Awakening is Not Self-Help

Let me clear the air on this mistaken idea~
Spiritual awakening has absolutely nothing to do with self-help, or self-esteem, or 'working on your self' as such.  The reason being is that if spiritual awakening is authentic and true it is about realizing that the self that you would 'help' or 'esteem' or 'work on' is an illusion.  And, not only is it an illusion it is the illusion from which all other illusions are created.  Spiritual awakening really has at its core a destruction of all these types of self-improvement projects, and a basic discovery of what one actually is, when the layer of self is removed.  This is not to say that there is no room for self-esteem or self-help within the scope of life, it is simply to say that if you're interested in the discovery of truth, you can't simultaneously be interested in building self-esteem or you go somewhat mad....
What spiritual awakening reveals is that what lies at the core of our being needs no improvement, no help, and has absolutely no need to be held in high esteem.  In fact, if anything, spiritual awakening puts our high esteem on a chopping block, and leaves us totally powerless to improve ourselves--so that we may wake up and see that what we are needs no change, needs no fixing. 
You could say that spiritual awakening becomes quite deep when we give up all the self focused striving, and begin to see that awakening is not about having a better 'me'.
Ironically, the self that we've been trying to fix is made whole in the radical discovery of what it actually is. 

Pathless Path

One of the most common questions that I hear come out of spiritual seekers is How.  How do I wake up?  How do I realize what I am?  How do I live the enlightened life?
One of the things that we are very much aware of but very much unwilling to see is that there really is no how.  We don't have some convenient formula or prescription for what awakening looks like, acts like, or even feels like.  And as soon s we adopt a particular concept of what it looks like, we have set the ground for another disillusionment, which comes when we realize that our concept of enlightenment doesn't fufill this deep need to live it. 
So what I often suggest is that we take the pathless path, the road that has no landmarks, signs, or pointers other than the immediacy of our experience as it is.  This pathless nature of the path often leaves minds very confused and bewildered as we jump from one concept to the next, one idea to the next.  If we just stop relying on our ideas and concepts and we give up this need for a prescription and how-to manual, what we begin to realize is that the path is living through us, not the other way around.  In other words, we have no control over the path, because it has always been in control.  If we try to control it, It eats us up....if we allow it to take over we are left with the Heart of the Truth.  The fiery immediacy of this pathless path will shows all that Is, not because we do it right, or get it somehow...but because that is just what it does.

The Spiritual Ego

Those of us who travel in spiritual circles are all familiar with the ego, and its ways to limit, debilitate, and cower us.  But very few of us are aware of the 'spiritual ego' which takes over after we believe ourselves to be enlightened, special, or in some way different than anything else.  This is where most people in the spiritual world just end up half-baked, thinking that they've achieved something profound. 
What they fail to recognize is that this new 'awakened' identity is just another version of the same old thing....just a more enlightened ego.  This is that camp out spot where people genuinely believe that they are manifesting Truth, living from Love, and are very Intuitive---but it is actually the place where the ego has constructed a very elaborate, very spiritual sense of self.
I meet people who say oh yes yes yes I know who I truly am, I get that, I've been there already....I am free of suffering, I am free of my past.  All the while working very hard to prove this to everybody else, to demonstrate that they have somehow escaped being like you and me. 
Let us just look and see what we are actually telling ourselves, and let us examine the way in which we corrupt our own deepest nature by making our self into some glorious new thing.  Let us see the arrogance, the fear, the denial that reasserts itself at this stage.  Let us move beyond any idea of ourselves, others, or Truth into that nakedly raw place where nothing can be known, where nothing can be achieved, and where any identity we create is essentially false.
Let us see that the True Nature of all has no specialness to it, because it is that which all beings are equally.... then we will see that this Truth of our self doesn't not make us special, it destroys any notion of being special.
This leaves us being TRULY special~

Spiritual Materialism in Our Time

We are living in a time when great Masters are seldom heard, while all manner of people bearing the 'spiritual look' are venerated.  Just as in all the other arenas of life, we worship appearances and fancy titles, rather than the simplicity of the Truth within the Heart.  We read books and hear stories about these beings who walk on water and dress in robes, or have special powers and we think somehow that truth is found there...
Without knowing ourselves or our own mind we want to follow the next exciting opportunity---maybe this one will lead somewhere, but after so many empty promises...after relying on Buddha's word, or Jesus' word, or Ramana's word we must finally discover for our self what is actually true.
That is the beginning of real spirituality, and the end of our materialistic relationship with life.

Proof

If you look for proof of truth, you find Nothing,
If you look for nothing, you find Truth.

Unimaginable Love

In speaking with people about Love as the nature of Truth, I often encounter misunderstanding of what is actually being pointed to.  Because our conditioned and romanticized depiction of Love is centered around emotion and pleasure, it becomes very difficult for many of us to detach from that original view.  There is an open space in which Love is actually more than we can imagine, more than we can associate with as a feeling or thought.  This unimaginable Love is unconditioned, unregulated, unbound--we must come to it totally naked of any preconceived notion of Love.
This Love is sweet, but not sweetness...it is ecstatic, but not ecstasy...it is Truth, but not truthfulness.
Love is the Source, and the Source is ungraspable-
We can, however, recognize this Love as our own beingness.  In this way, love will not be known by how it looks, or feels, or even how it acts-it is deeper and more primary than that.
Love is, Love is...any thing we try to tag at the end of that makes Love into an idea.
Love just Is.

Don't Believe the Lie

Anything that tells you that you are not whole and complete is untrue and we can right away ignore that information.  What we can't ignore is the call, the longing that tells us that we are not in harmony with our Oneness, our True Nature.  That call, that scream is the voice of the Self calling us to awaken all the sleeping energies within ourselves and to emerge in Love.
It is not a call to change, to do something, to achieve anything.  Rather, it is a call to shift from "me-ness" and our limited view to the view of entirety, of the One.  The shift is toward opening, softening, relaxing and letting go of the constant striving.  It is a shift from being so involved in our story to letting everything dissolve in peace. 
Mind will always say "I'm not whole" because the very nature of our thinking is partiality, division, interpretation, and analysis.  Our thinking does not and cannot understand Oneness.  In order for the mind to understand Oneness, it would have to be outside of Oneness looking in...that simply cannot be when we recognize that Oneness includes everything and has no boundaries.
Ultimately,  the basic ground of our mind is Oneness, and as that essential truth is realized the need to try to understand or comprehend our wholeness is seen as futile.  Mind eventually sees that it and Oneness are the sameand with that comes an enormous peace and ease of being.
This eventuality that I'm talking about is not necessarily in time...it's not a matter of when, how, or why but simply a matter of Is.  Oneness is Here right now.  When the mind is available to recognize this, the eventuality is seen to be ever-present.
There is a very subtle difference between the call that draws us into our wholeness, and the thinking that would tell us we are not whole.  We can only see this through direct experience.  Only after we have failed to find what the Heart has been calling us to do we finally realize that it isn't 'out there' to be found.
Both longing and searching can come with pain, and both can carry enormous energy.  However (and ultimately)  we have this choice to stop believing anything at all and drop completely into Oneness right now.  Don't wait another instant!

Non-Duality is very Natural

Non-Duality means non-duality.  It's funny how, through our manic searching and desperate attempts for control we can very easily imagine separateness in our lives.  We have this in-built tendency to create very subtle conditions for Truth.  We may understand intellectually that everything is One, but through our experience we always conjure up exceptions to that.  In this way we tend to try to exclude what we don't want, or create some condition that prevents someone or something else from being whole.  But, non-duality means non-duality...just because a person may not know all the spiritual languages, or be able to astrally project themselves doesn't mean that they aren't just as much the One as anything else.
In our truly natural state, which is just right now, there is nothing excluded from the totality of existence.  But the mind would believe otherwise, the mind would organize and interpret experiences down to the nth degree, hoping to somehow get a grasp on the eternal and unbound~ but it can't be done!

Non-duality is the relaxation of the mind to the essential truth that there is nothing to fix, nowhere to go, nothing to become...

Non-duality is the basic nature of our Being, that aspect of our Being that includes everything.  The aspect of of our Being that isn't concerned with analyzing reality, or making assumptions based on false evidence.
Non-duality is the direct experience of your own Self, and the recognition that your own Self is in its essence no different that anything else.

Realizing Presence

The realization of our most essential nature is not any different than Being present, or rather, Realizing Presence.  While it is with the best of intention that people run around saying things like "just be present" or "I'm trying to stay present", it is not actually possible for us to be present.  We are Being, we are Presence.
The matter of being present to our lives is one of realizing the Presence that underlies our whole life situation.  It is not a matter of going from 'not present' to 'present'....in that way, there is no such thing as actual presence because it ends up just being a 'me' who 'got present'.  This is already living in ignorance of the ever-present nature of Presence.
Realizing Presence, though, is the most important thing we can do as human beings.  It is the realization of what has always been True, and the reality of what we have always been~ Pure Presence.

The Preciousness of Uncertainty and Doubt

There is a great gift provided to us directly from Life itself.  It a gift that I am calling the Preciousness of Uncertainty and Doubt.   This the basic law that Life enforces to bring us to a full and authentic awakening to the Self.  The good news is that it works, the bad news is that the vehicle that Life uses can also be the catalyst to deep resistance and suffering. 
The good news...
The good news is that Life is unrelenting in its movement to awaken all to the basic Reality.  Life provides us with exactly the appropriate teacher and teaching at the perfectly appropriate time.  This is evidenced by the appearance of uncertainty and doubt in our lives.  Essentially, self-doubt exists because as long as we have some notion or idea of ourselves as fixed, Life will disrupt that pattern with great doubt.
When we become very certain (of ourselves, our ideas, our beliefs, etc.) Life has already provided the necessary medicine- uncertainty.
There really is no such thing in the quest for spiritual awakening as self-confidence, self-worth, nor is there any certainty to be found.  Psychology and belief systems may provides temporary (and sometimes useful) senses of self-worth and certainty, but when it comes to Reality there's really no such thing.  The sooner we get clear on that and give up the insistence on finding some certainty or developing self-worth, the sooner we come into accord with the nature of Life.
The bad news...
The bad news isn't really bad news, it just implies that likely Life is going to have to be very fierce in tearing away the illusions that we hold to so strongly.  Ultimately, any certainty or self-worth that we discover only sets up the conditions for our disappointment, because NO idea, belief, feeling, or experience is lasting...and the only 'things' we can rely on are those things.  In this way, Life is inviting us to give up our need for certainty or a good feeling about ourselves, and arrive right Here, where we rely on Nothing.
The funny thing is that in relying on Nothing, we simultaneously rely on Everything...so the need, desire, or drive for certainty is just irrelevant.  It's not that we've arrived at certainty and 'found our self', it's simply a matter of no longer wanting for anything at all.

To the Beloved

I surrendered to You,
and you completed me.

Then I began searching for You,
and you escaped me further
each time I got close.

I looked all over,
and sometimes I thought I'd found You~
but I kept looking

and You appeared
and told me to stop looking
for You

and I had trouble doing that,
because I hadn't found You

So I crossed the ocean, and
sat in the burning desert sun~
still You could not be found

and when I was really frustrated
with You
You came once again
and invited me to stop searching

And I knew not what else to do
so I stopped looking

And there You were~
except You were not You
and I was not me

It was all along I
that was sought,
and Grace that was found.

Where God Is

"God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
                         ~Corpus Hermeticum of the 3rd Century:
 What is it that we call God, aside from the images, ideas, and assumptions that have been handed down to us--and sometimes shoved down our throat?
This phrase "God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere" is such an accurate pointer for the true and living nature of God.  If we take God to be a person, or thing, or even some 'force with an intention' we miss the real thing.  Likewise, if we assume that there is no greater essence than our material world is just as much of a misunderstanding.
In order to see the real and actual nature of God we have to hold both formlessness and form simultaneously.  If God is God, it must be everything everywhere.  And, if God is God there must be nothing that is not God.  Otherwise, what we call God is a fantasy in our mind.
When God is That which contains your life and also who and what you are, then God is real, and living, and nowhere else but right Here now.
With very good reason this word God has a great deal of stigma attached to it, because the distortions that have been made of this very simple and intimate Presence have been widespread and used for all sorts of violence.
So, let us give this word God back to the Truth of itself so that we needn't run from a concept that no longer serves our awakening.  If, though, we can see the real and true nature of God, we will no longer run, and we will no longer seek more understanding, nor will we cling to material reality as any more real than the non-material reality.
Ultimately, God is your own Self, and my Self, and the Self of all things everywhere.

Locate your Self and you locate God~
As with God, your Self has no actual circumference, and its center is everywhere all at once.

Relationship with Fear

The one thing that is almost universal about fear is that we all want to avoid it...naturally.  It may even be built into our DNA to avoid pain, discomfort, and unease.  And, for many good reasons, that is perfectly appropriate.  However, there is a way in which, through our attempting to avoid fear and discomfort, we actually generate our own suffering.  We actually, as human beings, put an extraordinary amount of time and energy into securing a sense of comfort and avoiding a sense of discomfort in order to establish a sense of 'personal solidity' that will help us feel safe and invulnerable to ever present tides of pain, sickness, dis-ease, and finally, death.
Spirituality is in many cases the further attempt to find and secure a sense of safety, or a sense of having some ground beneath our feet.  But the real purpose of our 'spirituality' is the possibility to encounter our fear, our insecurity, and our groundlessness directly.  In one sense our true security lies in a total absence of security, our true fearlessness lying in the absence of any 'safe place' to reside.
Our relationship with fear need not be one where we must get rid of fear, or abolish fearful thoughts....Rather, our relationship with fear is one where we enter in directly to the fear, removing all sense of security and safety in order to see that there is a huge void that we exist eternally in.  In resting in this enormous void, we find that even without a sense of security or safety, who and what we are is eternally safe, eternally secure.  It was simply in our imagination of what we were securing safety from and security of that we missed this eternally present abode.
Life then becomes an opportunity to encounter all the ways in which we seek security and protection of an image of ourselves, and how that leads to deeper delusion and suffering.  It becomes an on-going investigation into deeper and deeper experiences of having nothing to hang onto, nothing to comfort you, and being willing to see fear for what it is...ultimately useless.
With fear no longer at the helm, life begins to look different...namely, there's really nothing wrong, nothing to be fixed, nothing to find, nothing to become~
we finally have the freedom to just Be.

Causeless Ceaseless Bliss

Ananda, Bliss is what we so crave as 'spiritual' people.  We want to escape the turmoil of this existence and its unenlightened people and hold up in some Nirvana....this is all a huge waste of time!  If we think that bliss is forthcoming, that its in some expanded awareness or sense of ourselves, than its not really bliss that we're after.  Bliss is only right here, not in some fulfillment of an idea of enlightenment....we are very arrogant in our search for bliss, and also in the thinking that we've found it. 
Bliss is the ground on which we all stand, it is not some feeling you get after your chakras are all illumined the right way.  Bliss is the ruthless simplicity of this drop of water on this blade of grass.  Bliss is not some special state or experience. 
Nor is bliss coming and going.  If it comes and goes it's not bliss, for bliss is always here underneath every coming and going.  This is why when we attach ourselves to a blissful experiences or go chasing a blissful experience we suffer--our suffering is letting us know we're in a fruitless journey, for what we seek is right here before we ever take a step. 
My urging to you is to discover yourself to be that Bliss.  In order to discover that you must find out what does not come and go.  What is both ceaseless and causeless....
A few really huge experiences or a couple hits of samadhi, or some major intuition you may have does not indicate that you've discovered the ground of Being as your own Self.  And if you think you've got it and someone else doesn't, the only thing you've got is a delusion.
This causeless, ceaseless Bliss is ruthless--it will consume every image, idea, and identity until only Itself remains.

Emptiness and Humanness

In our culture and society we put so much attention and energy into becoming somebody, with a deep fear of being nobody.  So the most appropriate medicine for many of us is Emptiness, and the realization of no-self.  While that might be good medicine for somebody clinging to their somebody-ness, it can be nauseating for somebody who gets stuck in emptiness and thus negates his or her humanness.
With a tight grip on emptiness and no-self life becomes very dreary, grey, and dead...what is needed is the realization of the fullness of emptiness only found within this very life, this very human being.  Some "spiritual" people get trapped trying to become nothing and nobody, all the while attempting it with a hollow, miserable sense of self.  Or, in avoidance of being a miserable self, we go about trying to become something bigger or better.
There is a space in which we are neither a nobody nor a somebody, right where the Truth of who one really is remains inseparable from this very life.  We are neither the absolute nor our human experience, we are both our human experience and absolute existence...holding neither side reveals the true non-duality of our Spiritual nature and human nature. 
Finally, Heaven and Earth are not separated at all.

Total Faith

True and total Faith has nothing to do with beliefs.  Total Faith is knowing.  The difficulty is in trying to describe what that Faith is or what is known.  Total Faith is what relies on nothing at all.  Total Faith is what arises when you have discovered your true nature.  Awakening erases the believer in us and makes us what we were believing in... from that, Total Faith becomes our life...who we are....what we are.  It is a faith that goes beyond the believer and its object of belief.  Total Faith ends our belief oriented faith.  It takes the whole structure of our belief and turns it around so that we have become what we were believing in.
I cannot say have total faith that you will get everything you want. I cannot say that total faith holds promise for what one is seeking.  Total Faith is itself the means and end.  It is the deepest desire of the heart, and the fulfillment of all longing.  It is Life, unhinged.  As Total Faith, we no longer rely on anything either outside ourselves or inside ourselves....Total Faith annihilates all of our conceptualizations and puts our life in direct contact with the Source of all Being.  In direct contact with the Source one becomes Faith itself.  All need, all desire, all hope is unnecessary because one knows oneself to be the Totality.

Blown Wide Open

The phrase "blew my mind" is such an accurate  description of what occurs when you see who you truly are.  What is most immediate about an experience of Truth or God is that you recognize that your mind isn't capable of containing that Presence.  You realize that what you're experiencing in that very moment is the Totality of Everything everywhere.  The mind, being this little device revolving around 'me' is never gonna get it...the mind is never going to wrap its understanding around the Infinite.  Being blown wide open is to have your mind humbled by the vastness of what you are.
For many of us that can be quite a terrifying ordeal because we are so accustomed to being able to understand, relate, and conceptualize our world.  Just the slightest kiss of Reality shows you that that's all a big joke.  It shows you that what you have held yourself together as is merely an image on the surface of an ocean that is endless. 
The ocean that is our own Self is constantly inviting our lives to be blown wide open, but it is our attempt to always put a lid on things and keep them manageable that we avoid this 'being blown wide open'.  It may also be that we at some time had this little kiss and because it was so big and huge and held so much energy we're simply not willing to look.
It is very useful to see what prevents your life from being blown open, or what keeps your life from falling apart.  It is often the case that what keeps your life from falling apart is the very thing that keeps life feeling fragile, broken, and full of innumerable sufferings.  It is not that I, or Life, or the Divine wants your destruction or to blow you up.  It is simply that when we hold an idea, image, or belief about what we are, that little 'me' is going to have to be seen through at some point or other because it is ultimately unreal.  The Real will eventually erode, blow up, or simply reveal Itself to Itself and make this illusion of who we think we are totally transparent.
Spiritual Awakening is just a possibility to light the fuse, close your eyes, and say good-bye.
Then, you see that you haven't gone anywhere, nor could you go anywhere.
You are Here.

Change and Transformation

Change doesn't come about through trying to change, change comes about when whatever is standing between you and the change is let go of.  For many us what stands in the way is our very own effort to transform.  When we attempt to transform or change anything, we automatically set up whatever quality, condition, or circumstance that we are attempting to change as a problem.  All problems will increase in degree simply by our desire to change them.  To include within oneself whatever it is that one is attempting to  change frees the problem from being a problem to get rid of.  The problem simply persists out of our resistance, or unwillingness to experience it.  In a sense  change is impossible until we're no longer wishing for it.
It is a ruthless transformation that unfolds when effort and striving to change have fallen away.  The more that we realize our own powerlessness and inability to change ourselves, the more room we actually allow for real transformation.  Up til now you thought you could do it, but it is only when you realize that you can't do it that real transformation is possible.

Being Water

Look at the example of water, see how water does not fight for itself.  See how it bends and flows, evaporates, and is a total example of non-resistance, non-effort, and non-striving.  And--as the Tao te Ching says, "there is nothing so powerful as water to erode a mountain".   Water's power lies in its total non-trying and it therefore follows the natural way of all things.  Water has no will, nor is it  predetermined...it just is as it is when you find it just like it is. Following the example of water we give up both willfulness and no-will.  We simply abide in the way things are.

On the Nature of Thought

First thoughts have no parents,
but all thoughts bare children.
All the offspring have no souls,
because at first there was no ancestor.
Thoughts arise to describe reality--
but it can't be done.

Thoughts are not trustworthy, and thoughts are also not an enemy.  Thoughts are just thoughts, they come and they go.  They, in and of themselves, have no reality or substance.  All thoughts arise first because we identify ourselves as some person, or some thing.  When we give rise to a single thought, it rises up first from the sense of 'I'.  From 'I' all thinking, conceptualizing, describing, opinions, and evaluations are derived.  Without first having that primary 'I' concept, all thoughts are irrelevant to the individual.  The only importance or significance that we give to thought is the degree to which we identify with what the thoughts are saying, "their stories".  And, actually, the less importance or attachment we give to our thoughts, the less thought runs our lives. When thought is no longer running the life, then one is free from the 'virtual' life, and living in the actuality of things...Reality.

On the other hand, thought is not to be made the enemy, because making thought bad entrenches the thinking even more than identifying with it.  It is only a thought that wants to get rid of another thought.  It is only an identification that sees a particular thought or concept as problematic.  Who you are cannot be determined by a thought, nor can who you are be determined by resisting thought.
It is actually possible to neither identify with thinking nor resist thought- but to simply recognize that thought is thought, it is impermanent, changing and ultimately unreliable.

The Ecstasy of this Moment

Ecstasy is simple, it is when we complicate it by attaching so many expectations and needs on our state that we actually distort the true simple ecstasy that's here now.  Expecting ecstasy is to overlook ecstasy, to wait on it is to postpone its right here right now reality.  Look for nothing to be better, and find that it is better than we could have made it. 
As the 6th Zen patriarch said, The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
If we don't prefer ecstasy over anything else, we experience the ecstasy of this moment.  Ecstasy can even look like pain.  It can look like sadness. It can look like ecstasy.
Life itself is ecstasy.  Not our notion of ecstasy, that's a fantasy.
One cannot find the ecstasy of the present, one can only be it.  Finding would require that you were separate from it, but to be it is the simplest thing we could ever do.

Green Tea

Awakening is,
my cup of golden green tea
what else?
The Buddha didn't have anything
on my cup of tea--
flower wilts,
green tea strong

Life and Death

Life and death are the same, birth and life are the same.  Birth and death oppose each other, but life opposes nothing.  Life just is, it is all that there is.  It is a great error to think that you were born, or that you'll die.  Just as Life is never born and never dies, so too with you.  The body will die.  The Self that animates it cannot.  The Self and Life are the same. 
The fear of death is based on the assumption that because the body will die, you will die.  If you were aware that you could not die, what fear could touch you?
If we're really serious about discovering the truth of our existence we must look into this matter of life and death.  There is no getting to Nirvana without first holding this great question very dear. 
We must proceed beyond, to stare directly at our unborn essence, and to see that death is an imagination created from a primary imagination: a sense of separate self.
To find this separate self is to clear up the matter of life and death.  To dig down to the root and find out what this self is made of is to look directly at one's true nature. 
In order to live you must first die, and in order to die you must find out what is living.
No birth, no death, no self, no this, no that...only Life.

Reincarnation

As is often the case, words hold within them great truths, but it is our consciousness that must look deeply in order to see what is hidden within the words.  I find this word reincarnation particularly useful to reveal a deeper truth within our experience.  RE:  again  INCARNATION: coming into the flesh
We are all familiar with the traditional definitions of reincarnation...we die, we're reborn over and over until we reach liberation, right?
But that is all theory, very few of us have that direct knowledge.  There is though, a pointing to our actual direct experience right here, right now.  That pointing is to see how we constantly re-identify with our bodies, with our thoughts about our bodies, and the conditions that our bodies live in.  And I'm not just talking about superficial identification, "I strive to be attractive".  I am talking about the constant binding of 'I' with the body.  Our notion of our self is continually tied to the shifting changes of the body. 
In deep sleep, or even during an engaging movie, we temporarily drop the identification with the body, only to reincarnate again by re-identifying the body as 'me'.   We repeat this cycle a nearly infinite number of times until one day we stop and look, "what am I, really?"  If my body changes, and my mind changes, and my conditions change...what is it that does not change? 
To find that out is liberation...
The notion of ourselves as body, as mind, as conditions, is liberated from the bind of 'self'.
The cycle of reincarnation doesn't end in the future, it ends when we finally get interested in finding out what's True.
The Truth  reveals that there is nothing to reincarnate, and that there is only One that itself incarnates as all things... the reincarnation is not yours or mine.
That which believes itself to be in the flesh must find its non-existence to be liberated, and upon liberation realizes Itself to be that which exists infinitely and eternally.

What is Spiritual Awakening?

Spiritual awakening is the realization that this life that we believe is so real and so unchanging is but a dream.  It is the realization that one is not one's body, nor mind, nor circumstances.  It is the realization of what has always been here, and what has never left.  It is a great mystery, beyond description...there is no proof for it, no sign or pathway to it....it is found only right here, right now. 
I may stick out my finger and say there it is, but I will fail....
You may have an experience and say here it is, but you'll lose it....
Spiritual awakening is a moment to moment recognition of the impermanence of all things, the transitory nature of oneself, and the ever present aliveness in the Heart of all beings.

Spiritual awakening is a great paradox, because it happens--and yet it is Here all along.  It must be fought for, strived for....but it is already naturally one's own nature.
Waking up is not about living as any other human being has lived, not Buddha, not Christ.  It is about living as you, just ordinary, simple you.
It is the discovery of the untouched, incorruptible nature of your Self, and the death of everything that you have believed you were.  It is the death of a past and death of a future. 
It is you, It is Here, Now.
What else could you want?

Meditation

Meditation is the discovery of Self.  We sit down to meditate and what we first come in contact with is the huge momentum of everything that we think we are.  This means everything from thoughts and feeling that we had as children up to who we think we are in the present.  But, these thoughts and feelings are always shifting, changing and dying.  Our image of ourselves, and all that we imagine when we say "me" is what immediately arises when we sit down, close our eyes and do this thing called meditate.
Meditation has nothing to do with quieting the mind or stopping thinking, this is the misconception that many people have.  Meditation is about discovery what is presnt regardless of thought.  It is about finding what those thoughts and feelings occur within...what is it that experiences "my" experiences?
To become aware of thought can be very useful, just as becoming aware of emotion can be useful, but if we never stop to find out WHO these thoughts and emotions belong to then we never really get to the core of the matter.
To get to the core of the matter we must begin to be interested in finding out "what is my self"  what am I referring to when I say "I".  Is it just this bag of bones?  Is it my thoughts? Is it how I feel?
These are the questions that our meditation can be an alive investigation into.
Meditation is about discovering that there is no separate self, and to see that all the thoughts and feeling have pointed to an imagination... and in discovering your life imagining, one can find out who one truly is.
We can't talk about what you find there.
That discovery is meditation Itself.

True Support

We can really be a true support for one another when we've given up feeding each other's stories.  When we are supporting the wholeness of one another, and not the division-the division of separate me's and you's with our own life dramas. I cannot support you and at the same time try to change you.
If anything, we support each other to see our own wholeness and that of all beings.  I cannot advise you, or teach you your own wholeness but I can encourage you to discover it for yourself. In that sense we cannot help one another, because we are That which needs no help.  We are the answer before any question arises. 
So I have a very deep trust that not only is the answer within you, but that you can experience even the deepest pains, failures, and grief and remain completely unscathed.  So I will encourage you to fail, to experience your pain directly so that you can see that you are untouched by it all.
You are the indestructible Oneness of all things, what could harm you?
It is only after we have been willing to plunge into the heart of despair that we can discover the true nature of one's Self.  That is our true support to one another, the deep trust and invitation to that realization.  Forever, we expand Self into Self, all separation being seen as illusory.  True support is recognizing the wholeness of each other, not settling for the illusion.

Pleasure and Spaciousness

So many of the people I talk with really believe that they want spiritual awakening, and with a little looking find out that what they're really after is pleasure. We think we want Truth, but what we usually want is to feel better. Which is perfectly normal. However, what I often see is that as soon as one feels better, the desire for Truth (or awakening) suddenly seems unimportant.
It is important that we strive to feel better, but mistaking the desire for spiritual awakening for pleasure is like mistaking a band aid for total health.
Pleasure is great, I encourage it...but to believe that pleasure, or feeling good, will last in the long run is to invite yourself over and over into suffering.
The happiness or fulfillment of awakening is much more like spaciousness. In open space there is a sense of clarity, openness, freedom, and of non-changing.
So let's be very very clear about what it is that we're after...
Do we just want one more good feeling?
One more experience?
Real spaciousness and what is discovered in authentic spiritual awakening is really the end of all that. It is the end of seeking one more good anything. It is the end of the drive to find more, better, or different experiences. This is what the Buddha was talking about when he mentioned Nirvana. Nirvana means 'Extinction' not 'Heavenly Candy Store'.
When we get clear on that, then we can finally shift our focus away from 'me', and what will 'make me feel better' onto real spiritual awakening and real insight. This is the wilingness to bear pain, to bear hardship, to bear suffering without running for a dose of pleasure.
Then, one's life can be used...
And with that comes no greater satisfaction.