There is a widespread belief that the spiritual side of ourselves is somehow “other” than the side we know and trust. Partly, this is a result of reports of people whose world fell apart, and who as a result underwent a spiritual awakening.
Confrontations with our own mental instability, with sudden loss, or the emergence of post traumatic stress triggered by circumstance can often be followed by spiritual awakening. Reality cracks open, we look death in the eyes, and we realize we are still here. But who are we? The ‘spiritual’ possibility and potentiality opens up in a shock of long forgotten freedom.
This kind of awakening experience can be a precious and momentous part of an individual process, but it’s not an end-point. Our world does not have to break open for us to access the light which created it. We don’t need to die suddenly inside, in order to come to life.
The power of the familiar
The spirituality dimension, or the nondual awakening, is not a strange phenomena. It’s not to be found in alienated corners of the psyche, in temples, or in shanti clothes evoking the Far East. The fastest, safest and most gently way into our spiritual core is through the heart of the familiar.
The miracle is here, in all this we take for granted. It’s in our patterns, our habits, in our partner, in our routine lives. It’s in the familiar way we relate to being in a physical body. It’s behind our birth name, looking back from our face reflected in the mirror, or within the pressure in the muscles of our feet when they rest on the ground. The door to the source of all we are is not in another corner of the universe, it’s here, at the intimate core of all we feel to be “normal”.
The alchemy of awareness
In programming and habit we fall into a non-alert state where much of the system runs on automatic pilot. We trust that it works – through some kind of ingenious in-born power of its own – and most of the time it does. We get in our car, drive to our known destination, and often couldn’t recall anything along the way. Sometimes, we are so deeply sunk in our programs that we go on our usual route when we actually planned to go elsewhere.
In this cordoned-off zone of familiarity, we shut down the familiar; or to say it differently, we cut ourselves out from our own living vitality. By gaining a sense of the familiar, we stop sensing altogether, letting the body and part of the mind run its routines without being present. It can feel comfortable for a while, like a soft drug. For some time, it can give a sense of safety: living your life, doing your job, in your country, among your people. The problem is, that the source of all you are has a deeper drive: it’s not enough. You didn’t enter again through the gates of physical life in order to – well – not really live.
One way or another, we try to shake ourselves awake. Mid life crises; unconsciously designed disasters like divorce or debt; accidental romances; vicious arguments with friends we once swore we loved – these are all wake up calls we give ourselves. And if we don’t call ourselves home, then sooner or later, life (or karma) steps in. Accidents, broken bones, bereavement and a variety of shocks bring opportunities to awaken out of the narrow dimension of physical consciousness and into more subtle, more invincible aspects of who we are.
An exercise with comfort zones
A powerful nondual practise is to be vigilant in maintaining awareness. Staying aware is not as easy as it sounds, as awareness itself quickly can bring a sense of discomfort. This discomfort can be in the body, in our thoughts, or in our feelings. It is this discomfort that causes us to turn on the TV, seek distraction, fantasize about the next fashion purchase, or focus on a hypothetical argument in the head.
Yet the simplest of tasks is to notice where there is discomfort, and to stay aware of it. Discomfort is where the magic is. Just the continuation of our awareness has an effect, like a flower opening in the sunshine. The more we stay aware of where there is discomfort of any kind, the more space is opened around us, and around any area of trouble.
At a certain stage, the duality of comfort and discomfort begins to spin. We could notice that we are quite comfortable with patterns of discomfort, for example. This would be the unravelling of a habitual pattern of reactivity. Moving beyond the local loop of comfort with discomfort, and even wider comfort opens up – a kind of comfort in being aware.
It takes some time as the nervous system begins to recognize new dimensions of safety, but it happens.
The more comfortable we are in awareness, the more freedom we find to manifest. The more awareness becomes our comfort zone, the less we can be satisfied living within the box of habitual action and reaction. Both we, and the “other” are so much more than that.
Distractions will come, pulling us back down the trauma tunnel of entanglement and emotion, and we will go through those tunnels and emerge again on the other side. The more aware we become, even to say “I am in a trauma tunnel right now”, the more free we become from the limitations of habit, which in the end, are the limitations of karma.
Why? Because the one who can say “I am in a trauma tunnel right now” is not the same one as is found in the tunnel. He or she, is already so much more than that.
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