Spiritual Awakening

Spiritual Awakening

Spiritual Awakening Is Now!

The truth of living in the Now is the truth of our lives, nothing else is real for the past and future do not actually exist, for when they occur they do not occur as the past or future but as Now. We can NEVER experience the past or the future. It is our conditioning and beliefs and mind-chatter that prevent us from seeing the truth of reality. Mostly we live in made-up assessments, conclusions and evaluations, and in this process, life is not lived as it IS, but as we THINK it is, or want to believe it is. And these thoughts and assessments are what give rise to our suffering for they take us away from reality, which is the gateway to all that we really want in life - Love, fulfilment, peace, forgiveness, kindness. If we can simply live in the present moment, our suffering ends.

As we experience the present moment more and more, we learn the art of self mastery, for in that process we get to see all that prevents us from living in the Now; and this we must own and transform. This is the tricky bit. For all that prevents us from being in the here and now, includes our pain, which has us remain stuck and unable to be present to our life as it is and to people as they really are.

Our ego/mind will persistently try to convince us we are ok because it doesn't want to feel pain. But if we can see beyond the ego's desperation, we can begin to shed the falseness within us, the cunning, the hypocrisy, the games we play.

And then we start to experience true peace and joy and Love. This is the experience of God...the spark of God in us, for we become more loving to ourselves and to others, we become gentler, wiser. We no longer believe something ABOUT God, or 'have faith' in God, or believe we KNOW God. Rather, we understand God through our own Self, our own Being, we experience ourselves as the God spark we contain. We begin to live the message of unconditional Love, and we see that we are all One, and this makes us kinder to others, and more forgiving.

So we come full circle to ourselves; to our amazing potential. This is the wonderful little riddle that life gives us. It's like a test. We don't come into this life to amass riches, status or power; we come to solve this riddle for ourselves. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have money, or a powerful role in society, but it does mean that attachment to it, gaining our identity from it, worrying about losing it etc is in fact the seat of our suffering. Whereas non-attachment - an allowing - is the seat of our soul.

But how can we, as people who live in such a society and world, live without attachment?

The answer must be answered for ourselves individually. The road to the answer lies in Awareness, in becoming present to what it is. Have you ever consciously listened to how you speak and what you say everyday? Have you ever thought about your thoughts, how your chatterings and justifications occupy so much of your time? Have you seen yourself as you are, not as you would like to think you are? Such self-observation can first of all show us what our attachments are.

Do you know that life is never, ever lived in your mind, in your thoughts, in the past or in the future? If you want to really experience life, just stop for a moment, right now. Look around you. Sense how your body feels. What are the feelings that are there? Right there in front of you in your awareness, that's life. Can you sense the difference between this and what you normally do? The difference between being in your head, and being present now?

Life is not lived the way you think it's lived. Life is not how you decide it is. Life....just is. And it does not wait for you to catch up with it. It just goes on showing its glory in every fresh, new, moment of every day. When will you slow down and quieten your mind to notice it?

How long can you go on living with your inner conflicts, confusions, self-justifications and half-hearted attempts at love? How long can you continue to live with a sense of something being wrong, a feeling of inadequacy, a sense of weariness and disillusionment? How long can you convince yourself that 'you are happy'? 
When the answer to these questions is 'Not much longer, I'm tired of all that effort!' then you have begun to travel your real path.

Seeking our joy outside of ourselves, as I did for so many years, is like trying desperately to see your own eyes through your own eyes, and then one day you see yourself for the first time in a mirror and realize they were there all along, and in fact you can never get away from them even if you tried (bar, gouging them out of course.....but let's not take the analogy too far...).

Thus spiritual truth leads to ourselves in the present moment, and this is why the term 'holistic' and 'wholeness' is used. We usually think that the partial truth we believe in - whatever that may be - is the whole truth, but have you noticed that when we do this there is never any deep fulfillment? In fact this always leads to suffering, whether acknowledged or not. This partial truth might be a belief system, our culture, our beliefs about ourselves and others, and all our conditioning.

We become fully present to that which simply is - both within us and without us, without seeking the usual distractions to escape, when we see all the mass of beliefs we hold on to everyday. Have you noticed how children are so much more here than adults are? They do not seek to escape what is. And when we don't either, we begin to sense the exquisiteness of the Now.

Let me ask you a question. Who or what is it that is always on your mind, always the focus of everything you do or say? If you are totally honest, would not the answer have to be that it's you? Not your spouse, not your children, not your friends, foes, not your hobbies or passions. It's you! Can you see how everything that happens is somehow always related to the 'me'? And can you sense how heavy this feels. It's always effort-full? The mind is never still, and this saps one's energy.

The mind is like the word tree - it cannot give you the experience of the tree. Awareness of the moment is like touching the tree itself.

And so it is that we experience a moment of awakening, it is a moment of satisfying freedom, because for once in our life this 'me' is no longer this desperate momentum of striving and mind-preoccupation.

Your deeper Self has been waiting patiently for this moment!

About the Author

Find out more about spiritual growth by joining http://www.soulalert.com, a recently-launched spiritual portal for all evolving people. Reena Gagneja, the author of this article, is the founder of SoulAlert, and she is also a Spiritual Counsellor and Soul Contract Reader. She offers a free initial consultation by phone for Counselling and Soul Contract readings.

Copyright Reena Gagneja 2009

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