Revealing the Real You

“Lead us from the unreal to the Real… lead us from darkness to light… lead us from death to immortality.” – Prayer from The Upanishads

In my last blog post, I shared my years of frustration as I unsuccessfully pursued spiritual realization, through a variety of well-intended spiritual studies and practices. There was no lack of desire, nor sincerity. I really wanted to find the “peace that surpasses human understanding.” Like many motivated and serious truth students, I poured myself into countless texts, both ancient and modern, seeking the pearls of wisdom that would, at last, unlock the truth and get me to the promised land of spiritual understanding. I even spent two years in a New Thought seminary program and the subsequent score of years as a practicing pulpit minister.

Clearly, I knew enough. Congregants were moved by my sermons and classes, and I was a respected writer of all things spiritual. I became abundantly familiar with and could express quite clearly the promise of spiritual teachings as well as offering astute guidance in navigating the esoteric territory that could potentially lead one to the holy grail of enlightenment. Never mind I had not yet fully awakened, I was driven by its promise, equally for others as myself.

While the clear seeing of truth eluded me, there were some instances of transcendence along the way, and in fact, it was in my early days of attending Sunday services in a Unity center in San Luis Obispo, CA that I had some beautiful grace-filled moments. Initially, I didn’t know what I was experiencing. In the beginning, I was pretty much a “mental case”, that is, heavily dependent and invested in my intellect as the sole means of accessing and comprehending reality. Thus, it took a lot of insistence from my life partner for me to even step foot in a church, where I was certain myths and wishful thinking predominated, and would be of no help to my life. However, at that point, I also had to admit that I had been following my own agenda solely based on my own thoughts, planning, and actions, and despite my best efforts, I felt unsatisfied and unfulfilled. Consequently, I was somewhat curious, yet doubtful about whether there was a better approach to life.

I listened to the minister’s message, and I was shocked at how he was describing what could have been my own journey of seeking but not finding satisfaction in life’s circumstances and conditions. How could he know what I was going through and was it fair that he was ignoring the rest of the congregants in solely addressing my needs? When he described the about-face, the turning within and finding fulfillment within one’s own being, my heart broke open. I was taken aback. What was happening? I was not prone to emotionality, definitely cry-averse, and yet there I was feeling this incredible opening in my chest, with tears running down my cheeks. The tears felt like a release, a cleanse. There was no sadness, quite the opposite, a subtle yet unmistakable sense of joy and well-being. I couldn’t make sense of it. My mind was at a loss to understand yet this felt more real than anything I had come to understand intellectually, and I was hooked on following these feelings wherever they would lead. Illogical, yet extraordinarily compelling.

These profound cathartic experiences convinced me that my life needed to be devoted to these teachings and I became further convinced that I wanted nothing more than to share these teachings and feel the enhanced satisfaction of simultaneously living these truths for my own wellbeing and the benefit of others. That was the motivation that compelled me to become a Unity minister.

I studied the teachings, and I started meditating. But meditation for me was challenging and rarely rewarding. I employed the object-focused method, watching my breath, using mantras and guided visualization. But none of these practices brought me anything more than a few moments of peace. There was no heart opening, no tears, no feeling of transcendence that had been the early experiences and inner confirmations that inspired my spiritual quest. Yet, I pressed on, assuming that eventually there would be a breakthrough and I would “become one with" the deep truth of being, finally peace-filled and happy. It was a progressive path, ingrained in the conviction that enlightenment would come, in time, to the person I took myself to be at the end of a long road of sufficiently sincere and dedicated practice. And yet years of this approach yielded no greater sense of spiritual realization.

Even though I believed and passionately professed that the truth was within me, its realization remained at a seeming distance. The problem which I only came to see a few years ago was that I was stuck in a mind-made sense of myself, that is, a separate person in the world seeking a mystical state apart from me. This dualism was the barrier. It had me pursuing something I believed was to be achieved in the future, instead of waking up to the truth of my own being.

Finally, it was the direct path that brought a reprieve from this feckless search and yielded genuine illumination. Asking the question, “Who am I” and “What am I” led me to systematically dismantle the person I assumed myself to be and revealed the truth of being at the core.

When we turn the focus of attention around, we notice thoughts and feelings are ephemeral, coming and going. Yet I the conscious being, remain aware and present. The body goes through many changes as we grow and age, yet the I of awareness remains ever-present and unchanged. Spiritual realization is a process of subtraction, not addition. What you truly are and have always been is revealed as all those superficial aspects of the personal self, are seen as transient. Further, all attempts to satisfy the deep longing of our soul with objective solutions will ultimately fail. This is because while we are seeking peace and happiness and attempting to satisfy this inner longing through external means, the truth of us is actually calling us home to ourselves. As Sufi mystic, Bastami said, "For 30 years. I sought God. But when I looked carefully, I found that in reality, God was the seeker and I the sought."

Those teary episodes years ago in the Unity church were the telltale sign of a deep longing in the heart calling me home from my mind-made self and its odyssey of separation and futile seeking in the world of form. To get there is effortless, while to stay there takes some vigilance, as the mind will want to reclaim personal identity. This commitment to returning, again and again, in surrender to the soul’s calling, is life’s highest purpose and most worthwhile path. It is the distanceless journey that brings seeking to an end, and the peace and happiness we long for.

Namaste,

Rev. Larry