Thisness

I’m continually surprised by how many apparently mature and experienced spiritual practitioners remain fixed in a self image of brokenness and lack, perpetually seeking their idea of perfection or nirvana at some future point in time and space. It’s as if they can’t let go of the handrail of spiritual materialism.

I have no idea what awakening or enlightenment mean to anyone else but to me they simply mean the open, unconditional, honest, vulnerable recognition of and gratitude for our life exactly as it is here and now.

There is a dishonesty to many spiritual teachers that misleadingly promise some fictional, unattainable future state, to seduce and entrance its seekers, to keep them ever bound to their path that leads nowhere.

It’s not a matter of either deserving or not deserving anything. We just get what we get when we get it.

Doubt, chaos, uncertainty, darkness are all part of the same whole, the same indivisible aliveness of being.

There are pockets of wisdom and insight to be found throughout all the great spiritual traditions which can enlighten our lives. However no insights are of greater value, nor awaken us more, than those born from our own personal experience of our aliveness.

Don’t expect anything to happen. Just wait. This waiting is a deep acceptance of the moment as such. Nietzsche called it amor fati — unquestioning love of whatever has fated you to be here. You reach a point where you’re just sitting there, asking, “What is this?” — but with no interest in an answer. The longing for an answer compromises the potency of the question. Can you be satisfied to rest in this puzzlement, this perplexity, in a deeply focused and embodied way? Just waiting without any expectations?
Stephen Bachelor