Written on December 24, 2009 by Tom Stine
Twenty-one years ago, I was feeling a bit sick much of the time, and so I decided to find a doctor who was interested in a more alternative approach to health, as I had just gotten interested in a more healthy lifestyle. Fortunately for me, C. Norman Shealy, founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, had his offices nearby, so I scheduled an appointment with him.
After a thorough examination that lasted over an hour, Norm and I sat down to chat. As we neared the end of our time together, he looked at me and said, “What do you believe in?” I had to ask him to repeat the question because, well, no doctor had ever asked me such a thing. I said, “Well, you’re born, you live, you die. Nothing before or after. No soul, no God, nothing. I guess you could say I’m an atheist.”
Norm looked at me with a kindly smile, and said, “About 5% of the population believes as you do. And that’s okay. But statistically, people who believe in something beyond themselves tend to be healthier and happier. The research is pretty clear on that score.”
Then, he absolutely floored me with what he said next: “I’ve examined you thoroughly, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t anything physically wrong with you. You are quite healthy. Yet, you feel lousy. If I were you, I’d get a spiritual life.”
I’ll never forget the next words out of my mouth: “How the hell do I do get a spiritual life?!”
Norm smiled at me, patiently explained that he didn’t mean go to church or anything like that, and suggested a few books that I should read. He seemed to know, somehow, that once he pointed me in the right direction, I’d be okay. And he was right. After reading his few book suggestions, I discovered the local new age bookstore, Renaissance Books, and went crazy, reading everything under the sun.
After reading dozens of books in the space of nine months, a set of 3 blue books kept catching my eye. I would pick-up one, read it a bit in the store, and then put it away, somewhat disgusted, because the books had all this Christian sounding lingo in them. After doing this little drill 4 or 5 times, I finally broke down and bought them. Within a week, I was hooked. A Course in Miracles became my spiritual path for 12 years as a result.
Strange how these things get started.
I’d love to hear your story of how you got started on the spiritual journey. I’ve turned the comments on for you to share.
Happy Holidays. Namaste.
Written on December 17, 2009 by Tom Stine
A sure sign that you are a member of The Half Awake (Half Asleep) Club is the almost inevitable pair of questions that the mind loves to ask:
What do I do with this… this… awakening thing that has happened to me?
and
What do I do now (in general)?
Ah, the poor mind. Even when it gets it, it still doesn’t get it. I’m going to call these questions the Half-Awake Dilemma.
There is nothing wrong with these questions, by the way. As long as one has any identification whatsoever with the world, the body, the ego, the persona, anything in the manifest world of form, the questions will arise. And given that so many of us are still somewhat (or greatly) asleep, the mind will ask these questions, and, like night follows day, we will at times believe these questions are important and must be answered.
I’ve found myself trying to answer these questions any number of times. One or both will arise, I get a little hooked into it, and then I’m pondering, writing, researching, even surfing the Internet looking for answers. And each time one of these questions arises, each time I sit with one of them, I always come inevitably to the same realization:
What do I do now?
NOTHING!
Nothing?
NADA!
ZILCH!
ZIP!
ZERO!
Now, please, don’t misunderstand me. I haven’t fallen into the quite common non-dualist trap of looking at everything in the world and in a droning voice uttering, “there’s nothing to do, no one to do it, nowhere to go, and no one to go there.” Not at all. While these statements may ultimately be true, they are more often than not a convenient excuse for sitting on your butt and doing nothing all day. Not my point at all.
Implicit in many questions like “What do I do?” is one of the following two words: should or need. “What do I do?” is almost always the question “What should I do?”. The should is the key. If you will sit with the question, really look deeply into this word should, you will discover that should is a false dilemma, a lie that hooks you into an entire world of problems that need to be solved.
For instance, let’s look at a pretty ordinary example to see what I mean. Let’s take the statement, “I should exercise more.” A pretty common sentiment that many, many people share, and one that almost any doctor or health expert would endorse. But let’s turn it around and ask, “Should I exercise more?”
Here’s how to explore the question: well, if I don’t exercise, what will happen? Hmm… according to the health experts, I will have lots of horrible diseases, be depressed, and look terrible if I don’t exercise a lot, which I don’t do. But is that true? Will I suffer horrible diseases? Well, there have been marathon runners who have dropped over dead in their 30’s and 40’s, and sedentary slobs who have lived into their 90’s. So, that isn’t necessarily true. And be depressed? I’m not depressed now. Look horrible? I don’t think I look horrible as it is (you may disagree if you feel inclined!).
So, are any of these statements true? Can I know that I should exercise more? No, I can’t know. There are arguments for exercise, but there is no seeming necessity. Much different from “there is a bus about to hit me in 5 seconds. I might want to move out of the way unless I want to die.” Nothing as obvious as that.
I know this example is quite mundane, but it points out how quickly a bit of inquiry into the notion of should will quickly break down the very nature of it. Suddenly you are left with questions that have no real answer. Ultimately, after you’ve done some inquiry like this one with many other “shoulds,” you arrive at the only possible destination: you have no idea ever if there is anything you should do. It would seem, in fact, that there is no such thing as “should do” in all of existence!
You see, now that you’ve joined The Half-Awake Club, you are going to start moving through life in an entirely different way. There are no more shoulds, no more should nots, no more rules by which you must play. No, there is something new, something more interesting, and ultimately, something more vital.
Your doing will be increasingly determined by what I like to refer to as “those insistent nudges that keep repeating over and over again until you pay attention.” There is a nice word for this: intuition. Most of us, if we are honest, have had experiences that go something like this:
You feel an intuition to do X. But you don’t want to, or are afraid, or hesitant, or invent one of a thousand excuses. So you do Y. And Y doesn’t turn out the way you expected. Then you get this quiet insistence, this intuition, to do X one more time. But again, you are afraid, resistant, hesitant, or come up with 30 more excuses. And you do Z. Then A, then B, and unfortunately for you, B hurts. A lot. And so you pick yourself up, shake off the pain, and in the end, you say to one of your friends, “You know, I knew all along that Y, Z, A and B weren’t the right things to do. I’ve known all along that X is the better direction for me to go.” And you end up doing X.
Sound familiar? Yes, it does. And that is how you are going to live from now on.
One nice thing about these little insistent urgings, these intuitions, that help you see them clearly is that they never argue with you. They never offer reasons, they never debate, they never tell you bad things will happen if you don’t do what they suggest. They are quiet, subtle, and while insistent, are often gentle. But they never let up. They are persistent and insistent.
So, if you ask me, “What do I do with this awakening thing that has happened?” my response is: what do you notice arising in you? What do you feel at a subtle level to do? You will probably say, “I’m not sure.” To which I will say, good, fine, go sit on it some more. Don’t do anything. Come back in a few months and see what has arisen. Don’t worry. Life will show you.
Increasingly, I’ve noticed that doing nothing can be employed almost as a strategy, and it often works quite well. I get something that feels like an intuition, but I’m not sure. So I do something I never would have done 10 years ago: I wait patiently. And then lo and behold, things start to move in interesting ways. And before I know it, I’m doing the very thing I had the insistent urge to do, mercifully without all the painful false starts in the middle.
This process is exactly what has lead me to spiritual teaching, writing and working with people. You see, in some ways, I haven’t really wanted to. But there has been this urging for a long, long time. I’ve resisted, I’ve blown it off, I’ve held back. I’ve thought of dozens of excuses. For instance, I’ve told myself it is arrogant to do something like this teaching and writing thing. But in the end, the urging is still there. I’ve done Y, Z, A, C, G, H, L, and even R, but in the end, only X will do. Teaching keeps showing up whether I like it or not. And, fortunately, more often than not I like it. There is something deeply satisfying for me about teaching and working with seeming others.
Conversely, at times I’ve actually tried to dive into the teaching or working with people, thinking that since there was this nagging insistence then I should start teaching. Ah, there is that nasty should word again. I would end up feeling pressured, forced by the should, and then I would resist and fight back. Invariably, the timing was never right every time I jumped in because I should do it. Things never quite reached fruition. As the should fell away, more and more things opened-up for me, both inside and outside, and thus I find myself sitting here today writing to you.
I suspect that most people that experience awakening then experience this odd state of affairs. Interestingly, as I’ve discovered over the past few years, the majority of people who experience awakening never do any spiritual teaching. They live quiet lives of service doing many, many other things. Many don’t even do anything that looks like service. But nonetheless, their very presence is abundantly of service to mankind.
Perversely, many of these people will struggle with an egoic insistence that they teach while at the same time feeling that subtle urging not to teach but to do something else. And they must then go through the process of letting go of the ego’s insistence that they teach, just the opposite of what I’ve gone through. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it?
And thus is the Half-Awake Dilemma. If you are experiencing it, enjoy it as best you can. It gets easier and easier the more you open to the Awakeness that you are. Namaste.
Written on December 9, 2009 by Tom Stine
By using the term “Half-Awake” I’ve probably given a somewhat false impression to many people. Saying half-awake almost implies that there are 3 states that a person can exist in:
Asleep
Half-Awake (or Half-Asleep)
Awake
However, as a few of you can attest, a schema such as this one would be grossly over-simplified and possibly inaccurate. Let me try to clarify a bit what I mean by half-awake and how it fits into what is experienced along the spiritual journey:
1. ASLEEP
The vast majority of humanity is sound asleep. When I say the vast majority, I mean to say 99.99% (and I may have left out a few 9’s). I don’t think I need speak too much about this part, because, well, everyone reading this article knows exactly what asleep is like. *grin* I also recognize that more than a few spiritual people will take offense at me characterizing the vast majority as asleep. I never said there was anything wrong with being asleep, because there isn’t. It’s just a phase consciousness appears to pass through. In fact, there really is no such thing as asleep, it is merely the appearance of asleep. More on that another day. However, asleep is what many, many people experience.
2. An AWAKENING occurs
For no apparent reason (really, that’s how it works out), a moment of “Ah-ha!” happens, a realization, a seeing through the veil of illusion, a moment of pure knowingness. “Ah, so THIS is what I am!” The delusion of separate identity is uncovered to be a lie. An awakening is like no other spiritual experience. It is not an experience, in fact. It is beyond all experiences.
In this moment of utter clarity, one knows beyond question that the “me” that defined them, the psychological sense of self, is empty, void, nothing. Instead, what you are is everything. And beyond.
Very often, an awakening is accompanied by the expression, “Well, I’ll be damned!”
That said, for the most part, an awakening is not permanent. It does not last. Some teachers like to use the expression “non-abiding” to describe this experience. The old psychological sense of self resurrects itself, and once again you find yourself being trapped by the very thoughts and beliefs that you had seen through. You know it isn’t what you are, and yet, there it is.
3. HALF-AWAKE
The experience I’m calling half-awake can take many forms, varieties and “percentages” of awakeness (although measuring one’s awake percentage would be silly and quite futile to say the least). But this half-awake state is what follows from above. A real, genuine awakening occurs, and yet the psychological self is still operating. You are able at times (quite often, in fact) to get lost again in the seemingly important thoughts and beliefs of the mind. You seem to be a someone who has many somethings “he” needs to do.
What I’ve noticed in my own experience, however, is that this experience of being half-awake has changed over time. I would speculate that what I’m calling half-awake is quite evolutionary, fluctuates and is not a single, unvarying state. It changes as one dives deeper and deeper into the mental structure and uncovers more and more of the belief system that held the asleep condition in place. It also changes because there is a natural movement inward toward greater and greater clarity.
After the first awakening, it seemed that I fell back asleep. I couldn’t forget what I realized, and yet, I felt somewhat lost again. And yet, much of my life was different. I couldn’t stay asleep for long without the memory of that awakened state touching awareness. It really was more a contrast between the awake state and my new half-awakeness. But after a month or two, it became apparent that “half-awake” was very different from asleep. There was a sense, however, of going “in and out” of awakeness, but never that full experience of awakening that I had.
In the past 6 months, something new has become apparent, something different from what I had been experiencing. Now, I can’t really say that I’m ever really asleep. There is no more sense of “in and out.” Presence, consciousness, whatever word you care to use for the reality of what we are, is always “just inside my perception,” if that makes sense to you. It is like I can see it just out of the corner of my eye. Not really, but that’s the sense of it. “It” is here, now, present, and doesn’t leave, even in the midst of being occupied by a thought, belief or problem. I’m never asleep, even though I’m not fully awake.
It feels as if I’m moving along a continuum, a line of increasing awakeness. On the far left of the line was asleep. Then came “awakening” followed by what I’m now calling half-awake, but in reality is still a continuum of awakeness. Maybe a diagram will help make this explanation a touch clearer:
4. ABIDING AWAKENING
Ah, here is the Holy Grail of the spiritual journey. I know there is inevitable disagreement about the meaning of every term in spirituality, but abiding awakening is what is most often meant by the “E” word, Enlightenment.
At some point along the way, no one can say when, no one ever knows when or how, something within simply ceases. The psychological sense of self, the “ego” as it is often called, simply goes from the foreground of awareness to the background. It becomes irrelevant. It ceases to be of importance. The Buddha knew what he was talking about when he spoke of Nirvana, for that word simply means “cessation.”
What you are no longer is caught in the mind. It knows itself to be what it truly is. There is no “you” anymore in any real sense. There is just experience. What you are simply is.
I’ll be honest: I can sense this cessation. It is present in my very awareness, a sense that something will drop away, something will completely give way.
In the past 6 months I’ve had further glimpses of this shift. I guess we could say they’ve been “little awakenings,” although I have no idea what that really means. They’ve simply been deeper experiences of truth, further realizations of the Oneness of all things, the emptiness of what I used to see as myself. As so many before me have explained, there is emptiness and Oneness, simultaneously existing, no contradiction.
In the end, that’s all there is: deeper seeing. Even once you have ceased, once there is the experience of abiding awakening, this is still not the end. The spiritual seeking and spiritual journey may have ended, but there is further clear seeing to occur. Consciousness, if it has a purpose, wants to continually see things more clearly.
That’s why in the little diagram above, I put an arrow on the right end of the line. There is simply a continual movement of seeing all things more and more deeply, clearly, fully. Consciousness growing more conscious of Itself through the body called Tom or David or Sarah or Ellen. If enlightenment is anything, this further clear seeing is what it is.
And as long as there is a body that you, Consciousness (for that is what you truly are), seem to inhabit, there will never really be an end to looking and seeing. As my friend Davidya pointed-out in an email to me, there is quite likely always some arising of the psychological self, even in one who is what we might call enlightened. But it becomes a non-issue, arising and in the same instant falling away. Nisargadatta and Adyashanti both spoke of this occurrence, too.
I hope the above clarifies a bit more this experience I am calling half-awake. I’m sure there is still more to be said, and I’ll be happy to share it with you. Thanks for reading. Namaste.
Written on November 14, 2009 by Tom Stine
“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” — Groucho Marx
As I mentioned in a previous post, To Be Half-Awake (and Half-Asleep), my experience of spiritual awakening has been to be in a state that I am referring to as Half-Awake. Moreover, as I discussed, there are others who are experiencing this strange state, including some of you reading these articles (and I heard from quite a few of you after the last one). It is a far more common state than we might imagine, while at the same time, not the experience of the majority of humanity.
Moreover, it has been my experience that the majority of spiritual teachers and even “enlightened gurus” are fellow members of the Half-Awake Club. Unfortunately, many of these gurus and teachers have either flat out told their followers that they are fully awake, enlightened, or have simply left a profound state of ambiguity around the matter such that their followers have made bold claims as to the “enlightenment” of their guru.
Lest you get the wrong idea, there is nothing wrong with being a member of the Half-Awake Club. For the majority who awaken, being half-awake is just part of the process. It is simply part of the path. No big deal, no shame, no problem. Condemning people for being half-awake would be like condemning teenagers for being “half-adults.” Ridiculous to say the least.
The very nature of awakening is such that no one can be blamed or criticized for where they are on the journey. As a matter of fact, you have no control over awakening, over going back asleep, over fully awakening, etc. It is a gift, the supreme act of grace from the divine. I am very clear that I did nothing to experience an awakening (or any subsequent awakenings). They just happened. Really, I kid you not. I’ll address this point more in future writings. But as Ken Wilbur likes to say: awakening is an accident; all we can do is make ourselves more accident prone.
On the one-hand, I have to say that I don’t really care what other teachers are up to. It’s their karma, not mine. But on the whole, the mass of spiritual seekers have acquired some wrong-headed ideas about enlightenment and awakening, and I think we need look no further than the field of half-awake spiritual teachers for a lot of misinformation. Their own self-deception has led to some crazy ideas about reality and awakening to it.
To be honest, we have to admit it is a sad state of affairs out there in the spiritual world. There are websites like Sarlo’s Guru Ratings where you can read reviews of your favorite guru. There are other sites like Jody’s Guruphiliac whose mission is to reveal the “self-aggrandizement and superstition in self-realization.” Would we need or even have these sites if the spiritual world had its act together? I think not. (Warning: if you follow these links, prepare to read some harsh critiques of some of the best known gurus and spiritual teachers in the world. These sites are not for the faint of heart. Your favorite guru may get slammed.)
A little dose of self-honesty would go a long way in the spiritual world. And believe me, the gurus discussed on both these sites aren’t just obvious frauds and hucksters. There are some truly spiritual dudes out there who simply are unwilling to look in the mirror, be honest with themselves and with their followers.
There is even an interesting book, Halfway Up the Mountain, that seeks to address this very issue of Half-Awake spiritual teachers. The irony of the book is two-fold:
1. Most of the experts interviewed are in the Half-Awake Club.
2. They more or less condemn the state of being half-awake.
Again, to repeat in clear terms: there is nothing wrong with being half-awake. One can be a very effective teacher, helper, counselor, etc, from this state. A Course in Miracles makes this point quite well:
Do not despair, then, because of limitations. It is your function to escape from them, but not to be without them. If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their language. If you would be a savior, you must understand what needs to be escaped.
There really is too much to say about this subject for one article. I will get into this topic much more deeply in later articles as it gets to the very heart of spiritual awakening, what it is, how it flows, how it manifests in one’s life, how one’s life can change or not as a result of awakening, etc. And I’m also certain there will be the inevitable question: how do I know who is fully awake and who is not? I’ll just leave you in suspense on that one, with just this one comment: I don’t know for certain, but there are often telltale signs that one can look for, and even better, sense. A true light shines clearly for all to see.
Look for more in the coming weeks and months. Namaste.
Written on November 10, 2009 by Tom Stine
I am half-awake. Or half-asleep. Or even better, I am awake and asleep at the same time. It is a strange place to be, and I’m sure there are others who know what I mean. And I’m also sure there are spiritual teachers and writers who would say that such a state does not exist. But still, it is my experience.
What does it mean to be half-awake? The best way to explain it would be first to start with what being awake means. Being spiritually awake means the same thing as enlightened. I prefer the phrase “spiritual awakening” over enlightenment simply because it has less baggage associated with it. There is too much talk in the spiritual world about “enlightenment” and “enlightened gurus” for my tastes. And, as a bonus, awake is a nice description of what it feels like to awaken(although, to be fair, enlightenment really is quite accurate, too). It is almost the same experience as awakening from a dream at night. Almost.
Spiritual awakening, in its fullest sense, is the complete removal of delusion from consciousness. The Truth of your being, your reality as absolute consciousness, as the One consciousness that exists everywhere and is everything, is your natural state. For some inexplicable reason, the majority of humanity finds itself in what we could call a dream state, a state of consciousness characterized by a pervasive sense of individuality, a sense of “me” as a separate self, not connected to others, existing apart and alone from all other living beings and non-living things. Spiritual awakening is the reversal of this dream of separateness, a full, complete total reversal. Once one is truly awake, or as Jed McKenna would call “done,” there is no longer any doubt as to what you are and no tendency to re-enter the dream state of separateness. Even more, there is no “one” who is even awake, for the sense of individuality is gone. Consciousness has returned to a clarity, a clearness that is no longer deluded or confused.
Many people, although not that many when compared against the backdrop of 6.5 billion human beings, have experienced something rather profound, a spiritual awakening. They have experienced a realization of the truth of their being. They find themselves, for a moment, a minute, an hour, day, week or even year, as no longer this supposed separate self. They know at the depth of their core, all the way to the bottom, that the “me” they thought they were was merely a phantom, a psychological sense of self, no more real than any other thought, a figment of their imagination. And for that moment or hour or day, they are awake, utterly awake, as if they were never asleep in the dream state of delusion.
For most that have this experience, however, it doesn’t last. While much of the old psychological self, which many refer to as the ego, may have been blown out of the system by the experience of awakening, much may still remain. This psychological sense of self, the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc, that give it a sense of reality, has a certain weightiness, a certain momentum or inertia, that will continue to function after the experience has passed. And it may take many years for the inertia of this false self to wind down and eventually cease, like a pendulum that, once swinging, will swing and swing and swing until it finally comes to rest in perfect stillness. Cessation (the actual meaning of the term “nirvana”) is the eventual fate of the egoic self, but it almost always takes many years for that fate to come into full bloom.
This is the state I find myself in. Something happened to me that can only be described as miraculous, a gift from the divine. At some point, I will have to share that experience with you, because I think it might prove helpful to others. But as happens to the vast majority of people who experience a true spiritual awakening, the egoic self resurrected itself and came back in. I, too, experienced a pretty incredible “blowing out” of a lot of psychological baggage, but the material that was left came back with a vengeance! For over a year and a half, while there have been many amazing changes in my experience, there have been some old, buried items that have been raging in me at times, things I thought were over and done with 10 or 20 years ago.
There have been swings from fear to courage, from bliss to suffering. The dominant psychological pattern for most of my life, anxiety, has ebbed and flowed. While I became permanently free of panic attacks prior to this awakening, other forms of anxiety still plague me, and at the oddest times and places. All in all, I have to say it is simultaneously amazing and bizarre.
One of the hallmarks of the awakening process is the increasing inability to deny anything. You simply become incapable of hiding from any psychological issues that you repressed, denied or buried deep in your subconscious. You can no longer lie to yourself, and when you try, well, have you ever thrown a boomerang? The few times I’ve thrown one I’ve always ended up jumping out of the way of a rapidly spinning piece of wood itching to whack me upside the head. A whack upside the head is exactly what happens every time I attempt to lie to myself these days. What worked wonders 5 years ago is pointless, futile and outright foolish these days.
So, while I know the truth of what I am, while I can feel it, experience it, often see it in others, know it beyond question, I still am not fully aware of it yet. The description of enlightenment as “abiding non-dual awakening” is not my experience. Some days it is as if my awareness is on a roller coaster, going up then down, over then under and around. Moments of utter clarity then moments of delusion. And as I have come to realize, it is a perfect way to be, just as perfect as any other way of existence, lacking nothing. Like I said, it is strange.
Maybe a few of you are members of what I’m going to call the “Half-Awake (Half-Asleep) Club.” Most probably are not, and that is okay. It is a club that some of you will join soon, some will join at some point in this lifetime, and all of you are destined to join during some non-existent future life. Even a few of you may have “graduated” beyond the club. I’ll write more about the other members of this club in a few days, as there are quite a few of us. A sneak preview: most of the “enlightened gurus” and “spiritual teachers” floating around the world are fellow members. There is much to discuss about the strange existence I’m calling Half-Awake, and I’ll be saying more about it. Until then, I would suggest you read (or re-read) the article on Adyashanti’s View of Awakening…. Namaste.
Written on June 20, 2009 by Tom Stine
The further along I go with this awakening that has happened and continues to unfold, the more it becomes apparent that the real key to waking up is wanting to wake up. I know it is a radical idea, but it just so happens to be the truth of the matter. Technique is almost always given top billing in the world of spirituality, but the “how” will always come whenever you are truly willing. But willingness, that’s the crux of the issue.
You may already think you are willing. That’s why you meditate, read books by the spiritual giants, read this blog, talk to your friends about spirituality and awakening and enlightenment, go to retreats, all that good stuff. You have a very convincing case to prove how willing you are. But the truth is, if your willingness were electricity, you wouldn’t have enough to power a night light. A firefly could outshine you. Sorry, but it is true.
Look inside for a moment. Feel into this subject of willingness. Can you feel the resistance? Can you feel how much “you” don’t want to really wake up? Something inside of you knows this awakening thing is going to be different, really, really different, and it is frightened about that. Something inside wants to feel better about life, but it doesn’t really want what awakening entails.
Why not? Because the “something” resisting all of this, the “something” that is not willing to awaken, is the very thing from which one awakens! The resistance you are feeling, the UN-willingness, is simple the energy of thought, the “mind” as it were, resisting what is its eventual undoing. Well, maybe undoing is too harsh. Let’s just say that the mind gets to go from being the dominant player in your awareness to being second fiddle.
So there is a massive resistance to awakening. The natural question to ask at this point is “what do I do about it?” Ah, good question. But the question itself is just more resistance. Notice that the question is about doing and about “I”. The “I” is the very thing doing the resisting! The doing is how it resists.
Going beyond this resistance, becoming more willing, is the simplest of things: let it happen. What you are wants this awakening to happen. It is what is waking-up to itself. It IS awake, and is looking for this awakeness to transform everything. So, simply pause and let it happen. It will anyway.
As far as “you” are concerned, I think cooperation would almost be a better focus for the mind. Cooperate. Don’t fight what is happening. Give in. Allow. I think you’ll find this mindset to be a better one. It is far more in alignment with what is really happening anyway. Remember that whole “not in control” issue I’ve discussed many times? You aren’t in control, so why not just let that realization sink a little deeper. Cooperate with the inevitable, and you will find your willingness going up, up, up.
Be well. Namaste.
Written on March 18, 2009 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me an email letting me know that a statement of mine in my last post I Want to Be Like Jed sounded like I was claiming that I’m enlightened. The line in question was a bit misleading, so I’ve changed it. However, the line in question did cause me to think of something that I want to share with all of you before heading to bed.
So, how would you know if “I” am enlightened? How would you know if anyone is enlightened? What’s great about these questions is that (1) they are questions that most spiritual people ask about various teachers and gurus and (2) they are so misguided as to be a bit comical.
First of all, you have absolutely no way of knowing if someone is enlightened or not. Period. No way. Zero. Zip. Nada. How can I be so utterly certain? Because you can’t know anything about another. All you can do is have an experience of them. You may have an experience of where their consciousness is at (ego or One, let’s say). You may see their behaviors. But to know if they are awake? Nope. I feel I have a pretty strong sense of where someone’s consciousness is at, where their “focus” is. But I could be seriously wrong. And beyond that? No clue. And moreover, I don’t really care.
Secondly, questions like this inevitably come back to some pretty fundamental things about enlightenment. For instance, who is it that is enlightened? Is Tom Stine ever going to be enlightened? No, he isn’t. Tom Stine is just a body and mind playing around in the dream state. But is Tom that which will ever awaken to the truth? No.
Then what does awaken? That which is already awake. Oh, isn’t this stuff just crazy to actually see in print? That’s why you gotta take all spiritual literature with a grain of salt. None of it is true. At best, it is an attempt at expressing some form of truth to encourage the reader to find out for himself or herself what all the fuss is about. Never take any of it as a statement of the truth. Find out for yourself what is true!
I think it was Yogananda who said, “Anyone who claims to be enlightened isn’t.” I don’t think he got it quite right. Better to say, “Anyone who believes he is enlightened isn’t!” For enlightenment is beyond any belief as it is beyond the mind.
Just some late night thoughts for you. Namaste.
Written on December 4, 2008 by Tom Stine
I’ve recently written quite a bit about the topic of control. Over and over, as I look at my life, as I watch others experience their lives, I keep coming to the same simple realization: we don’t have control over our lives. We are lived by something, a force that operates through our bodies and conditioned minds. We are lived by LIFE itself. And whatever “we” are goes along for the ride.
Interestingly, as I was in the midst of writing my recent posts on control, I got to travel to San Francisco to hear Adyashanti give a weekend workshop. And guess how he started his first talk? Yes, of course, he started discussing control. I smiled when he mentioned control that morning. It was a wonderful talk, and as so often happens, I remembered almost nothing from it, even though it had a profound impact upon me. A good spiritual talk is memorable for its effects, not for its words.
Fortunately for me, I ordered a recording of the weekend, and after it arrived the other day, I began to listen again to the talk on control. It was even better the second time! Let me share a bit with you:
You’re not in control, but your desperate efforts to keep control actually does alter the way existence moves for you. It doesn’t move in the way your controller wants to, but it does have an effect on existence, your effort to control it. It doesn’t have the effect you want it to have, but it does have an effect. And you only know that when that control is totally let go of. Because when it is totally let go of, and you are no longer putting that energy out to existence or to consciousness, then existence starts to change.
Yes, of course, our efforts to control do effect the events of our lives, but not how we want them to. That explains so much. But as we let go of attempting to control, life then begins to flow. Ah, yes, perfect. It makes complete sense to me. Nothing to be but let go of one simple false belief: that we have control over our lives. So easy to say. So difficult fun interesting to do.
Written on September 23, 2008 by Tom Stine
It seems to me that blogging tends to come in 2 basic flavors. One flavor is where the blogger writes big, long, complete essays on a topic. For the most part, my articles have been of this type. The other flavor has the blogger firing off short, to the point items. These posts never try to be complete, but they nonetheless often communicate something vital to the reader. I’m going to start experimenting with these types of posts. And here is the first one for you.
When you get right down to the nitty gritty of spirituality, you find a very stark realization staring you in the face. And that realization is: you are not in control of your life. “What?” you ask. “How can that be?” Well, just pay attention to one very simple “fact” of your existence thus far: how often do things go your way? From the big to the little, from the important to the trivial, how often does life cooperate with your thoughts, ideas, plans, goals and beliefs? Not looking so good, is it?
We like to think we have control, or we like to think that we have at least some control, but in point of fact, we’ve got none. Hell, we can’t even control the thoughts that flow through our minds, let alone the turning of the wheels of life. And, to get right down to it, there isn’t even a you who is or isn’t in control! How’s that grab you?! No you, no control.
So, who or what is in control? What if I said no one? Or what about everything, the totality of Life? Same thing, really.
I know that this may sound scary to some of you, and downright crazy to others, but the simple truth is this: life has only gotten more delicious and fun the more I’ve come to accept the truth that we have no control. Much like a surfer riding a wave: you have no control over the wave. Your only job is to enjoy the ride! Namaste.
Written on June 13, 2008 by Tom Stine
When I ride on a roller coaster, I love to ride in the front seat. Everything seems to happen right now when you sit in the front. I put my arms up, of course, no holding on, no matter what the coaster does. Upside down, slammed to the side, you name it. It’s just more fun to be on the leading edge of the experience, arms up, come what may.
I realized recently that this same attitude is very important to take with life in general. Especially with thoughts and feelings. We usually “ride” our thoughts and feelings, especially our unpleasant feelings, in the back seat, as far from the leading edge as possible. We hope that the unpleasant ones will simply go away, and if we sit far enough away from them, maybe they will. But they never do. All feelings will keep returning until they are experienced fully.
More and more I’ve had the experience of moving to the front seat and experiencing most of my feelings and thoughts head on. While I can feel everything more powerfully, and some things seem a little more frightening, the whole experience feels more alive and interesting. It feels almost invigorating. I feel like I’m on the leading edge of my life, and it feels good.
In many senses, being on the leading edge is what awakening is all about. We wake-up from riding on a roller coaster with our eyes closed, holding on for dear life, sure we are going to die a horrible death. And we awaken to the realization that the sun is out, the coaster is flying 90 miles per hour, we are strapped in and loving the ride, moment to moment, in the front seat.
The leading edge. That sums it up. We are like surfers, riding the leading edge of the wave, hanging out on the front side. We may always be in the Now as Eckhart Tolle would say, but we can either live it hanging off the back end or riding the leading edge, wind in our faces, hair blowing, shouting, “Yeah baby!”
