The Thin Line

Our perspective as spiritual seekers is that of our personality looking for our own conceptualization of enlightenment based on what we may have read or heard.  We tend to see that as a state of achievement that we have to work towards.  But if we listen to awakening people, we begin to get an inkling that something much more profound is going on.

Imagine the boundless bearing witness to the character that we personally identify with.  That personality is really a temporary illusion, here for a brief time and then gone.  What we truly are is that boundless ever-being.  Now, the personality seems like a little cartoon, going about its days doing spiritual practices, stumbling its way through its own concepts of what spirituality means.  But in truth, it is pure consciousness seeking to meet itself in its creation.

To press the point, the ego identity we think we are actually is a fabrication of sorts.   For as long as we think we belong to our mind or body, to our story, we are attaching ourselves to that limitation, which imprisons us.  But complete surrender of our identity brings us to the realization that what we thought we were is just emptiness expressing itself in innumerable ways to fall back into itself.  That is what manifests in us as spiritual practice.  And so now we can see that those who experience a harder life, they actually are manifesting a stronger pull by pure consciousness than those who lead a comfortable life and feel very little urgency to shift to spirituality.

This may sound esoteric but let go of preconceptions and identifications for a moment.  Now, see that consciousness waking up has as a side effect, a change in the person.  We are already emptiness watching our own temporary creation of a personality waking up to the Truth in a lifetime.  Suddenly we realize that all the meditation, sadhana, satsangs, prayers and spiritual practices that we thought we were in charge of performing are really all manifestations of a deeper consciousness expressing itself through this life, finding its way back to itself.

When pure consciousness meets itself in form, it appears or manifests as a person awakening and integrating realization in their daily life.  But that appearance is a representation of something much deeper.  The thin line is there – where the awakened person can dance in life, with feet planted in both pure awareness, consciousness, bliss and in the everyday.  Knowing that it’s all a dream but enjoying the Divine play.  To be a limitless being, experiencing a limited body and its expressions on this earth – that is why the awakened are always so full of joy.  That’s the delightfulness of being a human being – and nearly everyone misses it – we are the beings that can bridge the manifestation and the unmanifest in this moment.

Now let’s switch back to our familiar shell of self-identity.  It feels constricted doesn’t it?  But this time, we can have the faith to rely on the universe, or God, whatever we want to call that cosmic intelligence.  We can know that the Divine reaches out for us evermore than we reach out for it.  We are in form, and the spiritual work is simply to align the form to the formless so that we are available to grace, so that we surrender to grace which is always beckoning.  The procession of life is to meet every moment with filling ourselves with the manifestation of life, and emptying of it, knowing that we are pure no-thing.  To be human is to ride the thin line, residing in boundlessness yet experiencing the bounded.

For Oneness to know itself, it must appear as two.  As Rumi said, “what you seek is seeking you.”