Changing of the Guard: Spirituality in Flux
Dr. Jenny Wade, who is the author of Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness, and Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil, is a well known researcher and teacher in consciousness studies who lives in the Bay Area. As many of you know, she is also a friend and student of mine. She’s just completed an article for an academic journal – which will be published sometime next year – and this teaching is highlighted within it. She makes the point that direct, essentially no-path teachings are beginning to spring up around the world. She closes her piece with a rather extraordinary statement – one that I have been making for several years, sometimes to the amusement of the skeptical. I quote:
“If the documented success rate of secular technologies, such as the Finders Course, and of non-aligned teachers like Fred Davis for helping seekers reliably attain nonduality in a short period of time continues to outperform traditional teaching methods by orders of magnitude, it may not be a question of if but rather when seekers will engage in “non-spiritual” means to awaken, reversing the trend of millennia.”
I shared what I sent her back with a couple of people, and they suggested I share it with you in a short post. So here it is.
Hey, Jenny! I enjoyed your article, thank you very much. I’m honored to be included. It led me to attempt to put my view into a nutshell.
In my mind, we have historically misunderstood, and thus misrepresented the meaning of the word “spirituality.” We present it as meaning the achievement of an altered state of consciousness – something other, different, or more – for an alleged individual entity. In fact, spiritual awakening is coming to see that the everyday life being experienced by a collective of individual entities is already an altered state, but this state is occurring to Consciousness itself.
No such theoretical individual exists, and thus no one is ever liberated from bondage, because there can be neither bondage nor freedom for what is nothing more than a collection of persistent, identifiable patterns void of an independent center. What does not exist cannot undergo experience. Hence what we call spiritual awakening is the awakening of Spirit itself, as it initially snaps out of the auto-hypnosis that has caused it to experience a false sense of individuality and of that so-called individual’s disconnection from some other Oneness.
As seen in hindsight, the whole notion is preposterous.
This does not mean that everyday life is discounted in every way. The common, collective way of being is subjective Spirit experiencing itself objectively, and thus is important. It is as real as anything else. It has whatever value we bring to it, and so we are deeply invested. Everything continues to count in our respective lives. Yet seen from the eyes of Consciousness, it is known that nothing ultimately matters.
The frenetic urgency of crisis living drops away to allow for a sweeter, gentler experience. We slowly go sane.
The so-called “event” of awakening is less spiritual than it is mechanical. The Living Method simply bends attention/awareness back on itself, thus bringing attention/awareness to bear upon attention/awareness, so that it simply cannot miss the truth of its own nature. This natural state is the Heart of all religion, all spiritual traditions and paths, as well as all peace, beauty, and happiness. It is the paradoxical “communion” of self with Self.
Love,
Fred
