Spiritual Forum

The following was written by Wes Annac for the “planetary healing” section of The Aquarius Paradigm Weekly Newsletter. Concluded from our discussion about meditative stillness.

Adyashanti tells us that most people only glimpse a state of timeless and identity-less perception for a brief moment before contracting back into the familiar mental mechanisms of lower-dimensional life.

“Most people are in a constant state of struggle with themselves. Tremendously burdened by the past and in constant anticipation of the future, most human beings are rarely able to be fully present for more than very brief moments. The tremendous openness and intimacy that is required to be fully present is beyond most people’s ability to sustain for more than a few moments before they habitually contract back into the familiar condition of separateness and struggle that so characterizes the human condition.” (1)

Having rediscovered the idea of being fully present, my hope is that it sticks with me. I hope not to forget about the importance of simplicity, and if this writing can reinforce it for any of you, then I’ve done my job well.

Adyashanti then describes the loss of perception of our identity that comes with embracing zero point, as well as the fact that the mind thrives in a state of struggle.

“This constant state of struggle manifests as a compulsive and addictive relationship to the movement of thought, emotion, and time. There is great reluctance to stop struggling because in the absence of struggle you suddenly begin to lose your boundaries and definitions of who you are. For many people this causes fear to arise as they experience the loss of their familiar sense of self. Struggling is how the ego-personality maintains its existence. When you cease to struggle, identification with the personality begins to break down and you become aware of your emptiness and lack of boundaries.” (1)

If we stop letting stress and frustration in, we’ll starve the ego of its greatest asset and reach a true place of stillness and bliss. Because we’ve been conditioned to think this physical reality is the only one in existence, we’ve become addicted to materiality, consumerism and everything else that feeds our perception of physicality.

Now, we have the opportunity to embrace the spiritual, and in doing so, we need to surrender our physical senses and perceptions so that we can receive the divine through an undistorted lens (or perhaps through no lens at all).

As Adyashanti says below, a lot of seekers find it difficult to embrace zero point because of its identity-less, non-conceptualized nature. He also tells us about the liberation we find when perceiving spirit without any expectation or identity attached.

“The most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is to stop struggling, striving, seeking and searching. Why? Because in the absence of struggle you don’t know who you are: you lose your boundaries; you lose your separateness; you lose your specialness; you lose the dream you have lived all your life.

Eventually you lose everything that your mind has created and awaken to who you truly are: the fullness of freedom, unbound by any identifications, identities, or boundaries. It is this locationless freedom of being that spiritual people are seeking, and at the same time are running away from because its faceless nature gives no fixed reference point for the personality to hold onto or to seek security in.” (1)

It can be frightening to contemplate the idea of leaving our identities at the door when embracing spirit and changing the world, but zero point, however formless, doesn’t entail complete nothingness. From the simplicity of zero point, we open up to spirit without any judgment or expectation dimming our ability to feel it.

Finally, Adyashanti tells us that binding ourselves to our identity will forever inhibit a greater perception.

“As long as you remain identified with the personality, you will always be seeking security to the exclusion of the Truth, and will remain in a constant state of struggle. It is only when your love and desire for Truth outweighs the personality’s compulsive need for security, that you can begin to stop struggling and be swept up into the arms of an ever unfolding revelation of the Truth and Freedom of Being.” (1)

Even though surrendering the ego makes sense, it can be easier said than done for a lot of us.

I can’t tell you if you’re at a stage in your growth that still requires effort, but if you don’t feel the “ever unfolding revelation of the Truth and Freedom of Being”, you could have more work to do. The “work” doesn’t have to be bad – it simply entails surrendering ourselves to the divine.

In concluding this report, I hope I’ve been able to present an interesting concept that’s shaken my view on life and evolution completely. I decided to write about this almost immediately after learning about it, and I, like many of you perhaps, still have a lot of thinking to do.

Do you feel as if you can see beyond your perception of yourself as an individual, apart from the whole, and embrace oneness? We have some work to do before humanity can open up to the idea of surrendering our individual identities and embracing refined spiritual reality, but like a lot of other things, this doesn’t mean the task is impossible.

Those of us who’ve discovered this idea can work to be examples of it, and we can help everyone become aware of the oneness of humanity and the nameless, timeless reality we can experience. Individually, we’re each a powerful force for change, but collectively, we’re unstoppable.

In laying down our individual and collective perceptions and judgments, we become a planetary force for positive change that can’t be stifled. Change will always start with us, and having done my part in communicating this, I’m ready to ask myself what I can do to start living it. How about you?

This concludes our planetary healing.

Footnotes:

(1)- Adyashanti, “Call Off the Struggle,” 1998, downloaded from http://www.adyashanti.org, 2004.

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