The spiritual journey often feels like a bumpy ride. You have some new revelation – POW! – and then you think that everything will be permanently different. But then no, you slide back again into old ways of thinking. Old habits. Old patterns. You feel like a failure again.
This back-and-forth, up-and-down, in-and-out experience is all simply the play of Maya.
None of it is real.
Yes, at times you may feel like you’ve suddenly understood things, in a way that you never understood them before.
You feel like you walked into a new room that’s brightly lit, whereas you had been living in a dim space for so long.
You have this flash of insight and clarity and you just KNOW you will be a different person going forward.
Almost always, those are experiences in ego.
I’m not saying that you are being egotistical when you have them, or that it’s somehow bad to think such thoughts.
No.
Those experiences are real — to the extent that you’re experiencing them.
It can be absolutely incredible to have your eyes opened wider, to perceive things in a new way.
All this means is that you’ve increased the amount of energy at your disposal; you’ve cleared yourself out in some way. Sometimes this happens through concentrated effort — more meditation, a new dedication to your practice. Very often it happens in the presence of illumined beings, those who are more clear themselves. It also happens through travel, and very infrequently through dreams.
No matter when it happens, it’s simply your karma playing out.
You are, NOW, in a place where your seeing is different.
Yes, you could say that now you have evolved, that you’re more aware.
But AWARENESS is always there — and AWARENESS is what you always are.
That’s why I say that the moment of insight is not true or real. It’s just that it’s still an experience; an overlay. Through the veil of your confusion do you perceive Reality. When your energy increases, you’re able to experience this Reality more fully.
In that moment of thinking, “Aha! I’ve got it! NOW I know!” you have already lost it.
The “knowing” mind is a deception. It knows to the best of its ability, but its abilities are limited.
This is exactly the same reason why a so-called setback also is not really so.
Frequently when we fall into a valley of past patterns or limited perceptions, it feels like a failure, like we’ve screwed it up again, we’ve regressed.
But that too is an illusion. That too is a feeling manufactured by ego, or another way to say it is it’s an incorrect view of the world.
Just like when you have this insight and opening-up of awareness and you suddenly understand things on a much grander scale, you suddenly perceive Truth in a new way, that it feels like you will permanently be such an open, purely receptive being who will forevermore go into the world casting peace and beauty about…
So too is the illusion of darkness, where you have the mistaken impression that you’ve fallen, that you’ve lost it, that you are a spiritual loser who’ll never make it to the goal.
The goal, you see, is already taken care of. It does not exist.
There is no place to be or state to attain.
When you fall off the path or succumb to your thoughts and get caught up in illusion, it can feel like you’re far from the Light.
But you ARE the Light. So how can you ever be separate?
The spiritual path is a switchback trail. There are many loop-di-loops and reversals, and many, many soaring new heights. Yet always, in all things, in each moment of your journey, you are complete, and whole, and 100% thoroughly YOU. You are love.
Many seekers find great pleasure in the process of seeking. It’s like a child’s game, where the joy of discovery means that you constantly go hidden. When you have the experience of a light that has dimmed, stop and inquire: What is different? Is anything? In this moment, how are you not the same Being who experienced the exultation of Light that you know is your own?
