The First Year on the Dance Floor by Adam Volny

If I had to sum up this past year of my spiritual journey in a single word, it would be failure. I now see that the reason for this is simple: the quest for spiritual enlightenment is destined to fail. That is its purpose. You cannot get there because there is no “there” to get to. But in a sense, you also cannot fail because your quest cannot go other than it does. But when the mind projects a goal which it does not attain, it will perceive this as failure. Don’t let that put you off. Quite the opposite – strive all the harder and perhaps you can bring about the failure sooner.

In this way the mind stays busy while the thingless Thing does its thing. What is really going on is that the mind is being cleared of its illusions and projections. That is all that is happening, and that is all that needs to happen because reality is already here. It is these words, it is this display, it is the air, it is your breath. It never went anywhere, and it never will.

This is not to say that the awakening event isn’t crucial. It shows us, often quite dramatically, how absurdly oblivious we have been. But it is not to be mistaken with reality. A glimpse of reality is not reality. Reality doesn’t come and go. Glimpses do. Perhaps we perceived timelessness, unity consciousness, or the disappearance of the self, all accompanied by feelings of great peace, bliss or love. But then the immediacy of these impressions began to fade.

And therein lies the first trap. We had this wonderful experience, which we mistook for enlightenment. Now we have a different experience, which we judge to be other than the awakened state. We had yearned and searched for so long! If we are no longer awake, we have failed again. Our plan to become the awakened being who finally gets a solid grasp on life and a leg up on others is suddenly undermined. What the hell happened to my enlightenment? Such thoughts and feelings are completely normal. Trust that this is not a problem. It needn’t be solved or fixed. These are just experiences and they are completely inconsequential to You. Just see them for what they are and accept them as such.

The initial awakening has its momentum. The crack in the mind closes gradually, so for some time we may experience flashbacks to the experience. And we might mistake these as our awakened state returning. Oh, thank God, it’s back! Now how do I keep this? Then the mind tries to hold onto that which is beyond it and inevitably falls back into suffering. This cycle may repeat many times. And while the angst may be great, there is still a lot of juice in it. We are having intense experiences and the drama is compelling.

The next phase for me, however, was like hitting the end of a long roller coaster water slide with a big splash. Now I was not only back to the boring part where nothing happens, but also soaking wet. That’s how life felt when the surge from my initial awakening lost its momentum. It was good ol’ Adam once again with all his complexes, positions and shame, left only with thrilling memories of how Oneness should feel. Here we reap the consequences of our delusions about the awakened state, and may struggle, as I did, with feelings of spiritual failure, of meaningless in daily life, of believing we should engage in more spiritual practice, that we should be having a different, more elevated experience, that by now we shouldn’t be so identified with the body and the mind, etc. But notice that these feelings all arise from thoughts. As such, they happen only in the mind and the body. In the meantime, nothing has happened to reality. It didn’t go anywhere, it didn’t change one bit.

During this phase, I spent most of my time trying to distract myself with video games, movies, TV, and occasionally, when the feeling of shame was unbearable, I would watch or read something spiritual (it didn’t help much). I was on summer break and worked only on weekends, so I spent a lot of time like this. My evening walks were no longer serene; instead, I was just rushing to get back to my PC and its distractions.

But over time it began to sink in that none of this was actually a problem that had to be solved. It was just how this unit was wired to react to given life circumstances. And this whole time, the thingless Thing was doing its thing because that’s what it does.

At this point, you might expect me to introduce a third stage and go on in some reasonably organized manner. But I find that the process is not linear. It defies our attempts to map a clear course. It feels more like some weird spiral that is twisted and folded onto itself, breaking any sense of structure and sequence. You only notice that some things repeat a lot. But that doesn’t stop us from creating stories about what’s happening. And that’s what I’m presenting to you right now – a story, filtered through my own very subjective and inaccurate memory.

I would describe the process of clearing as a gradual relaxation of expectations. We start off with a huge pile of ideas about what awakening, spirituality and life are all about. And during the process, one after another, we discover those to be false. And we are free of them – until we’re not. They tend to return and we tend to reclaim them. Eventually they are seen through again. And this process repeats as often as needed. Suffering really is your best friend. No one is more honest with you. Don’t be so quick in trying to get rid of it. Listen to it. Look at it. Be curious about it. And it just might happen that you notice something you haven’t before.

Adam Volny is enrolled in The Living Method Continuing Student Program. He lives in the Czech Republic.