Give up trying to ‘wake up’ and just enjoy!

The last thing I want to be encouraging, or promoting, or instigating here is another ‘goal’ to try to reach – to be a better person, or a more ‘spiritual’ person. This is not a puzzle that your mind needs to sink into to ‘solve’ or even understand.  But our minds automatically work that way, and so this path can be extremely frustrating because ultimately this deep recognition is not of the mind….. in this post I want to share about how much peace flooded in once I gave up ‘trying’…..

I wanted to ‘understand’ what Papaji, Gangaji, Ramana, Rumi and Hafiz were talking (raving) about so much – I wanted to experience what they were experiencing.  I wanted to see the seer.  I was so deeply frustrated at myself for not ‘getting it’ that finally I threw in the towel.  I decided this wasn’t for me anymore – this ‘experiencing ourselves as pure awareness’ – or truly experiencing life with ‘no separation’ – just wasn’t happening in my actual living experience.  At one point I decided that maybe they were full of shit – that they too weren’t actually living it, but just talking about it as though they were.  So I wrote it all off.

But as it turned out, the desire for freedom, for true peace, was not just in my mind (it was amazing how my mind adopted this desire too). I found that this desire was coming from somewhere much deeper.  So I was at a funny place of total resignation – but there was a tiny coal of desire still glowing deep in my being.   At that point, I knew that if I ‘tried’ to do anything, it wouldn’t ‘work’ (notice how the mind here still saw ‘awakening’ as something other than where I already was). I wanted to keep trying, and sometimes I still ‘tried’ (by listening to Papaji’s videos deeply, or meditating, or trying to reach my mind/energy into an imaginary pocket of ‘peace’), but something in me already knew that wasn’t the way- I had tried everything.  So the time came when I stopped trying altogether…..But that little coal still glowed.

I felt such a deep relief in letting go of all the ‘trying’ – it had felt like such an upstream swim without any eddies to rest in.  It felt so much better to just let go and not worry about ‘attaining awareness’ anymore and instead just have more fun.  I found that letting go of my effort really allowed me to enjoy where I was more – there was an easy ‘yes’ to all the great things that were happening moment by moment in my life.  Something deep started to shift in this period as my desire for peace quietly (but fiercely) grew while my effort to attain it completely melted away.

And that brings us to we are right now – all of my inspiration that I’m sharing in this blog here is coming from a bubbling over of this joy and peace and clarity that is flowing from whatever it is that is conscious, awake, alive and here.  It is totally mysterious to me, unpredictable and honestly has NOTHING to do with ‘me’.  Even the desire and action of  starting a blog and writing regularly is pulled by this mystery – I have no idea where it is going – I am truly just along for the ride.  I (as an individual body/mind) am reading these words as they come – not the writer -but the reader, just as you are.

I am no longer concerned if I’ve ‘reached awakening’ or not – there is a carefree lightness that laughs at the attempt to measure that anyway. Who cares??? =) I know that the part of me that was striving for understanding – or to experience something someone else has – is gone.  I am so excited about not feeling trapped in my unconscious patterns anymore – that is truly liberating – and I feel passionate about helping others (who want it) become aware of how they buy into their own unconscious patterns… but I find I never speak a word about any of this in my everyday life (unless it comes up – then of course I’m so glad to).  Now I find myself just enjoying all the forms in this world so deeply. I love being surprised by, and playing with the world through the form of my personality, my body, my emotions, my silly dance moves, my ideas – my actions.  My relationship to all of these things has changed – now it is all very mysterious and spontaneous and the range of what manifests is surprising.

So instead of trying to grasp some concept, or to have a ‘deeper’ experience in some way, what feels most truthful to me is just to experience whatever is here fully – people, music, making meals, changing diapers, watching thoughts, watching actions, swimming laps, doing yoga, hearing dirty jokes fly from my mouth, drinking a jar of green juice, sipping on a glass of wine, eating chocolate chips, noticing the immovable blissful consciousness that fuels everything…..

So my two cents is – if you truly have that desire for freedom, for peace, notice the glow of that little coal, and other than that, give up the ‘trying’ to ‘wake up’ and just enjoy your life with every fibre of your being.    

Peace and deep joy xx