The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment

by Adyashanti

It’s only at this particular point that people start to realize that almost everything that previously motivated them in life was self-centered.

the driving force propelling us through life when we are in the dream state is very self-centered.

self-centered motivations in that the energy comes from the egoic state of consciousness. Again, this is not bad or wrong; it’s just the way it is.

The dream state is the state where we perceive separation, where we think we are a separate entity and a separate being.

with real awakening, that whole structure of separation begins to dissolve under one’s feet.

The difference is that once we have seen beyond the veil of separation, identification with our particular personality begins to dissolve.

Somewhere inside I always knew that everything was one—that I was eternal, unborn, undying, and uncreated.

If we are spiritual practitioners, one of the things that we hope for is the dissolution of ego.

awakening itself is not the same as egoic dissolving.

Awakening begins the process. The result of the awakening—its fallout or aftermath—is a radical dissolving of ego.

“Who am I going to be now? What’s going to move me? What’s going to motivate this human being?” Of course, if one is fully awake, one does not have these questions. But that is rare initially.

The disorientation arises because the mind is struggling to orient itself in a new context. It’s like you are falling out of a plane. If you just let yourself fall, there is no problem. But as soon as you start to grasp at space as if to find your bearings, you feel very disoriented; you realize you don’t know which way is up and which way is down.

one of the keys to the awakened view is that there is no orientation.

Literally, you find your orientation through not trying to find your orientation. You find your orientation by letting go totally.

There’s a phase in which we let go, and there does not immediately appear to arise in our consciousness a new energy that will move our lives.

But there is often a gap between the dissolving of our ego motivations and the arising of this energy in our consciousness. So we may go through a period of wondering what new energy will move us along after awakening.

Again, what is important is to simply allow the process of egoic dissolution to occur. For most people, this dissolution process will go on for some years. In my case, there was a six-year period

Initially, it may simply be leaving the dream state, awakening from the dream state of “me” and separation and isolation. But because we’ve awakened does not mean that consciousness has gotten past the gravitational pull of the dream state.

If we haven’t gone completely beyond this gravitational field, we’re going to be pulled back toward the experience of “me” and the perception of separateness.

In terms of awakening, all that matters is right here and right now.

The question is, “Is awakening awake right here and right now?”

We are not the ego; we are not the “me.” We are that which is awake to the ego and the “me.”

We are that which is awake to the world, and we are the whole world as well, when seen from the true perspective.

it’s enlightenment that is enlightened. It is not the “me” that is enlightened.

This “I got it, I lost it” phenomenon is the struggle, as it were, between our true nature and our imagined sense of self.

While we may know that a thought has no validity, is absolutely untrue, we may find ourselves believing in it anyway.

It’s like we feel compelled by inner forces we don’t understand to behave in a way that we know is not true.

it’s rare when someone’s initial awakening ends up in abiding awakening. It happens, but not nearly as often as the other kind of awakening, in which our realization vacillates.

There’s a much more accurate sense of whether we’re moving or speaking or even thinking from truth or not.

process of awakening as climbing a ladder.

Finally, the consequences of acting outside of truth become immense; the slightest action or behavior that’s not in accordance with the truth can be unbearable to us.

But freedom is much more nuanced than that. It is not a personal thing; it is not an acquisition for us.

We know that when we act from what is not true, we will only be causing ourselves pain. That knowing is a grace.

We realize that to behave from any place other than our true nature is destructive to ourselves and, just as important, to the world and others around us.

Our conditioning is in large part derived from our family of origin, the life we have lived, the situations we’ve been brought into, and life experiences that we’ve had.

Once we get to know one another’s conditioning, behavior becomes very predictable.

Most human beings derive their entire sense of self from their conditioning.

dualistic view of life and a dualistic view of self. This dualism is what I mean when I talk about conditioning.

This is one of the hallmarks of the awakened state—the sense that one could never again identify with the conditioned self. It seems unimaginable that we would ever go into a state of separation again. That sense of finality is inherent within the state of wakefulness.

ultimately the why doesn’t matter. Either way, we are dealing with what we are dealing with.

it does no good to complain about your karmic load, whether you perceive it to be greater or lesser than somebody else’s.

Karmic load actually doesn’t have much to do with whether we can awaken, but it may have something to do with what happens right after that moment of awakening.

What makes more sense is to ask how you unenlighten yourself. What is still held on to? What is still confusing? What situations in life can get you to believe things that aren’t true and cause you to go into contradiction, suffering, and separation? What is it specifically that has the power to entice consciousness back into the gravitational field of the dream state? We should not ask, “How do I stay awake?” Instead we should ask, “How is it that I’m unenlightening myself? How is it specifically that I’m putting myself back in illusion?”

The process here becomes one of coming into right relationship with yourself and looking deeply at what it is that causes you to go back into the trance of separation.

You need to start pinpointing the particular ways, the particular thoughts, the particular beliefs that put you back to sleep.

What is required is the willingness to let life impact you; to let yourself see when life impacts you; to see if you go into any sort of separation about it, if you go into judgment, if you go into blame, if you go into “should” or “shouldn’t,” if you start to point the finger somewhere other than at yourself.

Nothing in the exterior environment causes us to lose a sense of the awakened state. Nobody we meet, no situation we deal with has the power to cause us to fall out of awakening.

This is one of the most important realizations we can make. It’s all an inside job. It’s all something we do to ourselves—mistakenly, unknowingly, and often times unconsciously.

Once awakening has happened—if it’s real, if it’s authentic—we realize that even if illusions persist, they’re not personal, and they don’t define us. This is to our great advantage. It’s much easier to work with something if your sense of self is not being defined by it.

Once there is the perception, from the awakened state, of one’s own karma being impersonal—not having to do with any self, any body, any person—one’s situation is much more workable.