Direct Looking

"‘Direct path’ teachings are really aimed at those who are spiritually ready. And being spiritually ready doesn’t really have anything to do with your spiritual resume...By readiness I mean we are ready to go to the core, we are ready to go to the root of the cause of suffering, the elimination of suffering, and the nature of what we really are. The direct path teachings are not for everybody. They are in stark contrast with the way we are used to dealing with things. To go the root of problems is not so much to deal with the problem, because the direct path doesn’t really tell us what to do about [problems]. They are really not about managing our conditioned self; they investigate who it is that actually suffers."
--Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

Adya elaborates on this point elsewhere in the audio retreat that makes up Spontaneous Awakening. The direct path is sometimes viewed in contrast with more gradual pathways to awakening, which focus on moving into ever-deeper stages of insight and understanding until all identification with the local self drops away, and we see the Truth of What Is. However, there is a risk in using this kind of language (like using any language) that we begin to absolutize these terms. There are not really two paths.

The essence of this teaching is that moments of total, unpartial awakening are available to us all the time. Which is not to say that we don't slip back into the trance of thinking there is a separate self (taking our "selves" seriously, if you will). But once you have seen the self for what it is, even if you momentarily zone out again, you won't ever be the same. Every time awareness arises again, the truth of selflessness and interconnection will be clear.

Adya is trying to get us to stop the habit of "spiritual bypassing," or trying to use spiritual practice to "deal" with ourselves, as if there was ultimately a problem to be dealt with. This is the most fundamental way in which his path is "direct." We drop all the mental manipulation and obsession with our problems to look directly at what it is that is doing the manipulating, what it is that is obsessed. What is revealed puts all the other business (direct/indirect, problems/solutions) into proper perspective.

The "nothing" that is there

“Behind this dog and pony show called ‘me’ there is the ‘nothing’ that is there. And everything is about avoiding the nothing that is there. Hell, ninety-nine percent of spirituality is about avoiding the nothing that is there. It’s dressing it up, putting somebody else’s face on it, lighting incense to it, singing to it…doing everything but to actually, experientially fall in to the nothing that is there behind the mass called you and me. Only by letting go into that do we find out what we really are, so that in the end we find out we really are the nothing that is there.”
--Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

This kind of language, if taken seriously, tends to scare the hell out of people. My experience is that when most people first come in contact with the teaching of no-self, they are absolutely petrified by the implications. This was certainly my reaction, and even now when I peer deeply into the emptiness at the center of my own being, the ego still shudders a bit at first in recognition of its own transient nature. Adya makes an excellent point about the ways in which spirituality helps us avoid our true nature. We have this deep intuition of our nothingness, but instead of looking at it we objectify the nothingness into something we can worship, and therefore something that is not really a part of us. This makes it less threatening to our egos.

Our egos, that part of us that we take to be “me” and “you,” are very, very real. We misunderstand the teaching of no-self when we think that we are saying the personality and our bodies and our memories, etc., are illusion. They are very real. But they do not exist as independent entities separate from other egos. All of reality is an interwoven tapestry of experiences. “Emptiness” or “no self” is another way of recognizing this. Where “I” end and “you” begin is not a real boundary. The sense of separation is a result of our limited understanding. The “nothing” that Adya describes is that lack of boundary we discover when we bring pure awareness to our experiences. He could just as easily have said “everything.” Only by letting go do we find out what we really are, so that in the end we find out we are really “the everything” that is there.

What you really are

“To look into our own true nature is very intimate. This isn’t about following somebody else’s story, it’s very much about you…How do I look at what I am? And then you see everything you keep taking yourself to be. What are my stories about myself? Only when you start looking this way can you see that everything you take yourself to be is not completely intimate. Because there’s always something closer, there’s something noticing: Oh, I take myself to be this and this and this. ‘Well, I feel such and such a way.’ Okay, that’s what you feel. What is it that feels such and such? You can’t answer that in your head. See, it gets very quiet.”
--Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

This is the method of self-inquiry that Adyashanti teaches, alongside Awareness meditation. Though he presents them as two things, they are really one. Awareness is just deep looking to see what it is there. When awareness is applied to the landscape of the mind, it’s what Adya calls “self-inquiry.” It’s looking to see what is looking. And what is looking turns out not to be who you thought: it’s not your “personality” or any of the things you “take yourself to be.” It’s just wide open, infinite space. It’s the primordial silence. This is who we truly are, and from this space there can be no limitation, no grasping or aversion, no fear.

Deep calls unto deep

“This awakening to the truth of who we are is a spontaneous occurrence…you can’t manipulate your way to awakening…it tends to happen when our self-will takes a vacation. Even the will that says “I must awaken now” takes a vacation. As long as you are trying to make it happen, it has a hard time happening, doesn’t it?...And even though it just happens, it’s not a haphazard event…it’s not quite that simple…there’s another catalyst that’s very necessary, and that’s our willingness to look very, very deeply. This is the catalyst of inquiry…the most important thing is to be actually interested in “what am I?”
—Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

I have grown a bit ambivalent about this practice of journaling, especially in the practice of journaling and then deliberately sharing it with others. Perhaps it’s ambivalence toward the use of words themselves.

Words have played a strangely paradoxical role in my own process of awakening. As Adyashanti says, you can’t manipulate your way into awakening, which means in part you can’t talk your way, think your way or write your way into awakening. And my own experience confirms this, because I tried mightily to awaken in just this way, to no avail. And when the process of awakening actually began for real, it had nothing to do with talking, thinking, writing or anything else. But on the other hand, it took lots of words to get me to that point, and so the words served a useful purpose. The words pointed the way, even though they did so imperfectly, until the words were left behind.

And then the paradox: now I see that the words were never left behind, though my relationship to them changed. Words remain, even in the state of deep awareness, because words are a part of the whole human experience, just as ego remains even in the deepest awareness. Truth is completely undivided, which means it contains everything.

So ego is still there, just as Awareness is there (and always has been), and perhaps ego still plays a role in the writing of this journal. The ego has always gotten a little trip out of the way the journal moves others to think, or feel, or respond. And that’s fine. Because the deeper purpose is also served: the awareness that functions through this ego is simply calling to the awareness that functions through other egos, waking up to itself.