Adyashanti returns to a recurring question in his teaching: what does one actually want most? He suggests that truth tends to reveal itself only when it is wanted more than anything else, and that long-standing spiritual practice does not automatically guarantee that ordering.
Transcript
Any of you who have been here before, you've probably heard me um say many times of the importance of really being clear on what is really wanted most. What do you what you really really want most? And this is important because usually the truth reveals itself when we want the truth most. When we want the truth more than we want anything else. That tends to be um what allows us to perceive from that perspective which we might call truth or the divine. What's really really wanted? What's wanted the most? You would think sometimes that someone or anyone has devoted a large part of their life to spirituality would want the truth more than they want anything else. It's amazing though when you actually sit down and talk to people, you find over and over again it's not actually the case and you probably remember or have heard that saying that beautiful saying from the uh the Bible I think Jesus says seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all else will be un added unto So this idea is not a new idea. This is an ancient idea. What we're seeking first. He the the saying didn't say seek the the kingdom of heaven to the exclusion of everything else. It didn't say like don't take care of yourself. Don't take care of your job. Don't take care of your family. It just said didn't say seek the truth to the exclusion of it. said said seek the truth first and foremost. seek the kingdom first. And this is, I think, probably one of the easiest teachings to to talk about, you know, seek the king the kingdom first. Really, if you want to know the truth, then you really need to want to know the truth. It's an easy thing to say. And I think it's often also a very easy thing to hear. And because we hear, we tend to go, "Yeah, of course I want the truth. Of course I do. What do you think I'm doing here? If I didn't want the truth, I wouldn't be here. But this is actually a very very deep and very profound thing of do I really really really want truth. Of course, truth in this context is true truth. Which means not the truth that the mind can come up with. Not the truth that can be written in in in the book. Not the truth that can be held in an ide ideology. Not the truth that's a philosophy. Not the truth that's a spiritual or religious point of view. But the truth that's actually beyond all of that. Cuz all of that is actually petty. It's petty stuff. It's small stuff. Very, very small stuff. The truth actually doesn't care what our philosophy it is. It doesn't really care what we believe or don't believe. It doesn't really care about our own sort of personal religious points of view. It the truth is beyond all that. It's it's so much more immense than all of that. This is the truth that's timeless. The the truth that gives birth to everything that you could ever think, that gives birth to everything you could ever feel, the truth that gives birth to every ideology you could ever hear of, of every religion that ever was, the source of all of this, the source of all of that, the source of your own being. So something that's that's far beyond thought, that has nothing to do with anything that the mind could come up with. Not only your mind but the collective mind of humanity. You know the collective thoughts of humanity over time. These might be useful thoughts, useful ideas, but these have nothing to do with truth. Truth which is timeless. truth which is actually the source of not only your being but the source of all and that's how this this question of what do I really want if I really want the truth of course when you realize that the truth is something that's much the truth is something that's actually quite immense it's bigger than a thought bigger than an idea bigger than an experience you Is is that what I really want? Am I actually interested in that? Not that you anybody should be, but is that what's is that what I want really want? Because by and large, of course, anybody can sort of bump into the truth of their being at any point kind of by accident. Better known as grace. Anybody can be spontaneously graced. But by and large, it's only those who really really fall in love with the truth, fall in love with that which always is. Those are the ones that actually stay awake. [Music] Everybody else, they've got something more important, which is perfectly okay. It's a there's the nice thing about the truth is it's not judging anybody for wanting what they want. It doesn't think that anybody should want anything other than what they want. So when we find that we actually do want what's really true, we really want to know more like it's really we must know.