Getting closer to your true self has many practical benefits. So far we have focused on the practical side, because it is crucial for spirituality to solve the very real problems that people face. But if you are a parent raising a young child, it would be shortsighted to think of walking, talking, and reading as practical things only. We don’t say to a toddler, “Start walking. You may need to run after a bus to get to work.” To grow from infancy to childhood, from adolescence to adulthood is valuable in itself. Life unfolds in all its richness as we unfold. The inner and outer worlds mesh into a single process known as living.
Spirituality has its own value, leaving aside all the practical considerations. When you are alone, facing no problems or crises, the situation doesn’t call for solutions. Yet your need for spirituality is greater than ever. When you consider what it means simply to exist, the true self beckons. It can tell you who you really are, and nothing is more valuable. That’s a grand pronouncement, I know. Anyone can spend a rewarding lifetime ignoring the riddle of “Who am I?” Or, to be more precise, people answer the question by identifying with the everyday self. “I am” can be followed with countless words that apply to ordinary existence. I am my job, my relationships, my family. I am my money and possessions, my status and importance. Into the equation you can add race, ethnicity, politics, and religion. The everyday self is an expanding suitcase crammed with every thought, feeling, memory, and dream you’ve ever had.
And yet for all that, the true self has not really been touched. The soul, the essence, the source—by whatever name, your deepest identity doesn’t unfold without personal growth. Spirituality is voluntary, and in the modern age the vast majority of people opt out. Now that we’ve covered the practical reasons for not opting out, it’s time to see whether the true self is worth seeking for its own worth, not just for what it can accomplish. Lofty ideals are not what we need, either. We need to experience the true self and say, “I choose you over my everyday self.” A new kind of self-worth is implied, and a higher kind of love. The bliss of simply existing, if you can experience it, would be chosen by anyone over the ups and downs of ordinary existence, the fragile happiness that is always accompanied by sadness, anxiety, and disappointment.
The everyday self is already flooded with experiences. To arrive at a deeper level requires a process that takes you higher. On a daily basis you must orient yourself to grow in the following areas:
Maturity—developing into an independent adult
Purpose—finding a reason to be here
Vision—adopting a worldview to live by
“Second attention”—seeing with the eyes of the soul
Transcendence—going beyond the restless mind and the five senses
Liberation—becoming free of the “reality illusion”
Your success in these areas depends on your really wanting them to unfold. Personal growth involves the same things that go into learning how to play the piano or to master French cooking: desire, motivation, practice, repetition, and discipline. This is your life you want to transform. A generation ago it was unusual to hear anyone speak about personal growth in these terms. “Finding your true potential” was just emerging as a catchphrase, along with “consciousness raising.” Can we say that either one showed people how to reach the goal? Did thousands of aspiring seekers manage to transform themselves? Sadly, the answer was usually no. To find success, you must acquire a trait that protects you from fickleness, illusion, self-indulgence, and loss of motivation. That trait is sobriety. Sobriety is a combination of serious intent and realism. It is an expanded state of awareness that has to be cultivated. If you don’t walk the walk, you will remain in a contracted state of the kind known as everyday existence.
Let me apply sobriety, then, to each point on the preceding list.
Maturity is a psychological state, not a physical one. It involves things like emotional balance, self-reliance, moderation, and the possession of foresight. Children aren’t expected to have those things. Adolescents move erratically in their direction. If the journey isn’t completed, you can be fifty while still viewing the world through the mind of a fifteen-year-old. The demands of everyday life tend to work against maturity. There are so many distractions and pressures that a person can use as excuses.
You can even say that society now devalues maturity. Mass media creates the illusion that being young and hip is much more fun. By comparison, not arriving late at work or staying after to finish up some paperwork is deadly dull. But in reality the young are more stressed and anxious than at any other stage of life. Immaturity begins with the brightness of youth, but it wanes over the years because to remain immature is to miss the learning curve that allows you to master your life. Maturity doesn’t sound like a spiritual word, but unless the spiritual path is grounded in mature psychology, it quickly evaporates into wispy dreams.
Reaching maturity means that you practice the following on a daily basis: Take responsibility for yourself. Provide the necessaries of life without depending on others. Stand up for moral values and play your part in keeping society together, beginning with the basic unit of society, your family. Treat others with respect and expect the same in return. Behave fairly and work toward justice in every situation. Learn the value of restraint and self-possession.
Almost no one would say that they lead a purposeless life. We don’t randomly put one foot ahead of the other. Our lives are formed around short-term and long-term goals. Yet, despite this, at a deeper level countless people do wonder why they are here. They regard with nostalgia a bygone time when being a good Christian, obeying God’s laws, fitting into one’s social class, or defending your country—among many other kinds of ready-made purposes—was enough to give life meaning. We are left to find our own purpose, one person at a time. But here nostalgia is misplaced. It was always true that life’s real purpose was to be found through a personal search.
I’ve offered the true self as a purpose worth devoting yourself to. Short of that, you can find purpose simply through growing and evolving. Looking to the unseen horizon, your purpose could be as profound as reaching enlightenment. If you are suspicious of being told what your purpose in life should be, that’s healthy. The most one should accept is inspiration, which is also the most one can give. The point is to remain aware of your purpose, whatever it is. Everyday existence tends to blur our purpose for being here, swamping it in mundane practical demands. Purpose only survives by paying serious attention to it.
Reaching your purpose means that you practice the following on a daily basis: Do at least one thing that is selfless. Read a passage of scripture, poetry, or inspirational prose that makes you feel uplifted. Share your ideals with someone who feels sympathetic. Without proselytizing, express your purpose for being here; aim to inspire with modesty, not to persuade with force. Help your children to find their purpose; make them see that this is important. Act from your highest values. Don’t sink to the level of those who criticize or oppose you.
When I was young I committed to memory a quotation from the poet Robert Browning that in our grandparents’ day was known by almost everyone: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” The religious context may have faded away, but it is still necessary to aspire. Our highest aspirations speak to the visionary side of the true self. There are practical aspirations, of course, that are not visionary, such as aspiring to make partner in a law firm or to earn a billion dollars. Material aspirations occupy the front of people’s minds, yet in reaching them they don’t attain heaven or any other higher ground. The gap between everyday life and the soul remains wide. The yearning for something more isn’t fulfilled.
A vision is broader than a purpose. It embraces a worldview, which implies action. You step outside the worldview of those who don’t share the same vision. Walking the spiritual path unites you with generations of other visionaries. At the same time, however, you can’t ride two horses—the demands of material life are renounced. This isn’t the same as giving up on comfort and success. One kind of vision sees such a wide separation between the worldly and the spiritual that materialism is turned into an enemy of the soul. Fortunately, there’s another vision that speaks of renunciation, not through physical means but as a new orientation. You put your highest value on spiritual growth while maintaining your everyday life, even engaging in it fully. This is what is meant by being in the world but not of it.
Reaching your vision means that you practice the following on a daily basis: Look beyond everyday events to their higher meaning. What is your soul trying to tell you? Question your habits of consumption. Put material success in its proper place. Leave time to be with yourself. Put your values to the test by trusting in the universe or God to take care of you. Appreciate the present moment. See others around you as reflections of your inner reality. Read deeply into the scriptures and literature that express your vision.
Being in the world but not of it has to be real, not simply an ideal. We are engulfed by the material world and its demands. How can we put it in its proper place while still earning a living, raising a family, and enjoying some comforts? The answer lies at the level of attention. The things you consider most important draw your attention, and in essence they become your world, your reality. For someone fixated on his career, work becomes his reality because that’s what he pays the most attention to. In an age of faith, God became real for the same reason. People didn’t necessarily meet God personally or have experiences of the divine but hours of every day were spent either in devotion or doing God’s work.
In spiritual terms, this single-minded focus can be called first attention. But there’s a different flavor of awareness, so to speak, known as second attention. With second attention you see through the eyes of the soul. To put it succinctly:
First attention: From this level of awareness a person focuses on events in the physical world, pursues individual desires, accepts social values of family, work, and worship, sees the world in linear terms, operating through cause and effect, and accepts the boundaries of time and space.
Second attention: From this level of attention a person transcends the physical world, follows intuition and insight, accepts that the soul is the basis of the self, seeks his source in the timeless, aspires to higher states of consciousness, and trusts in invisible forces that connect the individual with the cosmos.
Second attention connects with the true self and takes you to the essence of reality. This essence can never be destroyed or completely suppressed. The soul awaits its resurrection, not through an apocalyptic end of time but through each individual beginning to wake up.
Reaching second attention means that you practice the following on a daily basis: Listen to the quietest part of yourself, trusting that its messages are true. Put less trust in the physical world, and more on the inner world. Learn to center yourself. Don’t make decisions when you are not centered. Don’t mistake frantic action for results; results come from a deeper level of being. Bond with at least one other person from the soul. Seek silent communion with yourself and your surroundings. Spend time in the natural world, soaking up its beauty. See past the mask of personality that people wear in public. Express your truth as simply as possible.
The phrase to transcend means to go beyond, but how can you really know if you have? In a parable from my childhood, a holy man sits in a cave until the day arrives when he reaches the cherished goal of enlightenment. He cannot wait to tell the good news to the villagers in the valley down below. All the way down the mountain the holy man is in bliss. He’s walking through the marketplace on his way to the temple when somebody pokes him accidentally in the ribs.
“Out of my way!” the holy man shouts angrily.
Then he stops, thinks for a second, and turns around to go back to his cave again.
This could be read as a parable about false pride, but it’s also about transcending. If you are really established in your true self, the knockabout of the everyday world doesn’t shake you. You feel detached, but not because you don’t care or because you have zoned out. Spiritual detachment means that you view the world from a timeless place. The place isn’t found in a cave on a remote mountaintop. There can be no location for this place except inside you. In practical terms, to transcend involves finding such a place, knowing it, and making it your home.
The traditional methods for transcending lead to second attention. These are meditation, contemplation, and self-reflection. Time has not made these methods outdated, but there’s no denying that as modern life becomes more stressful, as the everyday world gets noisier and faster, people have less time for meditation. Even setting aside a few minutes a day somehow slips away and best intentions are forgotten. It would be worrisome if personal growth couldn’t be achieved because of external distractions. Personal growth can’t be destroyed, however, but only postponed. As long as the true self is real, we will be attracted to it, because deep down each of us has a craving for reality. We don’t want to base our lives on illusion. To go beyond, then, isn’t about any organized spiritual practice. It’s about following your own nature as you seek greater happiness and fulfillment. Spiritual practices have no value except as an aid to get you to your goal.
I fully agree with the teaching that true meditation is twenty-four hours a day. There is great value in setting aside a time-out for sitting silently and experiencing a deeper state inside. But once you open your eyes, refreshed and more centered, what good will it do to throw yourself back into stress and strain? The crucial issue is how to bring inner silence into the real world and make a difference. That’s the part that takes twenty-four hours, because it’s a full-time occupation to become aware of who you really are. It’s also a joyful occupation, and the most fascinating project you could possibly undertake for yourself.
Reaching the transcendent means that you practice the following on a daily basis: Stay centered. Notice the external influences that are making demands on your attention. When carried away by a strong emotion or impulse, take a moment to come back to yourself. Walk away from stressful situations when you can. Don’t remain in any situation that makes you so uncomfortable that you aren’t yourself. Don’t give in to the anxiety of others. Be mindful that you are more than a set of reactions to your environment—you are an expression of the true self, always. In every situation where you feel confused, ask, “What is my role here?” Until you find out, don’t act or make decisions. Hang loose until reality begins to reveal itself a little more.
In a spiritual vein it is said that creation is the eternal play of opposites—good versus evil, light versus darkness, order versus chaos. Yet the ultimate drama is played out over illusion versus reality. No one wakes up thinking that it’s going to be a good day for living in illusion. We assume that our personal reality is real, and therefore it’s baffling to realize that everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell could be an illusion instead. Modern science has already provided a basis for dissolving the physical world. Every solid object disappears into invisible packets of energy when you delve into the subatomic level, and beyond that, even energy collapses into a construct that has no boundaries in time and space, the so-called wave function.
If you want to lead a life based on reality, the fact that the physical world is an illusion cannot be taken merely as a curious fact, to be ignored as you continue to do what you always do. Just as matter vanishes when you go deep enough, so do time and space. They spring from the quantum vacuum, a void that appears to contain nothing, but that in actuality serves as the origin of every event since the Big Bang, along with infinite possibilities that have not yet emerged in the cosmos. In the world’s spiritual traditions, the state of infinite possibilities is not a faraway, unimaginable condition but the very ground state of existence.
The true self liberates you because it brings you out of limitation, grounding you in a reality that is timeless, without boundaries, and infinite in its possibilities. The whole issue of illusion versus reality must become personal if you want to be free (we’ll discuss this in more detail in the final section of this book). The first step is a moment of disillusion. You stand back and admit that you do not really know the basis of your existence. By surrendering to what you don’t know, you can allow knowledge to flow in. That’s the true meaning of surrender. You are like a prisoner who stares at four narrow walls lit by a small window high up. The prisoner faces reality if he admits that he is in prison.
But what if he doesn’t? What if he thinks that his cell is the whole world? Then his notion of freedom would be insane. The same conclusion applies to each of us in our limited lives, but we don’t label ourselves insane. After all, everyone we know accepts being imprisoned as normal. Only a small, strange band of saints, sages, and visionaries sends up a loud cry for freedom. When you hear that cry, the beginning of transformation is at hand. Liberation is real because the timeless is real, more real than anything your five senses detect.
Reaching liberation means that you practice the following on a daily basis: See beyond your limited situation. Take as your first principle that you are a child of the universe. Dwell on those moments when you feel free, exhilarated, unbounded. Tell yourself that you have touched what is truly real. Seek love as your birthright, along with bliss and creativity. Dedicate yourself to exploring the unknown. Know that there is something infinitely precious beyond the reach of the five senses.
Someone might protest, “How can I ever change? This is all so overwhelming. There’s too much to do.” I sympathize. When you lay out the particulars of personal growth, the panorama looks vast. It’s for good reason that the Indian tradition speaks of enlightenment as being like a gold palace, which brings bliss and freedom, while dismantling your old reality is like tearing down a hut, which brings panic and dismay as the walls collapse around you. To state the case without metaphors, when you look around, the world seems real. And so it is, but it’s a reality without the true self. When you reach the end of the journey, you look around, and once more the world looks real. Only this time you are fully awake, established in the true self. In between these two poles, life is confusing. There are days when you get it. Events unfold as if someone upstairs were watching over you (in fact, you are watching over yourself). There are other days when the spiritual life vanishes like a dream, and you are mired in the same hard slog as everyone else.
What keeps you going? Think of children and how they develop. Through good days and bad, through smiles and tears, a hidden reality is unfolding. The surface of life doesn’t tell the real tale of neural pathways, genes, and hormones as they come together in concert to make a new person out of the unformed material we were given at birth. Nature protects our growth. Spiritual growth is liberated from that kind of determinism. Destiny is no longer biology. You have to make a choice to evolve, but that, too, is natural. If evolution is going to shift from the body to the mind, then the mind must enter into the decisions that determine how you evolve. Despite life’s ups and downs, the project of evolving isn’t complex. All you need to ask is one question: If I choose X, will it add to my evolution or take away from it?
You may not like asking that question. There are plenty of times when immediate pleasure or recklessly giving in to an impulse is more attractive. You may not like the answer you get, either. Evolution is usually unselfish, and we are all conditioned to look out for number one, either from greed or from desperation. None of these obstacles matter; nor does resistance, disappointment, or backsliding. As long as you can ask that one question—If I choose X, will it add to my evolution or take away from it?—you are stepping toward freedom. The great wisdom teachers would declare that failure is impossible, in fact. Simply to ask yourself if you are evolving is evolution itself.
Your true self is the real you, but how can this be experienced? The everyday self is already flooded with experiences. To arrive at a deeper level requires a process. On a daily basis you orient yourself to grow in the following areas:
Maturity—developing into an independent adult
Purpose—finding a reason to be here
Vision—adopting a worldview to live by
“Second attention”—seeing with the eyes of the soul
Transcendence—going beyond the restless mind and the five senses
Liberation—becoming free of boundaries and attachments
When all these aspects of your true self begin to grow, they combine toward one goal: breaking down the “reality illusion” that keeps you from knowing who you really are. The end of the reality illusion marks the stage of evolution known as enlightenment.
