"The self-styled gurus talk of ripeness and effort, of merits and achievements; these are mere mental formations, projections of an addicted mind. Instead of helping, they obstruct.” --Nisargadatta

They insist it’s rare, this awakening thing. It’s an achievement only for the very lucky few.

Kind of like the 1%.  Not available to the unwashed masses.

They also insist there are levels of attainment, stages. It’s a process, a journey. It leads somewhere. You might arrive temporarily, but you’re not there yet.

In fact, you never really do get there, do you? There’s always more to get.

There’s Right Effort, and rules to be followed. Enlightenment takes discipline.  

Better get to work.

And make no mistake, it is work. You have to turn inward, ask the questions, do the mediation, the inquiry, the reading, the satsangs.

Do it right, or no soup for you.

And then surely that hard work will be rewarded, right? Whooo hoo! Transformation! Shift! Healing! Dissolving! Transmuting, for gosh sake.

Although… some folks have been working hard for decades and still this special experience eludes them. Well, they’re obviously just doing things wrong. Too bad for them.

Naturally you want to travel this path extra-correctly. Because you really want to attain this magic.

Though it is kind of confusing exactly how to do that.

Especially when so many seemingly-successful attainers didn’t do all that work; they just woke up one morning and bam.

Ramana: “It was quite sudden.”
Adya: “All of a sudden…”
Jeff Foster: “Suddenly and without warning…”
Eckhart Tolle: “I woke up and suddenly realized…”
Francis Lucille: “This event, or more precisely, this nonevent, stands alone, uncaused.”

Um… uncaused?

Aw hell.

What’s a non-awake, non-shifted, still-on-the-path person supposed to do with uncaused? 

Do being the operative word.

Because after the fact, these teachers have come up with insights and meditations and inquiries that you are supposed to work at, in order to experience what happened to them, suddenly.

Which brings the question, is it possible to see through the self by giving it tasks, assignments, goals?

I mean, people sure are working very hard to get this thing.

Though the idea that we can get it, turns consciousness into just another small object that big-important-us can catch and hold on to, if only we have the right mitt and the right method. Not to mention infinite patience.

And by trying to make awakening happen with the power of our actions, we get to pretend we’re far more influential than we are.

While the reductionist, objectifying mind makes up journeys and levels, in order to appear like it contains incomprehensible Vastness.

Rather than the other way around.

With tales of attainment and paths and shifts, the mind attempts to reduce VASTness to a size it can handle.

Instead of seeing that, if anything, consciousness contains mind. And us. And our experiences.

Including awakening.

So there's no need to go looking for it- it’s present, always here, always has been.

And when we can try on the possibility that we’re experience itself, rather than the experience-er, well…

The sense of Me- that separate, achieving, goal-oriented object… lightens.

Without attaining levels. Without a process. Without a journey.

Experiencing is happening. Seeing is happening, feeling is happening, thinking is happening. We are consciousness seeing, consciousness feeling, consciousness thinking.

There is no shift.

It’s not rare.

We are… all of us… already Everything.

Welcome to enlightenment, where we’ve been all along.


"Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere." -- Nisargadatta


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