How to spiritually awaken, immediately!

Many of us that are on the "spiritual path" have been led to believe that spiritual awakening is a destination, a point in the future to strive towards, and to hope to realize someday.

"Some day I will be spiritually awakened...some day I will be like my spiritual idols and mentors." We drive a wedge between ourselves and that moment, and set ourselves up for failure. By turning it into a future destination, you remove yourself from accountability and all but guarantee that such an awakening will never happen.

However, as the mystics and spiritual gurus would tell us, the present moment is quite literally all that exists. The "future" we speak of is an illusion we grant ourselves for convenience. But the path of spiritual enlightenment has no room for convenience, and operates outside the space of the ego, trapped as it is in the illusion of time's passing.

To awaken—to realize that we exist in and as the one, all-encompassing ground of Being which many call God—is something which can only happen in the present moment. To realize this is the end of suffering, or dukkha, to use the Buddha's term. Continuing to live in suffering, and ignoring the opportunity that the present moment presents to awaken, is madness.

Your spiritual realization doesn't lie in future circumstances, when you finally have time to work on yourself or adopt a certain spiritual practice, or when everything is just right. It can only ever happen right now, once you have removed the illusion of time.

The amusing stories associated with Zen Buddhism are most famous for showing us this truth. In a flash, the practicing monk finally realizes that the truth they had been seeking through years and years of meditation had been staring them in the face the whole time. It was within themselves, waiting to be seen. Nothing changed for them, really, it was just that they finally were broken out of their usual thought pattern, and realized that they are what they had been seeking all along. "Thou art that," the Chandogya Upanishad tells us.

Don't fall into the trap of chasing your tail, living in ignorance and delusion, thinking your awakening or spiritual progress is right around the corner. Deep down, you know the truth of who you are and what you are seeking, and can evoke that space in this very moment.

Ken Wilber once wrote, "You cannot reach Spirit any more than you can reach your feet. You always already are Spirit, you are not going to reach it in any sort of temporal thrashing around." I think that perfectly illustrates the folly of many of our ways.

Realize truth within yourself right now, and then begin to live from that space. That is the true and only path.

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