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

by Adyashanti

But in a true awakening, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the “me” waking up, what we are wakes up from the “me.” What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.

There’s a much more accurate sense of whether we’re moving or speaking or even thinking from truth or not. When we act from a place of untruth anyway, in spite of our knowing, it’s much more painful than when we didn’t know our actions were untrue.

As soon as we notice ourselves using our own realization as a means to dismiss unconscious behavior, we should immediately recognize that we’re operating from a state of delusion.

Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone disconnected from life will look for purpose.

Most of us are taught that to go into division about certain things is natural. We’re taught that we would be deluding ourselves if we didn’t go into division about certain things, about our own suffering or somebody else’s. It’s as if we wouldn’t really be a feeling person if we didn’t internally experience a certain divisiveness, given particular events. But this is one of the surprising and even shocking parts of coming into the deeper realms of realization: we realize there isn’t a justified reason to argue with reality, because we’ll never win the fight. Arguing with reality is a sure way to suffer, a perfect prescription for suffering.

Worse still, we find that we’re tied to whatever it is that we’re arguing with. Whether it happened thirty years ago or yesterday morning, if we argue with it, we’re trapped by it. We are reexperiencing the same pain over and over and over. Arguing with something doesn’t help us get beyond it; it doesn’t help us deal with it. It actually imprisons us; it ties us to whatever it is we’re arguing with.

Of course, growing up is traumatic to some degree for all of us. Even if you had a wonderful upbringing, the most lovely parents, and the most wonderful environment in the world, there’s no getting away without experiencing some level of trauma. Life itself is traumatic in one sense; it is traumatic to a sense of separate self. Life itself is a threat to the sense of a separate self. There’s no getting away from it.

“This is what I want and the way I want it to be.”

Ultimately, the personal will is an illusion, which is why it is so frustrating when we try to use it to control and dictate events.

“Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.”

Everything happens in its time. You’re not in control. This isn’t something we want to hear, though, is it? It isn’t something our mind wants. Mostly we want to hear things that empower our sense of control. And we radically push away anything that does not empower our sense of control.

Everything I tried failed. It doesn’t mean that the trying didn’t play an important role. The trying did play a role. The effort did play a role. The struggle did play a role.

But it played a role because it got me to an end of that role. I danced that dance until it was extinguished. But I failed. I failed at meditating well;

I failed at figuring out the truth. Everything I ever used to succeed spiritually failed. But at the moment of failure...

So it has different aspects to it. It’s a flow. It’s a voice. It’s a protector voice. It’s your counselor. It’s your conscience, but not the conscience society taught us. It is a different conscience than that. Because the conscience that society taught us is our superego—and that conscience always contains judgments.