When you’re Stuck in the Spiritual Search
Individuals that seek personal development may stumble upon the wisdoms of spiritual truth. However, to the detriment of constantly searching for something beyond this life we may often trap ourselves in illusions, existential dread or a web of moral comparisons. We may unknowingly be avoiding the reality of what is taking place below the surface of consciousness. Perhaps this path may have instead led us to our unconscious desires, to fulfill a hunger for self-worth, perfection, recognition, or anything that may feel we is lacking in our lives. We may even be avoiding our fears of this current state of beingness. But beyond the level of the dream state is equanimity and contentment, unconstrained by the notion of gaining. The aim of spirituality is not pure bliss, though that can be a byproduct of it. The spiritual path seeks not to gain, it does not attach to such pursuits as that would be the disguised ego. I find myself in this state time and time again, only to realize the illusions. One cannot personify a spiritual teacher or an enlightened being when he himself cannot let go of this world and is still in love with enhancing the self. Like a caterpillar that desperately wants to be a butterfly, we cannot be what we are not. We will come to awareness when we are ready to let go.
But know this—that what we seek is seeking us. At the right time when the apple is ripe it will fall from the tree, and so we must trust the process. This is not a passive effort but of skillful intention not on becoming but a focus on being, both present and honest with ourselves and how we interact with the world we live in. We may come to awareness from deep reflective practices or even from the shadows of trauma which causes a cognitive dissonance. In those moments of awakening we see a glimpse of truth, not because we willed it so, but because we were truly allowing something to go. It could be letting go of the narratives we hold about the way we are experiencing our current states, whether that be attachment to an emotion, a thought, or a memory that serves the egoic mind. When we go through the process of healing our traumas and unraveling the conditioning of the mind, then perhaps in this lifetime may we transcend the suffering and connect on a deeper level that we had always been in search for.
We could simply begin by sitting up and listening closely to the birds and the cars. In this stillness, may it be the first time the mind knew silence and we recognized ourselves at our core.
