PRIME POST: The Power of Commitment

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The transfer of our identification from the illusion of personhood to the truth of unity is a difficult one. Even where we project that there was little difficulty for this teacher or that saint, the odds are extremely high that we have either been misinformed or we have misinterpreted what really happened in that case. I can’t know what is or is not possible, but I can tell you that of the hundreds of people I know who have awakened both with me and without me, not a single one of them had a cakewalk either before or after awakening. In most cases, which will almost surely include your own, it just doesn’t work that way.

Every week I have Awakening Sessions with people who tell me at the beginning of our session that they no longer seriously identify with the unit, only to discover thirty minutes later that in fact they do. One is an intellectual understanding, which I am in no way underrating, and the other is a felt knowing. There’s quite a difference. Even people who are awake when we meet will almost always discover pockets of residual identification when we do a thorough investigation.

I don’t mean here the biologically essential relationship that we have with our bodies. Without that relationship the unit cannot remain alive, so that’s not going anywhere. I still know what to feed and where to put a jacket when it’s cold, and so did St. Francis and Ramana Maharshi. I will turn around if you call the unit’s name, and they would have done the same if you called theirs.

So what we are talking about is psychological identification, where we think ourselves to be our minds. As addictive as the body can be, it doesn’t compare to the cravings of the mind. And, in the final analysis, regardless of the excellent teaching strategies that we hear state otherwise, ultimately we actually are our bodies, we are simply not limited to being our bodies. Like everything else we are ever taught, “I am not the body” is a statement about a stage within ever-unfolding clarity, not an absolute truth.

Just as we use one thorn to dig out another, pointers are helpful little white lies to move us beyond them. Use them and lose them.

A legendary Zen koan states:

“First, mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers.” (Pre-enlightenment.)

“Next, mountains were no longer mountains, and rivers were no longer rivers.” (Early enlightenment.)

“Finally, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.” (Mature enlightenment.)

If you’ll forgive the awkwardness of the phrase, “we are Oneness.” Given this, we can’t be Oneness and somehow exclude our bodies. Nonduality is always inclusive, never exclusive. We can declare that our bodies, these physical units, are for all practical purposes “real.” What I mean by “real” in this instance is that these bodies remain present whether we are or are not thinking about them. Contrarily, the character’s apparent existence is reliant upon present thought.

The character can be found in experience, but it is not located in reality. Experience is enough—it’s okay to enjoy experiences and take them relatively seriously, but ultimately only so seriously. Parents filling a stocking for a small child are taking Santa Claus seriously, but they don’t believe in Santa Claus. They have gone shopping beforehand; they are not waiting to hear reindeer on the roof.

It is the nagging, almost overwhelming belief in the character’s existence that confuses us. It is this belief that draws the line between unconscious awakeness and Conscious Awakeness. The Fred story was hugely detailed, and I had an enormous investment in it. It ran every morning, matinee, and evening for over fifty years. It had patterns within patterns within patterns. And some of those patterns are still running.

The character is, in effect, a meta-pattern. The philosophical truth that “it doesn’t exist” holds up quite poorly in the face of the living breathing fact that it sure appears to. We refer to it, and we defer to it constantly. And it is to this pattern that we turn to for help in waking up.

I doubt I need to hammer home the point that a pattern can’t wake up a pattern from nearly eternal pattern-ness. This is completely and ridiculously obvious once it’s seen, but it can’t even be guessed at when it’s not. It is as well-disguised and tricky as the cosmic joke of awakening itself—whose punch line is also glaringly obvious, but only when seen in a rear-view mirror.

The automated patterns that we successively think we are, can and do go through countless lifetimes trying to wake themselves up. And that’s fine—it’s their job to do that. Until it isn’t. How can we know when “isn’t” has arrived? We will find ourselves on either an overt or a covert spiritual path.

A really sure sign that you, the Reader, are fast running out of story-time in this four dimensional DNA-driven dream, a totally unmistakable sign, is the fact that you just read this paragraph. When it’s time to get obvious, the pull to Conscious Awakeness won’t hesitate to smack us squarely in the forehead. Smack.

This idea might be a real comfort for us, if it meant anything in a human-relative sense. It doesn’t. Given that we are talking about hundreds or thousands of lifetimes per dream-line, then to be a paltry five hundred or a thousand years from waking up would be considered really close. I’m not actually suggesting that spiritual development is measured by a given number of Earth-orbits around the random star we call “the sun,” but such an idea can make this slippery concept slightly less slippery. Use it and lose it.

Everyone will wake up in the end; that’s how it works. There’s really nothing to it. Unless there is. This time around for me, childhood physical and mental abuse, alcoholism and fill-in-the-blank addiction, homelessness, loss of family, health, and dignity, along with two longish trips to a mental hospital and about thirty trips to jail turned the trick very nicely. Suffering is a bummer of a path, but it’s certainly a sure one. And one has to say that I was surely committed to it.

But of course this is not the kind of commitment I’m talking about here. What I’m speaking of here is conscious commitment—making the decision over and over again—to do whatever it takes to wake up; to step up to the plate again and again and swing as hard as you can and damn the scoreboard. That type of commitment includes taking stock of where you are right now. We have to be willing to tell ourselves the truth today, and today, and today.

I had a session with a guy out in California’s beautiful canyon country this past week. As most of my clients are, he was a very smart, and as is also common, he was quite a long-term, experienced member of our community. He told me he went to sleep in the middle of the fourth grade, and that he’d been trying to wake up ever since—meaning for the last thirty or forty years or so. He said he’d been in cults, religions, movements, what have you. He’d had lots of teachers East and West, including some powerful ones. His use of Nondualese was as fluid and fluent as my own.

He was a totally committed guy. This was not only evident from the path he’d been walking for all of these decades. He proved to me that he was totally committed right then, that day, in that very moment. How did he prove it? Like this.

Two minutes into our intro he stopped talking, looked me squarely in the eye, and without hesitation said, “I think I talk above my realization. I think I need some remedial help.” It blew me away. My respect for this guy shot through the roof immediately, and I told him so. I should be hearing this kind of confession on an almost daily basis. I don’t.

This is someone who was ready to shed whatever he thought he knew—and whoever he thought he was–in the service of Truth. This was a guy who could see that whatever he’d been doing, no matter how good and skillful it might be for others, wasn’t actually working for him to the degree necessary to foster Self-realization. He was an empty cup, ready to accept whatever I was about to pour. Beautiful.

The most valuable thing any of us can ever know is that we don’t know anything. That doesn’t mean denying or tossing away all of our relative and relevant knowledge structure. It just means opening up the hatch and hurling sureness overboard. Doubt is our friend.

Less than an hour into our inquiry, my new friend came to a shattering realization of what he was not. It’s a simple, but staggering insight into the mechanism of the dream. His world changed right there. He saw it so clearly that going into what he is was almost rote, meandering through a list of gentle stories and reminders to That which had just experienced Truth about what It already knew. That could have never happened without the humility this guy displayed up front; he’d been his own best friend.

If you’ve been in a tradition for a long time, and you haven’t woken up yet, ask yourself why you’re still there. Are you yet seeking enlightenment, or are you perhaps hanging onto the known, the comfortable beliefs, rituals, practices, and community? There’s nothing wrong with the latter, just be honest with yourself about it—you’ll enjoy it more, and the pressure will be off for you to be anything other than what you already are—which is all you can be anyway.

If you are digging a bunch of shallow holes looking for water—trying this, then that; now this teacher, then that one—once again, ask yourself why. Are you sincere in your quest, or are you having a good time eating appetizers without having to commit to an entrée? Again, there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t lie to yourself about it. Acknowledge that you’re a dilettante and be willing to settle for a dilettante’s rewards.

If enlightenment is right around the same damn corner it was two, or five, or fifty years ago, and you genuinely want to wake up, then commit—right now! Commit to doing whatever it takes to wake up and you will wake up. Period.

And then commit again. Do whatever it takes to clear up—to abide, to endure, to embody—to be awake to this arising, the only arising that actually counts. Good luck. Let me know if I can help.

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This video is somewhat related to what this article is about, and might be worth your viewing.

On the Edge of Enlightenment

Fred Davis
October 14 2014