself in
quicksand: stop struggling. For the ego, life is nothing but quicksand, and the
more you struggle with it the deeper into ego you go. The ego actually needs to
keep struggling with life to maintain its sense of itself. And more struggle
just reinforces its sense of itself as ‘the one who struggles’, pushing it
deeper into its own separation, where it starts to drown in its own suffering.
The only way out of quicksand is to stop struggling. Big struggles push in
deeper in a big way. But even little struggles push you in a little deeper. You
have to give up the struggling completely. You have to let go into opening to
what life is, just as it is. Attempting to relax into this will most likely
generate a crisis within—the ego cannot live without struggle, so it is
freaking out—and you will try to find a justification for returning to
struggle. But if you can stay with the heat, staying present with it, the
ego-sense, the sense of ‘I’, at some point will just stop.
Be aware that it is easy to fool yourself with this one. You
can simply ‘space out’ of the struggle, basically suppressing it, and live in a
kind of a high, telling yourself that you are at peace. Self-delusion will not
help you though. You have to be honest with yourself. Again, it is the Truth
that sets you free.
8) Can I live without this story? Just as struggle reinforces the
ego’s sense of itself, so does the ongoing story you tell yourself about who
you are, what you are doing, what is happening to you, how you are feeling,
etc. It is ongoing. Start to notice this ongoing story. Notice that it is JUST
a story. It seems to be about you, but check it out. Are you really defined by
this story? Is this story really you? Ask yourself who you would be without
this story. Can you live without this story? Try living without the story.
Without your story only you remain.
9) Who’s watching this show anyway? Life is a great happening, full
of bells and whistles, sights and sounds, emotional dramas, mental struggles,
periodic violence, and death and dying, among the special effects. Who’d want
to miss the show? And it’s designed for audience participation, so virtually
the whole audience is on the stage, lost in the experience of the spectacle and
of themselves in it. But who’s watching the show? When you’re so engaged in the
action, you’re too busy reacting to see what’s really happening. So disengage a
little. Practice observing. But don’t observe from a position of
observing. Don’t become an observer, which is just another place for the ego to
hide. Rather, be the observing. This great drama of life is in your
awareness. Instead of being the drama, be the awareness. Relative to
your awareness, the entire drama—including the drama inside your head—is just
the coming and going of form, sensation image and thought. What doesn’t change
is the awareness. What doesn’t change is what you truly are. Rest in the
changeless. Be what you are. Of course, since you are already being that, there
is nothing for you to do; and yet for this awareness to emerge, something other
than what you are always doing must be done. This certainly isn’t easy for most
human beings, since we live in that mind-drama and experience it as self. At
best, you may be able to have only momentary glimpses before your mind kicks
back in. But even those moments bring Truth into the journey.
10) What does a tree know that you don’t? It knows how to exist without
thinking it’s a something. All plants know this. So spending quality time with
them can teach you a bit about this—if you are willing to pay attention and
learn this from them. Just being in nature won’t do it. You need to become a
student of nature. And specifically, you want nature to show you how to live
without thinking you are a something (or a someone). Learn to be the quiet presence of aliveness,
unfolding itself.
11) Where does laughter come from? Follow laughter to its root. It
doesn’t come from ego.
12) Where does choice come from? I know it seems like you make choices
in your mind. But that’s just the surface. What you see in your mind is a
reflection of the choice that has already been made. If you’re watching
yourself choosing carefully enough, you will see that. Even brain studies have
shown that you become consciously aware of your choices after the fact. So,
find where choice—which is free will—really arises from. Become more familiar
with that space.
*
Of course, there
are many more techniques that can help ripen you. And any of these, if they
suit you, can give you a taste of what awakening is. But don’t mistake the
taste for the actual awakening. Persist until the awakening is permanent.
Nisgardatta Maharaj said that to awaken, all you need is sincerity. If you are sincere, then you will be absolutely honest with yourself. If you are sincere, you will be completely truthful with yourself. And the Truth will set you free.
Ric Weinman is the founder of VortexHealing® Divine
Energy Healing. For more information on VortexHealing visit www.vortexhealing.org