Moving Beyond the Pitfalls of Non-abiding Awakenings

Flaming Canyon by Marc Adamus

Let’s explore some of the pitfalls that lead to the experience called non-abiding awakening, as if there were such a thing separate from anything else… This post will be a continuation of a previous post titled How To Make Yourself Unenlightened.

In this post, we will address the following 4 pitfalls:

1) Moving Aliveness Into Memory

2) The Expectation of Similarity

3) The Recreation of Duality

4) Thinking The Self Can Actually Be Lost

1) Moving Aliveness Into Memory

When an awakening is experienced, the mind may then seek to turn the present aliveness into a memory or intellectual understanding describing what it’s like to be awake.

There may be the fear that, like every other experience, this too will end, so you better remember it just in case so you have something nice to think about when it does. It’s like when riding an exciting theme park ride. Rather than enjoying the experience of the aliveness fully in the moment, the mind may begin its inner narration by talking about the experience to itself so that it can later repeat its words back to itself or others the experience of what the ride is like. Thus you’ll be able to relive the moment to the best of your ability.

Awakening is a bit different. Unlike a particular experience, your true nature never ends. Awakening isn’t about any particular experience, but rather recognizing who it is that experiences. Who you really are. It is simply a notion of the mind that the Self needs to be clung to, lest it be lost. In fact, it is this very clinging that leads to the so-called unenlightenment.

2) The Expectation of Similarity

When the awakeness is lost, so to speak, the mind may understandably want to reexperience being awake yet again. There may be the assumption that since awakening has happened before, it must be experienced in the exact same way again or else it’s not enlightenment. So the mind desperately tries to pigeon-hole itself into the shoes of an awakened person having an awake experience in any way it can.

Act like an enlightened person. Speak like one. Think like one. Not think like one. Basically the mind tries to fit itself into a box called “awakened state,” whatever it perceives that to be.

The thing is that Beingness can’t be put into a box. You can’t do beingness. You can only be it in this moment.

In the same way that no two people experience awakenings in an identical fashion, even one person who goes through a series of non-abiding awakenings will experience each awakening in a unique way. Some may be an instantaneous flash. Some may arise gradually. Some may happen while driving. Some may happen while meditating. It varies.

If the mind gets a hold of the idea of awakening and tries to ensure that you get yourself back to the space you were in last time when awakening happened, you may block yourself from allowing awakening to happen the way it’ll happen this time.

3) The Recreation of Duality

Third, upon the “loss” of awakening, there is the experience once again of there being something other than one, or more accurately, many separate things which are not the one.

There becomes such a thing as unenlightenment as opposed to enlightenment. You can go from enlightenment to unenlightenment and “lose” your awakening. Therefore it can be non-abiding.

No no, EVERYTHING IS THE ONE!!!

All experiences and all states are the one.

Enlightenment is the one. Unenlightenment is the one.

Heaven is the one. Hell is the one.

Bliss is the one. Peace is the one. Anger is the one. Frustration is the one.

Understanding is the one. Confusion is the one. Getting it is the one. Not getting it is the one.

Separation is the one. Unity is the one.

Form is the one. Formlessness is the one.

Vividness is the one. Dimness is the one.

No matter what expression life takes, it’s all lila, the play of God.

When it *clicks* that everything everything everything, including nothing (!) is the one, what on earth is there to seek? Even seeking is the one! It’s impossible for anything to not be the one.

When seeking is taken seriously, as if there were something other than what is here now to seek, then the one is missed. Seeking is just another game the one can play with itself.

When there’s a stopping and a true listening, a space is created that allows for the one to become conscious of itself yet again.

When we recognize that whatever it is that is arising in this moment is the one in expression (good or bad, happy or sad), when we allow ourselves to be one with the moment, we can fully allow this moment to be as it is. We are present and open to whatever is arising no matter what. No longer are we seeking anything outside of this moment, for the one is already here.

4) Thinking The Self Can Actually Be Lost

A key recognition to make is that unlike physical objects and experiences that arise and fall away in time, your True Self can never actually be lost. (Nor can you actually create it or make it happen. It is All.)

Even if you fall back asleep to the unawakened state, you can never lose your eternal essence.

What is actually going on when this happens is that awareness appears as something that is not recognized to be the one, such as asleepness or spiritual seeking. Yet even being completely and totally asleep is yet another expression of the one.

When this is seen, there can be a total letting go of seeking. Not a rejection of seeking, for even though seeking is the one. Simply a letting go of seeking anything outside of here and now. It’s literally impossible to lose yourSelf, and in fact you never ever actually did in the first place. You only thought you did.

You can never be lost. What you really are is always here. You are here in this very moment, as this moment itself.

Spontaneous enlightenment. Non-enlightenment. Gradual enlightenment. Easy enlightenment. Hard enlightenment… however you want to label things, EVERYTHING IS THE ONE.

For a deeper look at non-abiding awakenings, check out Adyashanti’s program called The End of Your World.