PRIME POST! Spiritual Progress or Spiritual Regress?

I want to report on a really interesting phenomenon. It may cause you to reevaluate your spiritual path.

Over two different weekends in September couples made the trip to the Heart of Progressive America–which of course, as we all know, is Columbia, South Carolina. They came to spend time with me. One couple drove down from Tennessee, and the other flew down from Baltimore.

Other than this single area of Nonduality, the couples had little in common. One thing they did have in common, however, was that in both cases the trip to see me was authored by the men. Neither of the women had more than, let’s say, “an open interest” in something that dominated their husbands’ lives: awakening. Certainly they’d both been exposed to nondual ideas, but they were not readers, viewers, or listeners of it.

Yet in both cases the wives woke up prior to their husbands and became clearer sooner.

Along this same line, this past Wednesday I had an Awakening Session with the husband of a regular student of mine. She had pretty much kept him in the dark about who I was and what I did. But clearly something was working for her, and she recommended he talk to me, so what the heck–why not?  He was a really pleasant, genuine, open–very open–guy, who also had a good sense of humor. Like the women above, however, he had no personal grounding in this field.

Yet he woke up faster and more easily than 80% or more of the devoted nondual seekers that I usually work with.

Are you noticing a pattern? I am, and in my case it’s not a particularly new one. What I’ve seen time and again is that lots of spiritual “knowledge” can become an impediment to awakening. This is counter-intuitive, but it’s a fact, and I see it at work fairly frequently. We think we know what we know, and we unknowingly stick to our guns, defending our false position.

Here’s a broad generalization: There are no accurate broad generalizations in Nonduality. I’m always teaching what I find in my teaching practice. Your gas mileage may vary.

I think that most often seekers seek and find a path that suits them idealistically, intellectually, aesthetically, or socially, and they turn seeking into a “pursuit of excellence”–into a story of future–where their chosen path will someday bring them future enlightenment. Let’s tell ourselves the truth and notice that this very rarely works. You are welcome to check the percentage of “awakenees” in any of the great traditions–including the overtly nondual paths–to verify my claim.

What we do is become “experts in the field.” Oh my God. Becoming an expert in the field of Nonduality is a booby prize. We are not trying to become academics of enlightenment, which is where countless paths are heading. I know this to be true, because I help those people wake up every week–but only after I’ve reset their thinking and destroyed their assumptions. Nonduality is not a philosophical discipline, although it is frequently offered and received as one.

Most of the time we end up getting very good at things that don’t wake us up. Meditation, for instance, is a very rewarding practice, but if ,on its own, it was truly effective in waking people up, then millions of seekers around the world would be awake. I notice they are not. The same thing can be said for prayer, mantras, singing, dancing, and just about anything else.

Reading is a good thing. I have a house full of spiritual books; I read daily and diligently, and I rarely read anything outside of this field. It’s good prep work prior to awakening, and it can be excellent for clearing as well, but it has to be understood that when you’re reading spiritual books, you are looking at lots of different cookbooks, with a zillion different recipes, some good and some lousy, but you actually have to put the book down and cook to get anywhere. Recipe collectors who don’t cook are rampant.

I work with “experts in the field” every day–unteaching them back to a point where there’s enough curious ignorance available that they can finally find freedom instead of gold-plated excuses for not finding freedom. Book knowledge is overvalued, and a get-your-hands-dirty, blue collar work ethic is underrated. However, effort as you will, that efforting, all by itself, is unlikely to work for you either.

I imagine this will be heard as heresy by some of you, but it appears to me that end-point ineffectiveness is the chief hallmark for the vast majority of spiritual practices. I hate to say, but I have to say, that it’s about the same for general, pre-awakening satsang. Are we willing to tell ourselves that pre-awakening satsang really doesn’t work very well? It just doesn’t. That’s why I don’t do it.

You may (or may not) get a taste of Truth in satsang, a rush and a gush, but I notice that it’s hard to take that happy meal home with us. By the time we get back to our cars, the taste is very often already waning. We had a great experience, but just like meditation or drug experiences these things begin and end, they rise and they fall.

Yes, you can wake up doing any of the three, but you can wake up driving a car, too, and we don’t hold retreats at race tracks where we take command of a fleet of rental cars. Can’t you see it? “This is how it’s done! Drive ’til you arrive!”

I had a guy this summer who woke up in the middle of the night from a dead sleep. Now tell me, how’s he going to repeat that? Are we all to take multiple naps, or group naps, or perhaps naps in exotic locales hosted by famous sleepers? It’s ridiculous.

It’s good to note, as my friend sees clearly, with great irony, that his know-it-all character had to be dead asleep before awakening could happen. I didn’t point this out, he did. Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Nothing truer has even been spoken.

Once again, check the people around you: are members of the crowd consistently waking up? No? Are you waking up? No? Get the hell out of there. I’m not saying the teacher is a fraud, I’m saying that for all you know you could have as much luck in a diner, and be enjoying coffee and pie when you do it. We can hear who and what we can hear and we can’t hear them all.

Self-inquiry is the notable exception to all other pre-awakening practices. It is the best one of the very few things you can do that can directly stimulate awakening. Yet it, too, has its problems. How do we know? Because zillions of us have asked, “Who am I?” until we were blue in the face and nothing happened.

Nonetheless, given all the practices I have witnessed and participated in, there’s nothing that touches inquiry for the discovery of Truth. Nothing. And now, at risk of being banished for blowing my own horn, which we all know I’ve never been loath to do anyway, what I notice is that guided inquiry is, so far as I know, the most effective and efficient method for coming to know your True Nature.

Our foremost loyalty should be to Awakeness Itself, not to any specific teacher, teaching, social network, or anything else. We’re either in this to awaken, or we’re not. Being honest with ourselves about our willingness to do what it takes to awaken is really important. In recovery they used to preach the “H. O. W.” of getting sober, where those letters meant Honesty, Openness, and Willingness. That is also the case in nonduality–in spades.

Why we are willing to do what it takes is quite secondary, or at least that is the case in pre-awakening. My motivations were chiefly shallow and self-centered in pre-awakening, but they have been radically restructured in post-awakening, and that restructuring was not authored by any so-called Fred. There’s still some ego here, it’s constantly on display, but I don’t do it; it does me.

Here is another heretical truth. Awakening introduces us to new, holy ground, but initial awakening in and of itself is not a particularly spiritual event. It can almost be a “non-event”. It is a shift in focus. It is when we finally become willing to pay attention to that which is already here and patently obvious, instead of believing in the ridiculous and fantastical that’s to be found somewhere other than here at sometime other that now.

We see What Is as it is. We also see what is not.

After about the age of two until liberation, we are all happy participants in what can only be described as mass hypnosis. This is our lot until it’s not. We’re in mass denial, addicted to thought and the sense of separation thought affords us. At core, the human race is an insane species. The process of awakening is the process of going sane. The awakening event, if there is one, is a starting line, not a finish line.

Some say that religion is a vaccination against spirituality and we all think that’s clever, because it makes us feel good about ourselves and our supposed choices. It sounds pretty good until you discover, in open-mouthed shock, that spirituality is most often a vaccination against awakening. This is difficult truth. As Al Gore might say, it is an inconvenient truth.

If what’s in your box isn’t working, then ditch it. “Understanding” what awakens others is not good enough. What is it that will awaken you? Find that.