If You’ve Already Started the Journey…

Written on March 9, 2008 by Tom Stine / 20 Comments »



Creative Commons License credit: judy_breck

I heard a story a few years ago that perfectly illustrates most people’s experience with the spiritual journey and personal growth.

It seems a well known Tibetan Buddhist was speaking to a rather large gathering. He asked the audience at the beginning of his talk,

“Who among you feel strongly that you are on a spiritual path?

About half the crowd raised their hands. Rinpoche then said,

“Those of you who didn’t raise your hands should probably leave and not listen to my talk. If you are not on a spiritual path, don’t start now. It is way too hard and demanding, and you will often hate it.”

The audience was stunned. They came to hear a spiritual talk, something nice and warm and fuzzy to make them feel good. And here they were being told that many of them needed to leave. Then Rinpoche said,

“And those of you who raised your hands, you need to get a move on. If you have already started walking the path, you might as well finish.”

I love this story. Have not most, if not all, of us on the so-called spiritual path had our moments when we really hated this journey we started? If you remember the movie The Matrix, we at times have our moments like Cypher, when we wish we had told our personal Morpheus to “stick that red pill up his ass.” We have our moments when we wish that we were still stuck in the human muck of unconsciousness.

“If you’ve already started walking the path, you might as well finish.”

But once we start, well, “You might as well finish.” At times, it almost seems as if the universe is calling us to move forward, relentless urging us not to stop until we realize the truth of our being. Is not this the real essence of the spiritual journey? Is not this what it is all about? Fortunately, as we progress, we find that we simply cannot stop, nor do we want to stop. We find that our moments of anger at the path fades, until finally they are gone. Something shifts, and while we may at times be completely unconscious of who and what we are, the call that is ever present brings us back. We must continue and know the truth.


Creative Commons License credit: ricardo.martins

While we feel this drive to continue the journey, we eventually learn that, ultimately, the ego, the mind, the persona called “me,” whatever we wish to call this sense of separate identity, can do nothing to finally realize the truth. Realization comes from “the other side” as it were, it is revealed to us in its own way and its own time. However, it definitely seems to be the case that for the most part, a little bit of effort is often required. While sudden awakenings can and do occur, we usually must spend some time in preparation, in other words sitting, meditating, doing our practice, each and every day, for realization of the truth to occur.

So, my friends, let’s get moving. Let’s do what we know in our hearts we are called to do: spend a little time each day with the divine.

Did you enjoy this article? Please share it with others. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • e-mail
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis

 

Living from Consciousness Newsletter

Free! A newsletter filled with exclusive articles on living from consciousness, awakening and spirituality. Support yourself via your inbox several times each month. (And fear not, your email address is never sold or spammed.) Sign-up and receive a special bonus.





Best of Tom Stine


Recent Posts


Categories


Twittering...


Subscribe to Articles

  Get Articles by Email:


Tom Recommends


Guru Quotes

All of our thoughts are conditioned. We all are thinking exactly along the lines we are conditioned to think. Programmed like a computer. Anybody who thinks they are actually choosing of their own free will the line of thinking that they have is completely deluded by their thinking.

—Adyashanti


Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you’re not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn’t someplace else; it’s the naturally occurring human state. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn’t in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it’s there too in the vastness of who we are.

—Suzanne Segal

In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.

—Jack Kornfield

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?

—Siddhārtha Gautama, The Dhammapada

We always want someone else to change so that we will feel good. But has it ever struck you that even if your wife changes or your husband changes, what does that do to you? You’re just as vulnerable as before; you’re just as idiotic as before; you’re just as asleep as before. You are the one who needs to change, who needs to take medicine. You keep insisting, “I feel good because the world is right.” Wrong! The world is right because I feel good. That’s what all the mystics are saying.

—Anthony de Mello