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

by Adyashanti

the slightest action or behavior that’s not in accordance with the truth can be unbearable to us.

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.

Grace.

Reality is always true to itself.

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 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.

Every time we reidentify with conditioning or karma, every time we believe a thought, we are putting energy back into the dream state, putting our foot back on that accelerator.

You are now capable of seeing yourself in a clearer light, and you are capable of seeing your tendency to go into separation in a more vivid way.

That which is awake has no fear of that which is not awake. It doesn’t have any fear, because it doesn’t perceive anything as separate or other than itself. That which is awake doesn’t even perceive delusion or the dream state as separate or other than itself. It sees that everything is itself, equally itself.

There is a desire, for lack of a better word, to release from hate, ignorance, greed, or any sense of confinement. The truth of our being is not content until it has freed itself of its own misunderstanding, its own fixations, its own illusions.

That’s why so many truly enlightened beings—those who have proclaimed that everything is good, that all is well, who perceive no need to change anything or anybody—are often the very ones tending to those who are suffering, those who don’t perceive truth. The truly enlightened beings are often those who dedicate their lives completely to the welfare

of others.

would suggest that the reason so many people who get that far in their own awakening end up dedicating themselves to the welfare of others is that they haven’t fixated on the absolute view. Without denying the absolute view of perfection, they are open to perceiving something more. They are open to perceiving the inherent compassion of reality itself.

Start to face it. Start to see it. In the simple willingness to see yourself, in simple sincerity, the truth starts to reveal itself to itself.

This can be very surprising, not only for the people it’s happening within, but for those around them. One minute, such a person could be extraordinarily wise, and the next minute he or she might be extraordinarily deluded. This isn’t only confusing to the person; it’s confusing to everybody around him or her.

At these times, what’s important is to avoid what I call spiritual bypassing—dismissing the thought, ignoring the fact that we got caught in a moment of reidentification. We often use nondual language to this end. We tell ourselves, “Oh, that’s just identification. It doesn’t matter, since there’s nobody to do anything anyway. Everything’s happening spontaneously, after all.”

When we inquire, it is important that we are using both body and mind; both feeling and thought. We must see which thoughts generate which feelings, and which thoughts are generated from feelings. It is a cycle: a thought creates a feeling, and that feeling creates the next thought—which then creates the next feeling.

When these Velcro thoughts and emotions arise, the key is to face and

investigate whatever belief structures underlie them. In that moment, inquiry is your spiritual practice. To avoid this practice is to avoid your own awakening. Anything you avoid in life will come back, over and over again, until you’re willing to face it—to look deeply into its true nature.

The choice is between meditative inquiry and becoming a victim. That’s the choice you have—to be a victim to your own ideas and beliefs, or to feel into them until they drop away.

Each moment is the moment that needs to be happening. Each experience we have is the divine invitation. It may be a beautifully engraved

invitation, or it may be a very fierce invitation, but each moment is the invitation. I couldn’t possibly emphasize this more: the texture and flow of our lives, from moment to moment, is itself what reveals freedom. Life itself shows us what we need to see through in order to be free.

Awareness is freeing itself, over and over and over. And as I have said, the key is sincerity. It’s the willingness to meet, sincerely and honestly, what is happening in our body and mind. That is always the doorway to freedom—a freedom that only happens now and now and now and now.

finished by saying that it was the most extraordinary evening of his entire life: just that evening of telling truth. Not asserting truth and not denying truth, just simply telling it in a very sincere way, coming completely out of hiding.

that most people have a fear of being truthful, of really being honest—not only with others, but with themselves as well. Of course, the core of this fear is that most people know intuitively that if they were actually totally truthful and totally sincere and honest, they would no longer be able to control anybody. We can not control somebody with whom we have been truthful. We can only control people if we tell half-truths, if we shave down what is true. When we tell the total truth, our inside is suddenly on the outside. There’s nothing hidden anymore. For most human beings, being that exposed brings up incredible fear. Most

It’s not about pure consciousness, it’s about how pure consciousness manifests as a human being in an undivided way.

Truth is a very high standard. Truth is not a plaything. To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection. Truth is not unloading our opinions onto someone. That is not truth. Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways that we actually hide from truth. Truth is much more intimate than that. When we tell the truth, it has the sense of a confession. I don’t mean a confession of something bad or wrong, but I mean the sense where we come completely out of hiding. Truth is a simple thing. To speak the truth is to speak from a sense of total and absolute unprotectedness.

How free I can feel? True freedom is a gift to everything and everybody.

The totality was expressing awakening through the being of the Buddha.

Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see

things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.

Part of being awake is being willing to be crucified.

Wow.

In fact, many times the dream state feels offended and threatened by true enlightenment, because a truly enlightened being cannot be controlled. Even the threat of death cannot control an enlightened being. The threat of death could not control Jesus. He was going to live his life as he was destined to live it, whether that meant life or death for him.

Be in the world but not of it

Sincerity is the key. You have to be willing; you have to want to see everything. When you want to see everything, you will see everything.

Enlightenment is not simply an escape; it’s not simply a transcendence. It is that state of being from which we can encounter our lives and our relationships as they are. 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 hide from anything.

That which we are, that which is fully awake, is also ultimately fully engaged and fearless. It moves the way it moves, out of unconditional love and truthfulness.

to be less than truthful with the people and situations in your life is to withhold the expression of who you are.

truth itself is the highest good, that truth itself is the greatest expression and manifestation of love. Ultimately, love and truth are identical; they are like two sides of a coin. You can’t have truth without love, and you can’t have love without truth.

A seamless continuum begins to emerge between realization and expression, awakening and its actualization.

justification for lots of unenlightened behavior.

our greatest ally is a deep and profound sense of sincerity.

We will be brought to our knees in one way or another. Ultimately, we will encounter ourselves. There is no such thing as deluding ourselves permanently; life doesn’t work that way.

If you stay in a place that is sincere, you will know that any sense of superiority is not true. This will allow you to look and see what you are saying to yourself, what your mind is saying that is making you feel superior. Because remember, it is only the mind that deludes us. All delusions begin in the mind.

When Jesus encountered a group of people who were stoning a woman, he said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Jesus is speaking from a state of nonseparation here; he is not seeing himself as better than the woman being stoned, no matter what deed she has committed. What he’s saying is that nobody is without sin. Sin means missing the mark; nobody is without misunderstandings. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. We have all acted in less than enlightened ways. We are none of us different from anyone else. For this reason, when we operate from the point of view of nonseparation, any sense of superiority dissolves.

If you try to push it away, remember that whatever you resist, persists. Whatever you try to push away, you’re actually energizing.

I saw that it doesn’t matter how much I’ve realized, I can still be defeated. I can still have something arise within me that is not true, that I can’t actually get rid of, even after the awakening that happened.

the futility of personal will.

We see that the ego’s desire to find meaning in life is actually a substitute for the perception of being life itself. The search for meaning in life is a surrogate for the knowledge that we are life. Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone disconnected from life will look for purpose.

But as I have said over and over, after awakening there is still a human being with a human mind that is trying to make sense of things. The mind is even trying to make sense of awakening itself.