If you are a seeker of Truth, God, or Self-realization, you no doubt find yourself driven by your spiritual search but unable to end it even by your most sincere efforts. You are caught by the desire for enlightenment or God consciousness, yet time and again you are acutely aware of your sense of separation. You desperately want to end your suffering or your longing, but no matter what you do or where you look, you are frustrated in your search for liberation. You may have tried all manner of spiritual practices, meditation, guru shopping, chanting, prayer, and spiritual reading, and still you have not attained your heart’s desire. You imagine you have chosen the path of being a spiritual seeker, but in actuality, the path has chosen you.
If you are such a seeker, you are in a dilemma. You desire spiritual awakening yet may be told by those you imagine are “awake” that either your desire is not great enough or your desire is the obstacle. You earnestly seek Truth but may be told that Truth cannot be “known” by your mind. You long for God yet continually feel separate from who or what you long for. You are encouraged to practice one or many spiritual disciplines, all of which require the efforts of your ego, but you are told the real goal is to rid yourself of your ego. You search for someone or something to tell you how to get where you want to go, but you are told there is nowhere to go. You are told to relax your mind but to keep your body perfectly straight. You are told to love your neighbor as yourself but not how to love yourself.
In your search, you are predictably confused and frequently frustrated. Even when you enjoy moments of expanded awareness, peace, and openhearted connectedness, you have no idea how to remain in such a state. However, you feel certain that if you just search long enough, work hard enough, or eventually find the right teacher, the right practice, or the right path, you can achieve your goal of “enlightenment.” Your spiritual ambition is to obtain the knowledge, wisdom, or grace to live in a state of perpetual happiness and bliss, free from anxiety, problems, and pain. You are sure all of the rewards you imagine will accompany Self-realization will be for your own personal enjoyment. Your search could end at any moment because the truth of what you are is never absent. And yet the time-bound, conditioned mind imagines you are on a journey from “here” to “there.”
Ending the Search is an exploration of the so-called spiritual journey, both pre- and post-awakening, with an emphasis on inquiry as an invaluable tool in determining the true identity of the seeker. Many, if not most, spiritual traditions and practices direct their teachings to a “self” that is seen to be separate from the awakening, enlightenment, or God it seeks without ever questioning who that “self” is. So the seeker approaches awakening with the ambition of “achieving” enlightenment through the efforts of his or her egoic mind. While the initial impulse to awaken comes from a deeper dimension of our Being, identified mind often begins to seek awakening in the same way it might seek to get an A on an exam or to achieve “success” in the world; and failure to achieve one’s spiritual goal is viewed as a failure of the “me.” This failure of the “me” to either “get it” or “keep it” is an important aspect of awakening—one that may invite a deeper surrender to Truth.
The funny thing about the spiritual search is that there is no one searching! And yet the search continues. No matter how many times you hear the wise ones telling you that there is nowhere to go and no one to arrive, you can’t believe that it is true for you. For them, maybe, because they have already arrived! But not for you! You truly imagine there is a them and a you!
This book is about the ego’s spiritual ambition, its search for its idea of “enlightenment,” its frustrations, and its eventual fate, as the seeker becomes the sought. The seeker’s quest for Truth becomes the Infinite’s quest for you. Woven throughout is the story of one woman’s search for God—a search that began in childhood, in anger and disillusionment, took many twists and turns, and suddenly ended in a most astonishing and unexpected way. Yet the “end of seeking” was merely a new beginning. You may imagine that this story is “mine,” but it is not. Yet it is no one else’s either.
Although for decades I considered myself an ardent spiritual seeker, there were certain ways I imagined the search should and should not unfold. For example, I never sought a guru, never wanted a guru, and in fact would have been repulsed to bow, even in thought, to any human being, because I believed no human was God. However, Ramana Maharshi and Ramesh Balsekar, both twentieth-century Indian sages, no longer in form, as well as the American-born spiritual teacher Adyashanti, appeared from the infinite Heart we share, functioning respectively as guru, guide, and buddha. It turns out that God, Guru, and Self are one and the same.
Once I refused to chant in Sanskrit during a yoga retreat because I did not know what god I was singing to and did not want to be praying to the “wrong” one. Now there is a deep honoring of all paths to God, all paths to Knowing. Once I imagined that only certain people, feelings, thoughts, and actions, and not others, could belong to God. Now it is seen that nothing and no one is separate from God or Consciousness. All there is is God. All there is is Consciousness. And yet no concept delivers Truth, and no name defines the ineffable.
While many methods and valuable practices are useful in one’s search, this book emphasizes Self-inquiry, a method advocated by Ramana Maharshi for searching, not for enlightenment but for the source of the ego. It is about the understanding that that which is driving the spiritual search is that which will end the search—or not—and that none of it is in the ego’s control! It is about meeting Adyashanti, a true spiritual friend and living buddha, years after an awakening had ended my search and learning that awakening to our true nature is only step one on the spiritual journey.
The ego mind cannot explain the Mystery that unfolds the spiritual search. It cannot explain the process by which one person searches for God or enlightenment, another searches for a cure for cancer, and yet another searches for ways to develop methods of mass destruction. And it cannot say why a book is written, or why it is read, or what value it may or may not have. It imagines that we speak or write to express something we wish to share. Actually, one writes because writing happens. One reads because reading happens. Because I am writing, you are reading. But in the world of appearances, this book was written for the so-called spiritual seeker, with deep compassion for the struggles and frustrations inherent in following such a path.
This book says nothing new about the spiritual journey, the myths of the so-called spiritual life, or the perspective that appears with the end of seeking. But if you had truly understood the first time you heard words pointing to your inner Truth—if you believed you were not separate, that God or Consciousness is all there is—and if you lived in that continual awareness, then these fingers would not be typing words and you would not be reading them. But because there are seekers, there are teachers and gurus and books written and words spoken trying to point to the Mystery that cannot really be known. Because there are teachers pointing, there are seekers trying to see. Each thing defines the other, as in all of life.
The entire course of life on earth seems to be about seeking. Plants seek light; birds seek insects; bees seek blossoms; water seeks its own level; energies seek balance; a person searches for a partner, power, wealth, health, a new job, the next meal, happiness, or a moment’s peace in a difficult life. Spiritual seeking is just another unfolding of that which drives all seeking—one that your body-mind organism seems programmed to do. And that is why we have found one another at this moment.
If any part of this book or the flavor of its understanding seems useful or helpful, know that it is given lovingly to you from your own deep Self. If anything seems true, it is your own knowing that remembers its truth. If nothing rings true for you, toss this book aside and follow your own inner guidance, trusting its process completely. About one thing I have no doubt: whomever you imagine yourself to be, however you imagine your life should or should not look, you have never been separate for a single breath, a single blink, a single moment from the unnameable Mystery you seek.
Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) is considered by many to be one of the greatest Indian spiritual gurus of the twentieth century. Self-realization occurred at the age of seventeen, and from that moment until his death, Ramana Maharshi continually abided in the Self, teaching mainly through silence. His recommended path to realization was Self-inquiry, a continual referral of the ego mind toward its Source through the question “Who am I?”
Ramesh Balsekar (1917–2009), considered to be an awakened Advaita master, was a native of Mumbai (Bombay), India, alumnus of the London School of Economics, retired bank president, golfer, householder, and disciple of Nisargadatta Maharaj. His teaching was simple: Consciousness is all there is, so “who” is to know or seek “what”? All there is is the impersonal functioning of Consciousness or God, reflecting within itself the totality of manifestation.
Adyashanti (b. 1962), a native of California, was an ardent student of Zen Buddhism for fourteen years prior to his teacher’s request that he begin to share the Dharma. His nondual teachings have been compared to those of the early Zen masters and Advaita Vedanta sages. Eventually awakened out of any tradition, Adyashanti now teaches around the world, inviting students to stop, inquire, and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence.