What Never Happened

We all go through the journey of awakening so that we will one day end up "there". We believe very firmly that enlightenment will result, that happiness will be there waiting for us at the magical pot of gold.
The paradox of it all is that if we do actually awaken to our true nature, there comes with it this incredible laughter at even the idea of enlightenment. What one realizes is that enlightenment was never anywhere else, it was never missing. And what's even more of a blast is that the whole spiritual journey turns out to be a wild goose chase. Not only was there never anything to be discovered, there wasn't anyone to discover anything...it never happened!
The realization is that ignorance, delusion, suffering were never actually real because they were always based on "me". Me, too, was never there.
Coming upon the Truth isn't a matter of a "me" becoming enlightened....rather, it's a matter of the direct recognition that"me" was never lost, and never found.
A lot of what's out there in spirituality is teaching to find your true Self, the high self, the soul... but the one problem we all keep running into is that we can't find it. And when we really believe we've found it, it changes so completely that we think we've lost it. This is not the Truth. The Truth, the Self is not gained or lost, it's there in the joy and in the suffering...our true Nature is there throughout. It takes most people a very long time to realize this, and to discover that there's nowhere to arrive, nothing to know, nothing to become....nothing to happen, nothing that ever happened.
So, when we stop trying to get somehwere, and allow our efforts to dissolve into silence, we realize that Here is where one has always been. It's not even a matter of being present as much as it is Being Presence . And, in the end, all ideas contrary to this simply fall away like leaves from a non-existent tree.