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by
Mateo Sol
December 05,
2020
from
LonerWolf Website
Spanish version
Welcome to the end of your spiritual search...
If you're familiar with our website at all, you'll know that it's
all about the spiritual journey.
Using the archetype of the lone wolf choosing to walk
her own path and seeking a true home (hence why our website is
called 'lonerwolf'), we've offered innumerable resources for lost
souls and spiritual seekers.
But there comes a point when the spiritual search ends...
Yes, we continue evolving and changing - that's the nature of life.
But eventually, something within us shifts at the deepest level, and
our desire to seek for Oneness, Wholeness, and Enlightenment ceases.
Poof! It vanishes.
It's gone. Hey presto...!
"Why?" you may ask.
The answer is that, suddenly, we come to realize that all we've been
seeking is already here.
Our True Nature is always and forever within reach.
It's as if the veil has been torn from our eyes, the mirror of our
minds has become wiped clean, and the doors of perception have been
finally opened.
And this, my friend,
is the end of the spiritual search.
It's the
end of the exhausting seeking, searching, longing, pining,
prostrating, and praying for something that is already always here.
It's the end of identification with
the ego or "me," and the
beginning of understanding at the deepest level that we are Life
itself playing out in innumerable ways and forms.
Isn't that beautiful...?
What is My True Nature?
Perhaps a better question is,
"what isn't my True
Nature...?"
There are innumerable
names from endless traditions that point to what our True Nature is.
It has been called,
Brahman, Tao,
Buddha-nature, Christ Consciousness, Self, Allah, the Absolute,
Non-Dual Awareness, the Holy Spirit, Spirit, God, Goddess,
Satchitananda, Oneness,
...just to name a few...
Our True Nature is often described as,
infinite, boundless, pure,
all-pervading, serene, silent, and unconditionally loving.
It is the
space from which everything arises and returns, and has no beginning
or end.
We call it the
Sacred
Wild as it manifests as both form and formlessness, and is
ultimately indefinable and unknowable to the mind which tries to
limit it through mental constructs.
It is the very essence of
inner peace and freedom.
Why
'Enlightenment' is a Joke (That isn't Funny!)
For many people, what drives them to continue their spiritual search
is the promise of 'enlightenment'...
After we undergo a
spiritual awakening, and perhaps a kundalini awakening, and have
done a lot of inner work, we'll eventually be able to earn enlightenment, right?
Well that's the (unfunny) joke...
Enlightenment is a big juicy carrot dangled in front of the ravenous
mind that believes itself to be broken and missing something.
In
other words,
enlightenment is a story created by the ego that feels
separate from the Divine.
It doesn't exist...
The frustrating reality is that when we strive to become
enlightened, we are perpetuating our suffering and exhausting
spiritual search.
We believe that the deficient "me" here is going
to eventually get to a perfect and ideal "enlightened" future state.
It's a spiritual treadmill.
The more we seek, the more we reinforce the separate self, the ego.
The more the ego is reinforced, the more we seek.
And so continues
the cycle of unhappiness and desperation...
Can you see how this can be exhausting?
Enlightenment doesn't exist because there is no "me" to become
enlightened.
How can "I" become enlightened when the "I" is just a mental story
to begin with - the very story the entire spiritual journey is set
out to dismantle!?
The whole point of the spiritual journey isn't to reinforce this
small and separate ego, but to untangle this contracted "me" energy,
make space in the mind, and allow us to taste the Truth of Who We
Really Are:
Our True Nature...
Author and teacher
Scott Kiloby puts this another way:
"There are many
spiritual methods and belief systems that promise future
fulfillment, happiness, money or other success.
If you look closely,
the whole idea that you can gain something from spirituality is
based on a false premise, which is that there is a separate
"you" that lacks something...
As long as you seek
enlightenment, enlightenment is unavailable.
In seeking, you act
from the false concept that you are a separate self that lacks
something. It is that very concept that creates the need for a
search.
Enlightenment is the
realization that there is no separate "you" to gain anything
personally from life. There is only life and you are THAT. No
separation...
In that realization,
your entire resistance to what is vanishes and the deepest truth
of spirituality is revealed."
7 Ways to
Awaken to Your True Nature
Firstly, it's crucial to understand one thing.
Awakening to your True
Nature, reconnecting with your Soul, however you want to put it,
doesn't happen by 'your' doing.
It happens by grace.
It arrives when
it arrives.
This reminds me of the old biblical verse (Eph 2:8),
"For by grace are ye
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift
of God."
With that being said,
although you can't control when the shell cracks, when the seed
falls, and when the bud blooms, you can create a good atmosphere
that encourages this blossoming.
Here are seven ways to awaken to your True Nature:
1. Understand that
everything you need is already here
"It is here. It
is in you, it is in me, it is in all life, both sentient and
insentient. It is everywhere. As long as you are searching
for it, it cannot be found because you assume that it is
someplace else."
Gangaji
"All the answers are
within"... I know this sounds cliché, but there's a reason why
it's a common saying...
Pair this with a
gratitude practice, and you'll be stepping outside of the
endless game of seeking, striving, and consuming that is a
cornerstone of
spiritual materialism.
Instead, you will
gradually deepen into an appreciation of the beauty of what Is
and the wisdom that is always accessible within you.
2. Simplify,
purge, and make space
We carry so much clutter in our lives.
Any type of mess is a
weight on the mind (which causes the mind to become
hyperactive). Clutter can be what we externally possess or agree
to or, alternatively, what we internally carry.
Examples of external
clutter may include,
excessive belongings, too many unnecessary
commitments, and disorderly social engagements.
Internal clutter can
include, for example,
unexamined beliefs, ideals, desires, and
traumas.
I'm not saying that you should sell everything, cut
ties with everyone, and go live in a nunnery or monastery.
Instead, just try to make as much space as you can in all areas
of life. Practice
non-attachment. Do this at your own pace with self-love. Making
space allows what's important to grow and flourish.
Psychotherapist
Robert Johnson echoes this sentiment,
writing,
"To 'create
space' is both to allow realization of our inherent higher
Self to occur, and to allow existence to 'send' desired
things our way.
In this sense 'creating space' is a metaphor
for Self-realization...
When we do not
create space, when we are too present in our ego-self and
its chronic tensions and mistrust of existence, there is no
room inside for creation to occur."
3. Be
sincere and committed to a mature spiritual practice
Your spiritual practice won't "earn" you awakening or
self-realization of your True Nature, but it will help to make
the garden of your being fertile (if that makes sense).
As
Bonnie Glass-Coffin Ph.D. and don Oscar Miro-Quesada
write:
For it is difficult to remain awake to our true nature, even
after we have glimpsed it. The ego fights mightily against our
enlightenment.
That is why spiritual practice is so important.
This is why practices such as meditation and inner work are so
vital.
They help to make internal (and external) space, undo
inner knots and contractions, and relax our inner selves.
They help us to
experience spiritual maturity.
4. Learn to
trust your own inner authority
There's another main reason why we chose the wolf as the symbol
of this website (and the spiritual journey).
The wolf symbolizes
self-sovereignty and trust in one's own inner authority.
Without
this trust, it's too easy to give away our power to limiting
belief systems, gurus, teachers, and others who would have us
buy into their worldview.
Indeed, it's too easy
to go astray when we have no inner fire, no inner sense of our
own divine sovereignty.
Spiritual teacher,
Jeff Foster, echoes this, pointing out that
eventually, we have no choice but to trust our own inner
authority (so better now than later!):
"All your
preconceived notions of "enlightenment" will shatter into a
million pieces; your happy ideas of "spiritual awakening"
will not survive this, oh no!
You will be
forced into a face-to-face encounter with life, without the
comfort of Mummy and Daddy, without the shield of belief,
without the protection of ego, without the seeming security
of fixed reference points.
Even your most
beloved spiritual gurus and philosophers will no longer be
of any use.
The raw pleasure
and the pain of it, unfiltered, at last! No longer numb, you
will be as softly vulnerable as you were in the beginning,
before you knew right and wrong, good and bad, God and the
devil.
At first, this
will be terrifying, this total reliance on inner authority,
on your gut, on your belly, on your intestines, this
absolute openness to experience, this honoring of yourself;
but you will learn to trust the path of no path at all, and
you will make your nest in the warm bosom of insecurity.
And everything
will be held in the most profound silence.
Oh yes, for sure,
there will be heartbreak!
Yet there will be joy, too, the
likes of which you've only ever dreamed about!"
Trusting your inner
authority doesn't mean becoming an egomaniac or denying all
help/guidance from outside sources. No...
Instead, it means
honoring your innate, bone-deep wisdom that is outside of the
realm of mind altogether.
5. Be aware
of the ego's tricks, ploys, and scams
There's no need to demonize the ego, but it is a tricky fella...
It will do all it can
to convince us that if only we align our chakras a little bit
more, awaken our kundalini, or clear all past karma will we then
become enlightened.
If that doesn't make it hard enough, we'll
also have other ego's confirming these delusions around us - and
that's why practicing spiritual discernment is so crucial.
Without being mindful
and being able to see clearly through our own delusion, it's
easy to get trapped in the sticky spider web of cosmic la-la
land.
Remember that awakening to our True Nature (what is known as
Moksha, Illumination, Enlightenment) is not something "achieved"
by the individual self, the me.
6. Explore
the nature of the "I"
To awaken to our True Nature we need to be able to distinguish
what is actually true to begin with.
In other words, we
need to actually have direct experience of the
transparent/transient nature of the ego and the unchanging
presence beneath that.
Perhaps the simplest way to do this is via self-inquiry, or
asking the question,
"Who am I?"
This can be done either in
meditation or in contemplation.
Indian sage Sri
Ramana Maharshi popularized this technique which has been
adopted and taught in many meditation circles and spiritual
fields.
So,
who are you?
What within you isn't subject to birth, change,
and decay?
I'll leave that to
you to discover...
7. It's
simple
After reading all of this you might be thinking, "geez, this is
all so complex."
Don't worry. It's not. But it seems that way...!
Our minds have a way of complicating things:
-
creating stories
and obstacles that don't really exist
-
making a mountain out of
a molehill
-
believing that we must "earn" our way to freedom
As spiritual teacher
Unmani writes,
After searching for
fulfillment or enlightenment for years, to be
told that I am already fulfilled and enlightened seems to be too
easy.
'Surely it must
be something more, something very spiritual.'
Enlightened people
should act a certain way and look a certain way.
They should be
vegetarian and not smoke or drink...
Enlightened people are people
who have attained a special spiritual state after years or
lifetimes of meditation and self-enquiry. They have dissolved
all their karmic knots and opened all their chakras.
This shows in their
compassion and their aura of unconditional love for mankind...
Why would Life be
anything but easy?
There is just the assumption that it has to
be difficult because in the play, when I want to achieve
something, it seems that I need to work hard at it.
The nature of Life is
not difficult.
Look at a flower:
Does it work really hard to be
a flower?
Does it need to hold the image of 'flower' in order to
be a flower?
What is being pointed
to here is simply Life recognizing itself.
Life being Life.
Flower being flower.
It's so easy that it's already all just
happening by itself!
In other words, this is it. You are it. You are already that
which you seek. You don't need to pretend to be something or
someone special.
What you're looking for isn't in a future ideal
state.
Everything is here
already. Why wouldn't it be?
When we orient ourselves
toward this simplicity,
We find the truth.
We
discover a doorway of awakening.
We learn that
simplicity is truth.
We understand that
simplicity is clear, pure, and untainted while complexity is of
the mind which is convoluted, dramatic, and stressful.
The mind believes
everything must be a super tricky game.
This gives the mind the
illusion that it's "achieving" something special while preoccupying
itself.
But what you are seeking for is that which you already are,
and what you already are can't be achieved!
So move toward simplicity.
And figure out what that
means to you...
Awakening
to your True Nature
is both an end
and beginning.
It's the end of
the spiritual search
but the
beginning of freedom.
And ultimately,
that's all we're
searching for
at the end of
the day.
At the heart of
every lone wolf
walking the
inner quest
is the longing
to reunite
with that which
we truly are.
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