One of my most important teachers was a man named Jean Klein. When I first met him back in the late 1980s, he immediately said to me, “You don’t need any intellectual input.” I said, “I know! I can’t read spiritual books anymore. I read one line and immediately fall asleep.” We cracked up laughing. Then I said, “I can’t even read your books!” And we laughed again because he knew that I was already receiving the teaching that is, and can only be, transmitted tacitly in the silence.
So what does it mean to receive the teaching? What is it that’s transmitted? What is awakening? Depending on where you are in your own process, the so-called answer may be less useful than the question itself.
This very natural and very common discovery we call awakening is really just the ongoing process of opening to a much bigger perspective of this mystery we call life, and paradoxically, as you explore more and more deeply you’ll find that existence becomes more mysterious rather than less!
So rather than seeking an answer, embrace the question. Rest in the question. Live the question. Gradually your identity will shift from the form—the limited person you’ve always taken yourself to be, with its history and personality, its dramas and struggles—to the emptiness, the space within which that personality has arisen, within which that history and all those dramas and struggles have played out. You’ll move from closedness to openness, from knowing to not knowing.
Awakening is active. It’s being opening rather than a passive state of being open. It’s a movement of energy, of availability, of receptivity—and when you are truly receptive, you are also radiant, transmitting the truth of who and what you are in every moment.
Awakening is not an endpoint. It’s an ongoing discovery, an ongoing movement into the perpetual unknown. In an infinite, unknowable universe how could there be an endpoint? The idea of an endpoint, a place called “awakening” that you’re striving to reach, might be useful temporarily; the sense of a goal or destination could be a helpful motivating idea, especially as you’re just starting out on the path. But ultimately, awakening is not an idea. It cannot be understood or comprehended through thinking. Thinking may have gotten you in the door, but now you have to find out how to let go of thinking, how to allow yourself to dissolve into this vastness of pure presence.
If you can allow yourself to just be here, that dissolving will happen quite naturally. For most people this happens gradually, over time, but even so you may find the effects of that dissolving showing up more quickly than you expect.
As you deepen and become embodied in presence, you’ll also begin to see clearly where you’re still caught or struggling. The ways you’ve been conditioned to protect and defend yourself will become obvious, and those too will begin to dissolve. As gradually you relinquish your many strategies of protection and separation, a deep movement of healing and integration will begin to emerge by itself.
Contrary to popular belief, awakening is the beginning of the path, not the end. Awakening continues to unfold and expand, and gradually the human person transforms and heals. From that awakened perspective, life—even with all of its complexities, disappointments, and unfulfilled dreams—has profound meaning. There’s a richness, right here, and you might even say that you are that richness.
You already know what I’m talking about. Whether you’re aware of it or not, at some point in your life, you’ve had at least a glimpse, a taste, of that possibility. It’s built in—that wisdom is just part of this life. It’s not something that you don’t have and you need to get, or that someone else has and you don’t. If some teacher is telling you it is, that’s your signal to run in the opposite direction as quickly as possible!
So how do you find awakening? The answer is in the silence. It’s in the stillness. It’s in stopping and simply allowing this moment to reveal itself. It’s in finding out how to become available for it to find you.
As you tune in to this moment, you may experience a natural expansiveness, which can feel very nice, but tuning in deeply could also activate things in you that have been hidden or held in. You may find that some emotional or physical pain that’s gone unseen or unacknowledged now comes into view, and it may be difficult to allow that emergence to happen. But that’s okay! If you find yourself resisting, take a step back and simply notice that resistance. That is to say, allow what’s happening—even if what’s happening is not allowing! Be the space within which not allowing is happening.
Many of us have been so hard on ourselves in this life, blaming ourselves for our shortcomings and limitations. Now, from the awakened perspective, we finally learn to engender and nurture compassion for the limited, imperfect, and sometimes wounded and broken human beings that we are. We begin to develop care and tenderness, forgiveness and patience, and love for ourselves. From infinite spacious awareness, everything is allowed. The heart can finally be heard, can finally be healed. We can finally be fully acknowledged. I think what we all deeply seek as human beings, probably more than anything, is to be loved—and to love.
Awakening leads to the opening, healing, and liberation of the heart. The heart is a very delicate flower, but when it blooms, it’s the most beautiful and fragrant flower of all.
Your fundamental nature is fulfillment—not the fulfillment of getting your needs met or accomplishing your goals, but the fulfillment of the fullness of being. That’s why we’re here—to discover that and to rediscover it in each and every moment. Awareness is always present and always available, but how to locate it may not always be obvious to us. So we seek out help. We look for teachers and teachings to help us find our original nature—to have it mirrored, to have it reflected back to us. To honor it, to give ourselves to it. To help us simply relax into that effortless ease of being.
And then what? We just live our lives! We hang out with our friends; we enjoy ourselves. No longer caught in the illusion of being separate, we find out in each moment how to allow the creative maturing process of this human mystery to unfold. Life becomes endlessly interesting, a realm of infinite discovery even in the simplest of activities—washing the dishes, taking out the garbage, brushing your teeth—and there is profound joy in the simplicity of each moment.