Suffering your way into enlightenment.

Jan 30, 2022 | Anxiety, Awakening, Coaching, English, Insights, Love, Personal, Purpose and Meaning, Spirituality, Typically Me

One of my most precious categories of clients is the Spiritually Disappointed And Exhausted Person.

In the last couple of years, I’ve talked to quite a lot of them, and I really get the experience well because I was exactly like that.

When spirituality and the idea of awakening or finding your true nature get a hold of you, it can become a screaming obsession.

For many people, it’s like the last straw, the definitive and ultimate solution for their existential confusion, and they will try everything to wrestle themselves into enlightenment.

Many Spiritual Confused Victims have devoted their lives to practices that are supposed to make them more conscious.

And very often it becomes a lifestyle.

They can change their appearance, become wandering hermits, or congregate in very specific groups of like-minded people.

They change their vocabulary, their habits, their demeanor and often try to mimic their way into the desired outcome of Self-realization.

They work really, REALLY hard, study a lot, and might spend days in self-reflection and self-inquiry.

And in many cases, it only brings more confusion.

The same mind that has caused so much suffering, has now gladly taken up the role of no mind or no ego, and experiences can change from moments of superiority to days of feeling completely lost.

We are so trained to solve shit with our intellect, to find the logic structure or nature in things, that we try to use this way of working stuff out in a rational way while exploring the divine nature of life.

That is most certainly not useless, but it only works up to a point.

The mind can be very helpful for a while, but it’s utterly incapable of fully comprehending the Whole.

Awakening lies beyond the intellect and can never be realized or understood by it.

No amount of quotes and second-hand insights and teachings and wise remarks can cause or force the moment of Self-realization.

Realizing your true nature is exactly that: you realize it.

Just like that.

All of a sudden you just know, because you know.

There’s this (generally subtle) shift, and there you go.

“Oh. Right.”

And life goes on.

But it will never really be the same again.

(Photo by @oneshotespresso, for Unsplash)