AWAKENING IS REVOLUTIONARY

The transcript from a recent online discourse - July 18th 2020

Awakening is revolutionary. It's revolutionary because it collapses all psychological structures that uphold the myopic egoic perspective. It’s myopic because the ego sees in terms of “me” and “mine”. And in order to see in terms of “me” and “mine” it has to be rooted — erroneously, but nevertheless rooted firmly — in a core belief of “me” as a separate entity, as “me” as a form existing amongst many other forms, and I have to fight for “my survival” amongst that sea of forms. Some forms I might agree with, and some forms I disagree with. And when I say forms, I mean all forms — the forms of other people, the forms of our own thoughts, feelings, other people's thoughts, feelings, everything that we experience in the world of form.

Let me just backtrack a little bit … when I say awakening awakening is revolutionary, I'm not talking about awakening as an “awakening experience”, as a satori or as some kind of spiritual high, or even a spiritual insight or any momentary or short-lasting — or even long-lasting, but nevertheless temporary — feeling or experience of expandedness or oneness or connectedness or peacefulness that then returns back to a sense of perhaps fear or anxiety or despondency or uncertainty or “poor me-ness”.

I'm talking about awakening as the truly revolutionary shift in consciousness, when all internal psychological structures collapse — structures that previously upheld “me" as a separate entity, “me” as a thing, a body, a person, a personality, an entity of some kind in which I am separated from other forms by space, and those other forms are either in agreement with me or in opposition to me. I either like them or dislike them, I either want them or don't want them — and with that comes the seeking of happiness, fulfillment, peace, love from an attempt to possess, take ownership of, create more of, manifest more of those forms I like, I want, I hold up as more valuable to me than the others. And again, those forms may be people that appear in our lives or things, possessions, material things, achievements, or the forms of our own thoughts and feelings in which we uphold positive thoughts, nice feelings, spiritual feelings as more valuable to me than the ones that I don't like that are unwelcome, that I have labeled as not good enough, not valuable enough, not wanted, not welcomed, too difficult, unbearable and so on.

Awakening — true awakening — is the end of that mechanism of seeking fulfillment for me, seeking “my” happiness, seeking “my” peace, and so on from the world of form, either external form or internal form. It's the end.

With that end comes the collapse of a fundamental core belief in separation. That is radical. That is revolutionary. It changes everything. It changes your perspective. It changes your perception. You no longer come from a place of belief. All beliefs are deconstructed, especially the primary unexamined belief that I am this body, this personality, this separate entity.

When all beliefs are deconstructed, they collapse. That doesn't mean we meet life from ignorance or from stupidity or from childishness. It means we no longer have to defend our position. We no longer have to defend that belief — which is either a conscious belief, we are aware of it and it becomes a thought, or it's an unconscious belief, we're not aware of it and yet it still drives the seeking mechanism. Whether the belief is conscious or unconscious, it drives what we seek and where we seek it from, and the addictive process of that seeking is always at the root of psychological suffering. It is a suffering because to be driven by that unconscious seeking mechanism — the mechanism that seeks fulfillment from the world of outer or inner form — always comes to dissatisfaction, always comes to unfulfilment, because what we're seeking is not real. What we're seeking is not the resolution, it is only a figment of our imagination. So there is only temporary satisfaction, a temporary relief. And then we come back to a sense of dissatisfaction, a sense of lack of fulfillment and the yearning for seeking more. So that seeking of satisfaction from the world of form is not the answer.

We are mostly driven by the unconsciousness of that addictive mechanism — the core belief that “I am separate”, “I am not enough”, not loved enough, not happy enough, not peaceful enough, and therefore I must find something to make me feel complete because underneath that I am a separate thing born into this world and I have to fight for my survival, I have to fight for my happiness, I have to find , I have to seek it, I have to grab it, I have to own it, I have to possess it.

When that belief is unconscious, we have to defend that position. We either defend it on the surface by defending our thoughts, our opinions, our intellectual beliefs, or we defend it unconsciously underneath the surface by having to protect ourselves. But we don't protect ourselves in a healthy way, in a wholesome way — we defend and protect ourselves in a way that creates further division and separation within, and usually without too. When we need to defend our core belief in separation, then anything that arises in consciousness that seems to be in opposition to that, we create an enemy out of. That's the root of inner division.

Awakening is the end of all that. When awakening goes down all the way — from a mind realization to a heart surrender to falling into the depth of open silence at the core of being — then all those internal structures come tumbling down. That's revolutionary. The internal revolution has begun.

It's the end of inner division. It's the end of inner violence. You're no longer violent towards feelings that arise. Everything is welcome. There's no more division into good feelings or bad feelings. And the paradox is when there is a non-judgment — when there is an equanimity, when there is a gentleness towards all feelings and experiences that arise in the consciousness of “you” — there's no more fight against it. And when there's no more fight against it, gentleness, kindness, tenderness, and peace become the bedrock of who you are.

Very often when I speak of the end of separation, it is often equated with oneness. So then this idea of oneness is taken and it's often interpreted as being in agreement with everyone — everyone thinking the same way, everyone being like-minded, everyone being spiritually awakened in the same way. And then that creates a kind of homogenous oneness. That's very appealing to some part of us — to the mind, to the imagination — but really the end of separation and the true meaning of oneness is the end of the division in you. In other words, it’s the end of making your experience — your internal landscape — into made an enemy. There’s no more hardness towards it, no more violence towards it, no more rejection of it.

So the end of separation is a state of surrender — an inner surrender, an inner softness, an inner openness to what is here. And in this openness you can listen. I've said this before, and I say it again, but it's really important. When we listen from inner openness, then we can truly hear, we can listen to a deeper intelligence that guides us — and this has nothing to do with the surface of “liking everything” or “liking everyone” or “agreeing with everything” or “agreeing with everyone”. “Things” in the world — in the sense of other people, circumstances, events, happenings, thoughts, and feelings (either your own or others) — will always arise. Always the waves on the surface are moving, are emerging — you cannot stop that and you don't need to be in agreement with it all, you don't need to like it all.

The invitation is to meet it all — not from the surface but from the deep, from the depth. And in that depth there is an open awareness, an open silence. There is a spaciousness that is innately kind, innately tender. It has no need to reject anything. Awakening, when it filters all the way, means that we no longer meet our experience from the surface. On the surface there is seeming duality, seeming division, seeming separation. The waves always seem to be separate.

Awakening is revolutionary because you meet your experience with freshness, with openness, there is no division in that. It's an innocent naked meeting of what is here that fundamentally changes everything. It fundamentally changes how we meet our experience, how we meet our own lives, how we meet each other, and how we meet the world. It doesn't happen from the top down. It happens from the inside out.

And without that fundamental shift deep within, there can be no true revolution. There can be no true revolution of love in our lives or in the world. There can be no true revolution of peace in our lives or in the world. That's why there is such a personal responsibility in this — not the responsibility to do the right thing or follow the right belief spiritually or ethically or morally, but to look within with such honesty and with such humility, to look within and see what we give our allegiance to. Do we give our allegiance to the pull of the surface? The momentum of egoic mind is to pull us to the surface and say "look, this wave is like this” or “this wave is like that”. And so starts the judgment, the division, the rejection.

Your responsibility is to be honest as to what you’re giving your allegiance to. The pull may always be there, or it may not over time, but it doesn't matter either way. What matters is that you have a choice within as to whether you give your allegiance to that — in this moment, in this moment, in this moment — or whether you choose to pause in that movement. The waves will still continue, but something in you has come to rest in the deepest. This is the willingness to surrender the following of that movement to the surface. Awareness can either move with that movement to the surface, or it can just surrender itself in the now. And in this surrender, there is a mini-revolution and something collapses. The egoic structure that clenches into “me” and “mine” — “me and my thoughts” in response to this event or that event or in response to this experience or this emotion — that clenched fist can be surrendered in each moment, when you notice it.

It's an act of vigilance and surrender — you surf on that razor's edge. That's the invitation of awakening, until it goes all the way in and down. And then that vigilance and surrender become very natural.

• Amoda Maa

To watch the video click the image.

The next online meeting is - "Meeting the World as Love"
Thursday, September 17, 2020 5:00 PM 6:30 PM (Mountain Time USA)

More information - https://www.amodamaa.com/events/2020/09/17/online-meeting

Thanks for reading!