Awakening involves a profound shift in how we engage with emotions, beliefs, and what is happening around us. It is also a unique insight into how the mind operates. More importantly, it is a continuous process, involving approaching inner and outer experiences with a great deal of awareness and openness. The process can vary for individuals, depending on the individual history, emotional baggage, and how we approach the process. Nevertheless, some aspects relate to all of us.
Two fundamental blocks that constitute the path remain constant: openness and curiosity. The first aspect, openness, has to do with our ability to learn and practice being open to whatever arises in our present experience. It is a key part of the process, as it paves the way for a stable realization rather than a mere spontaneous experience. However, being open is not that straightforward. Surrendering to whatever arises is anything but easy. In fact, it is the most challenging process of your inner exploration. Why? Because the body is not accustomed to it. The body is used to resist, fight, and avoid narratives and situations that are seen as threatening to it.
So, how should we approach this? The crucial approach lies in mastering the art of embracing momentary experience without resistance, even when faced with resistance itself. It also requires patience and the capacity to remain receptive and compassionate towards varying levels of emotional and mental discomfort. When confronted with what we label as negative emotions, there’s a habitual tendency to react to or resist them rather than greeting them with openness and acceptance. Being open entails more than merely refraining from resisting patterns of resistance; it involves cultivating kindness and affection towards whatever emerges.
The second part involves applying curiosity about core beliefs of who are and recognizing them as they arise involuntarily. One frequently reported insight, also called kensho or first awakening, is the realization that there is no thinker of thoughts or an experiencer of sound and sensations. Following this realization, a period of relaxation and ease may be experienced for days or even weeks, referred to as a “spiritual honeymoon.”
But here’s the catch: This is just the beginning. Our old habits, attachments, and identifications will creep back in. For most of us, the cycle of selfing and conditioning will come back and another set of beliefs lay ahead to be addressed. These beliefs arise involuntarily and are specific to individual history and conditioning, and addressing them relies very much on our intuition and curiosity. Whenever there is a reaction such as anger, shame, anxiety, there is a belief, a story breathing life into this reaction. Other narratives regarding the existence of time and locality, expectations of how life should be, and habitual desires, still operate.
Other more subtle beliefs may arise in a non-verbal form. For example, even after you had a key insight that there is no such thing as a separate entity managing life, this does not imply that the sense of self is completely gone. Whatever is experienced, there is a sense, or rather an assumption, that is happening to someone or something. This belief arises involuntarily whenever a thought arises, whenever some activity is happening. It is a subtle one and not easy to spot, mostly because it does not arise in a narrative/story form. It could take the form of a belief in a being, a center, a perceiver, an experiencer, a watcher, awareness, and so on. Despite we are still dealing with a belief, it might register as a sensation affecting the entire body or lingering behind the eyes, creating the impression that everything is framed about this sense, as if all activities belong to it or are happening to it, as there is still a thing perceiving and experiencing the outside world.
Addressing these beliefs is a continuous process towards liberation, during which the egoistic tendencies lose their substance and solidity. I strongly suggest exploring beliefs while practicing openness. These two are basically two interconnected elements, and are very much complementary. Openness allows for a deeper insight to emerge, as the mind becomes more receptive and alert. By refraining from engaging in battles with beliefs and emotions, they gradually and simply lose the power they once held.
At a certain juncture, the seeking and mental suffering stops. It becomes evident that what we’ve sought throughout our lives is present here and now and is not dependent on anything. It also becomes clear that it has been always like that. It somehow feels familiar. The automatic inclination for things to be different dissipates. The immediate experience becomes simpler, paradoxically richer, radiant, joyful and profoundly direct, leading to a state of general “okayness” and equanimity as natural by-products. Beliefs and over-intellectualizing life lose their necessity and significance. There is no longer a center (Self, I, me) absorbing or generating experiences and actions. At this point, one can assert that all mental afflictions and ideas are principally irrelevant, including big ones such as awakening, self, no-self, ego, Buddhism, or emptiness. Existence becomes effortless, a markedly different life, yet familiar. A sense of lightness prevails. It can be stated that whatever is, simply is. No more impulses urging things to be different than they are, no emotional roller coasters, and no attachment to the mind. Radical aliveness and simplicity.