“Don’t try to hold onto what is realized, be what is realized. You cannot maintain realization or sustain it. In order for it to always be, you must be it yourself—in your humanity.”
– Adyashanti
It is important to differentiate between experiencing and being. Prior to awakening, we may have experiences of higher stages. But these are just experiences. Wonderful, but if we try to hold onto them, they become a barrier. We can never hold onto an experience anyway. We’re just holding on to a memory of an experience. A memory is not even the experience and tends to devolve over time.
Real awakening is letting go of experiences and becoming that which we really are. And even the experience of awakening itself must be let go of to continue progressing. There is much more.
At some point we find progress is almost a continual letting go of what has been “reached.” A continual surrender into greater and greater depths of being.
Davidya
When we learn to apply this, things go so much smoother.
Thanks for the reminder =)
This is so true here Davidya! I find this the ultimate humility and vulnerability.
I am seeing in an unending and ever increasing way that no experience, no mental conceptual position about what has been realized or whether I have arrived will carry the day.
The defenses and conditioning peel off layer by layer the more real it becomes that I cannot sustain any realization whatsoever.
The other part of this I find is that only a radical openness and being defenseless to how humanness appears here including all sensations, emotions, thoughts, desires, shadows, and appearances no matter how beautiful or ugly provides the service of both failure and salvation.
Failure to manage, control, or even know how realization opens or that this bodymind will look all spiffy and pure according to some limited conceptual framework.
Salvation in the sense that a willingness appears to trust the ground of being more and more beyond personality and thoughts of self identity. That the nakedness or openness even with all self judgments is exactly what i really wanted and didn’t know it.
I have heard some people say you cannot turn towards what you are already are. I agree, and I say that is a bit deceptive in the sense that if you are willing to be completely and totally open, transparent, and real, you will see nothing that appears completely satisfies always and forever. It is all very transient. It isn’t who we are.
What is changeless is just a relaxation into life as it IS with vulnerability and a willingness to be ever more intimate with ourselves.
It breaks me open over and over again. I am the clay that is being molded ever new. Despite the discomfort and emotional resistance, I am growing to love it more and more. I can no longer fight it when I don’t love it. I don’t want to fight anymore.
So, when all the appearances are seen for what they are then what doesn’t want to “let go” drops away. This is not a turning towards per se, but it is a clear seeing thru in a very real, honest, and authentic way.
I am not a fan of the concept of “letting go”. I have had a brief conversation with Adya about this, and he said it best for me then. What wants to “let go” can never let go. He was talking about the thoughts and desires to let go. I have to agree. Intellectually, I can’t let go… enough although it can point and speak the truth as you do here.
I have had to do something the bible talks about and “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” (to my self concepts and identity) allowing everything out in the open most especially those parts of me I wanted to hide from everyone else. It is slaying all the beautiful lies I tell myself. It drops my defenses.
This doesn’t mean I go around sharing my dark secrets with everyone. It means that I let them out in the open of awareness, and I see clearly the humanness, the fear, and transient nature in all forms. They all pass away sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly.
Clearly seen there is a humility and compassion towards myself and others. That’s when the walls drop, the lion lays down with the lamb within, and I see we are not different really even though the thoughts, emotions, and desires might be in their particulars. We are the same in our limited conditioning and the willingness to see an openness that is here right now is ourmy greatest fear and also our greatest freedom.
We
no longer
have
to hide
from ourselves
or fix ourselves.
In that openness,
vulnerability,
and intimacy.
realization,
freedom,
clarity,
wholeness,
and oneness
claims us.
Not the other way
around.
Come,
Hold My Hand.
We are not
so different
after all.
Wonderful Post Davidya!!!
Hi Raz
Shifting from an ego-control model to an allowing then surrender is a pretty big shift for many but the most devotional people. But yes, life is much smoother. Trying to control the universe is a pretty futile job if we’re functioning from the ego. 😉
Hi Ben
Well, there comes a time when certain aspects of a true realization become abiding and no longer come and go. But then we adapt and they shift more background and ordinary. And then new experiences come along and new realizations unfold. (assuming the allowing continues)
Yes, and the knowing of our deeper nature loosens the bonds of control.
hmmm – well at first it can be experienced as a turning within. But as that becomes known, then there is nothing to turn to – you already are that. Thats a realization with a number of layers of depth though.
Well observed. What wants to let go cannot let go. We cannot overcome the ego with the go nor the mind with the mind. We have to step beyond them.
Yes, there can be that experience of facing the shadows, confronting the dark side, or going into the dark night. Even facing down our fear of death itself.
Beautiful. Wonderful expression. Thank you for sharing.
let go, let be; I would say is a byproduct when we embrace our innate nondual/unconditional attitude that is always there, ready to be realized by this limited attention that shapes our experience according to where it habitually dwells. Attention no longer absorbed by inflating the ego can start inflating our spirit instead =)
(laughs) Right. I’d probably use the word awareness rather than attitude, but yeah.