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

by Adyashanti

Ultimately, we find that enlightenment—if it’s true and real—does not allow us to avoid anything. In fact, the enlightened perspective actually makes it quite difficult, and ultimately impossible, to turn away from any part of our

We may want change, but change always has a quality of unknowingness; you never know how something is going to turn out.

We have to confront our life as it is. Is this relationship satisfying; is it based on truth? I don’t mean is the relationship perfect or ideal. That’s not relevant. What is relevant is whether it’s a relationship based on honesty and truthfulness and wholeness, or not.

Are we relating from that place where we see that the other is our own self, actually the same nature as our own self?

I constantly tell people that enlightenment is no guarantee that your life is going to go the way you planned. Life will be much better than it was, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to go the way you want it to. In the end, it’s about truth; it is about being truthful in all aspects, at all levels of our being.

Life itself is nothing but relationship. In the ultimate view of things, it’s the relationship of the One with the One, of Spirit with Spirit.

Then there is the appearance of this relationship—the dance of relationship, the dance of life.

And in this dance, it is absolutely essential that we not ...

If you do try to hide from something—if you are in a relationship that is dysfunctional or a job that is tremendously unsatisfying, and you choose not to deal with it—the consequence of that denial is that you will not truly be liberated. You won’t ever be capable of being fully free, because any area where we choose t...