Adyashanti: You Can't Force Awakening — But There's What You Can Do

And my heart's you know, and then it gets and and at some point I think this is going to kill me. This is going to kill me. And then the weird thought came up again from the belly and the thought just said, well, if this is what it takes to see whatever this drive is wanting to see or experience, okay. I don't think there's any direct causality between awakening and anything we do, but I think there's a lot of indirect causality. Right? Cuz if it was direct causality, you just say, do this, this, and this and then like baking cookies, put the right ingredients in the bowl, mix it up, put it in the oven, and boom, you have awakening. People want that. They want the cookie recipe. We all want that, right? Every I would I wanted that, you know, I wanted to be told like just tell me the thing, you know? Right. Tell me the magic. Tell me the Um so Yeah, like um we all want that, but that's just not the way it works. But there is indirect causes and effect all over the place. So meditation, I think yes, people have awakenings without any meditation. I've met people who wanted nothing to do with spirituality that had awakenings out of the blue. But 97% 98% in my experience, they were doing some spiritual practice. Well, let's hear about these openings as you're describing them using that word openings. Well, as I told you, Tamsin, I took my compete I competitive spiritual athlete, you know, just train more than everybody else and you know, that whole attitude which didn't really fit spirituality, but that's what I knew. So I took that in and like I said when the spiritual impulse was activated for me, kind of the enlightenment impulse it's hard to convey how night and day it from one day to the next it was and how strong it was. It occupied every single waking moment of every single day. Literally every moment. Meditating, not meditating, going to work, walking down sidewalks. It was just there. This impulse was just pushing pushing and pushing and pushing and it was wanted something. I didn't know what the heck it wanted. So it was very strong. >> on, let me understand that because this impulse, I mean, people I think maybe feel drives like that to find their soulmate or, you know, just this thing, but when it comes to something as you're describing the enlightenment impulse, I'm not sure people know in their own experience Yeah. what that feel what that feels like, what made it an enlightenment impulse. What did it what was going on inside? >> It felt like a all at times almost overwhelming internal intensity. I mean, I just walked around in an intense intense like I just had to know what this enlightenment thing was, but the the difference the weird thing about it was totally impersonal. What I mean by that is usually we think like you mentioned I I'm looking for my soulmate or I want this or I want that, those desires that we can have. This wasn't this wasn't something that was coming from what I would think of as the kind of person who would have all those other desires. Like it it it was an invasion. That's what it felt like to me. It was almost like getting the flu. Do you know what I mean? Like I got the I got I caught the flu, the spiritual flu. And I need to cure myself of this somehow. I mean, I didn't see it as a negative thing like that sounds like, but that's how it played out for me. I just kind of got myself so worked up like I just had to have a breakthrough. I just I was driving myself crazy. Literally I would walk down every day walking to the the place where I work walking down the sidewalk and I would think, is this the day? Is this the day I just crack under the pressure and just fall apart? Cuz that's how much intensity there was around it. And then one morning I'm sit down to do my meditation and I was just so I mean, it seems so foreign to me now like where I am, but at that time I was just like I got to have a breakthrough. I can't not and all that sort of intensity and you know, that athletic way of approaching it and all of that just kind of crescendoed literally within a couple of minutes as I'm sitting there meditating. And it just crescendoed and the the like a wave breaking, you know, coming over when it comes over the lip and just starts to break. Um I literally just thought these words just came up it was to us, I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't make a breakthrough happen. I can't force it. I just like I'd come up against something that I couldn't I couldn't compete with. I just was so I met it was like a moment of total failure. And as soon as I felt that very viscerally, very powerfully felt that. It wasn't just a couple of thoughts. It was you know, when you're like just defeated, hands and knees, just you know. And all of a sudden there was just like a kind of explosion of energy. Okay, hold on. Explosion of energy. What where in your body, outside your body, in the space? >> in the lower part of the belly. Really like the bottom of the belly. And it was just this like energy release and it just was like You know, the thing that I remember is when I watch some shows about space and they'll show like a supernova exploding or something, you know, that visual. That's how it felt. So started low and it just worked went up and up and up and hit my heart and before you know it my heart I knew what my max heart rate was cuz I was an athlete, right? So I knew okay, my max heart rate at that time was about 201 beats a minute. I was way way way way way beyond that. And my heart's you know, and then it gets and and at some point I think this is going to kill me. This is going to kill me. And then the weird thought came up again from the belly and the thought just said, well, if this is what it takes to see whatever this drive is wanting to see or experience, okay. I'll die. Today. Now. And I remember being surprised by the thought like Really? Really? But I but the answer was like, yeah, actually I am. I will live physically die today for this. And as soon as I had the thought like I was willing to that, all of a sudden all this energy and you know, I'd kind of been it all just s- like as fast as you can stop your fingers, it was gone. Just gone. And then I just started to have these insights coming. So everything came from the bottom up, but now the insights were just like pouring down like someone had a pitcher of milk or something. They're just pouring them into me. And then at some point everything just returned back to like really quiet. And then just gradually I noticed, oh, there's a heartbeat and oh, there's a body here. Oh, there's my body and you know, I'm there I am this 20 25 year old kid sitting there, oh. And what do you do now? You know, like what was that? Holy smokes, you know, like And so I just decided, I guess I'll get up. And I did what I always did. I got up. I was had a meditation hut in my parents' backyard. And I turned to my little altar and I bowed to my little Buddha back there and somewhere between here and here I just started cracking up. I mean, I laughed so hard. You're crying now, but you laughed then. Because it's still the laugh, but it's the the the tears are the the the the being intimately touched, you know? But that's that's the tears. They're they're still the I can still feel the same joy and Yeah, there's a there's a theme of like intimacy through it all. I mean, there's it's I bowed to this thing. By the time I get up, I looked at that Buddha statue and I literally thought these words which probably sound very strange given the talk we're having. I thought I literally went like, you little son of a I chased you I basically all over the universe and you end up to be me? And I ended up to be you? You've got to be kidding. And I just thought it was the funniest damn thing in the world. Just the funniest thing. I just couldn't believe it. Like I'd been looking for this thing and the thing I was looking for was the thing that was looking for it the whole time. So that was the first sort of that was the first opening for me. Certainly the most dramatic.