Your Roadmap to Spiritual Awakening

In the previous post we discussed what spiritual enlightenment is and why our pursuit of it leads us off in the wrong direction.

Here we will discuss how to actually see the truth. If you never read another book or watch another video and only focus on this one thing, your awakening to the truth is pretty much certain. Here it is:

Ask yourself “Who am I?” over and over, until you know. That’s it.

This simple phrase gets you to truth because enlightenment is not about going somewhere or learning anything, it is simply about discarding what is false.

The truth is always there right in front of you, but you’re unable to see it. The journey is simply about learning to see it.

Asking yourself this question and writing down your answer until there is nothing left but truth is all you need.

Perhaps another way to phrase it could be “What is me?”. But it doesn’t really matter where you start, just grab a thread and start pulling until you get to the end.

Write down what you know is true, or what you think is true, and keep writing until you’ve come up with something that is true.

With this process you tear away layer after layer of falsehood masquerading as truth.

Write and rewrite. Make it cleaner and cut out the excess and the ego, and follow it wherever it leads. Anytime you go back to read something you wrote you should be surprised by how far you’ve come.

Perhaps this process of self-inquiry doesn’t appeal to you right now, that’s okay. You will realize the truth one way or another eventually since the truth is always there.

Trying to rush towards enlightenment is akin to rushing towards death. What’s the point? Both will find you when it’s time. So relax, there’s no hurry.

Plus there is no way to sugarcoat it: this is a painful and vicious process, and the only reason to do it is because you can no longer stand not to.

Why is it so hard you ask? Because the ego will do anything to survive.

The fundamental conflict in the spiritual quest is that ego desires spiritual enlightenment, but ego can never achieve spiritual enlightenment. Self cannot achieve no self.

We humans are fear based creatures, and this fear of no-self underlies all our other fears. To become awakened we must develop and sharpen the ability to detect the source of fear within us.

When one looks for true self and finds nothing, it’s the dread of that nothingness that keeps one’s attention outwardly fixed. There is no true self to perceive, there’s only false self and no self.

The only way out is through this fear; in those difficult moments remind yourself that there can be no rebirth without first a death.

You’re in a Dream

Our collective illusion of ego is similar to being in a dream and enlightenment is waking up from the dream.

If you were to become lucid in your dream, how seriously would you take everything that is happening in your dream?

Whether you are suffering or being happy, it doesn’t matter. That just means you’re having a good dream or a bad dream, while enlightenment is getting out of the dream altogether.

The dream you must disappear in order for the real you to be awake.

The only thing you need to do to wake up, is to sit down and ask yourself what’s true until you know.

And the key to minimizing the pain through this process is to not resist what comes up, to surrender to the experience. 

Surrender to the idea that all our beliefs, perceptions, identities, and assumptions are an illusion.

Realize that we cling to these things to create an illusion of something where there is actually nothing, because that nothing is terrifying.

But if you think for yourself, perhaps you’ll realize that the terror itself is just an illusion within our dream as well.

Remember: what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.