Adyashanti The End Of Your World Quotes

We realize--often quite suddenly--that our sense of self, which has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs and images, is not really who we are. It doesn't define us, it has no center.

Anything you avoid in life will come back, over and over again, until you’re willing to face it—to look deeply into its true nature.

All delusions begin in the mind. All delusions are based on various ways we’re talking to ourselves and then believing what we are saying.

When you get out of the driver’s seat, you find that life can drive itself, that actually life has always been driving itself. When you get out of the driver’s seat, it can drive itself so much easier—it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will take you.

The important thing is allowing the whole world to wake up. Part of allowing the whole world to wake up is recognizing that the whole world is free—everybody is free to be as they are. Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.

Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently—until you have given the whole world its freedom—you’ll never have your freedom.

The way they perceive the world suddenly changes, and they find themselves without any sense of separation between themselves and the rest of the world.

One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment comes from a Jesuit priest named Anthony de Mello, who passed away some years ago. Someone asked him to define his experience of enlightenment. He said, “Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.” I love that, because it defines enlightenment not just as a realization, but as an activity. Enlightenment is when everything within us is in cooperation with the flow of life itself, with the inevitable.

In truth, we are life itself. When we see and perceive that we are the totality of life, we are no longer afraid of it; we no longer feel afraid of birth, life, and death. But until we see that, we will see life as intimidating, as a barrier we somehow have to get through.

This one question -- "What do I know for certain?"-- is tremendously powerful. When you look deeply into this question, it actually destroys your world. It destroys your whole sense of self, and it's meant to. You come to see that everything you think you know about yourself, everything you think you know about the world, is based on assumptions, beliefs, and opinions-- things you believe because you were taught or told that they were true. Until we start to see these false perceptions for what they really are, consciousness will be imprisoned within the dream state.

I have found over the years of working with people, even those who have had very deep and profound awakenings, that most people have a fear of being truthful, of really being honest-- not only with others, but with themselves as well. Of course, the core of this fear is that most people know intuitively that if they were actually truthful and totally sincere and honest, they would no longer be able to control anybody.

Again, the only way to know that we’ve seen into the true nature of something is that the story we’re telling ourselves releases.

What we call ego is simply the mechanism our mind uses to resist life as it is.

True inquiry is experiential

In a certain sense, enlightenment is dying into the ordinary, or into an extraordinary ordinariness. We start to realize the ordinary is extraordinary. It’s almost like catching onto a hidden secret—that all along we were in the promised land, all along we were in the kingdom of heaven. From the very beginning, there was only nirvana, as the Buddha would say. But we were misperceiving things. By believing the images in the mind, by contracting through fear, hesitation, and doubt, we misperceived where we were. We didn’t realize we were in heaven; we didn’t realize we were in the promised land. We didn’t realize that nirvana is right here, right now, exactly where we are.

What is required after a glimpse of awakening is radical honesty, a willingness to look at how we unenlighten ourselves, how we bring ourselves back into the gravitational force of the dream state, how we allow ourselves to be divided.

When these Velcro thoughts and emotions arise, the key is to face and investigate whatever belief structures underlie them. In that moment, inquiry is your spiritual practice. To avoid this practice is to avoid your own awakening. Anything you avoid in life will come back, over and over again, until you’re willing to face it—to look deeply into its true nature.

Somewhere inside I always knew that everything was one—that I was eternal, unborn, undying, and uncreated. I understood that my essential nature was not limited by or confined to my personality structure or the body I seemed to be inhabiting. There had been a dissolving, in a somewhat radical way, of the world as I had known it and of the self I had known myself to be.

enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being more or less happy. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true—from ourselves to the world.

True realization, true enlightenment, comes through a complete relinquishing of personal will - a complete letting go.

Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.

…you don't die; the illusion of a separate self dies. Still, it may feel like you are going to die. Only when you are willing to die for the sake of truth can that grasping truly and authentically let go.

When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing. We are simply acting out of deep programming. But once we have seen the true nature of things-- once Spirit has opened its eyes within us-- we suddenly know what we're doing. There's a much more accurate sense of whether we're moving or speaking or even thinking from truth or not. When we act from a place of untruth anyway, in spite of our knowing, it's much more painful than we we didn't know our actions were untrue. When we say something to someone that we know is untrue, it causes an inner division that is vastly more painful than when we said the same thing and thought it was true.

So with awakening, the stakes go up. The more awake we get, the higher the stakes get. I remember when I was staying at a Buddhist monastery for a while. The abbess there, a wonderful woman, talked about this process of awakening as climbing a ladder. With each step you go, you have less and less tendency to look down. You have less tendency to act in ways you know aren’t true or to speak in ways you know aren’t true or do things you know aren’t coming from truth. You start to realize that the consequences have become greater; the more awake we get, the greater the consequences are. Finally, the consequences of acting outside of truth become immense; the slightest action or behavior that’s not in accordance with the truth can be unbearable to us.

When many of the old saints and sages say, “Your world is a dream. You’re living in an illusion,” they’re referring to this world of the mind and the way we believe our thoughts about reality. When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.

What is required is the willingness to let life impact you; to let yourself see when life impacts you; to see if you go into any sort of separation about it, if you go into judgment, if you go into blame, if you go into “should” or “shouldn’t,” if you start to point the finger somewhere other than at yourself.

[...]in a true awakening, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the "me" waking up, what we are wakes up from the "me". What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.

In awakening, what's revealed to us is that we are not a thing, nor a person, nor even an entity. What we are is that which manifests as all things, as all experiences, as all personalities. We are that which dreams the whole world into existence. Spiritual awakening reveals that that which is unspeakable is actually what we are.

It’s important to note, as well, that we do not become immune to misperception simply because we’ve had a glimpse of awakening. Certain fixations and conditionings will linger even after we perceive from the place of oneness. The path after awakening, then, is a path of dissolving our remaining fixations—our hang-ups, you might say.

All of a sudden there I was, standing there, holding my plate my of food at this wedding, and there was the realization that even though I don't see things the way most people around me see them, this is it. This is life, and it is absolutely wonderful, amazingly beautiful. The only thing left for me to do was to walk back into the world.

The simplest thing one can say about the experiential knowledge of awakening is that it is a shift in one's perception. This is the heart of awakening. There is a shift in perception from seeing oneself as an isolated individual to seeing oneself, if we have a sense of self at all after this shift, as something mush more universal—everything and everyone and everywhere at the same time.

that smallest point of light was a thought, just floating out there. And the thought was: “I.” And when I turned and looked at the thought, all I had to do was become interested in it, in any way interested, and this little point of light would move closer and closer and closer. It was like moving close to a knothole in a fence—when you get your eye right up to it, you don’t see the fence anymore; you see what’s on the other side. So as this little point of “I” came closer, I started to perceive through this point called “me.” And I found that in that point called “me” was the whole world. The whole world was contained within that “I,” within that little point called “me.” There wasn’t really an I, but an emptiness that could go into and out of that point, in and out of it, and it’s like the whole world could flicker on and off, and on and off, and on and off.

There is a scripture in the Buddhist tradition called the Heart Sutra, which says that there is no birth, no old age, and no death, and no end to birth, old age, or death. This is a very important part of the sutra. There is no birth, no old age, and no death. This is true from the absolute point of view. But unless we’ve also realized, simultaneously, that there is no end to birth, old age, and death, then our realization is not complete.

One of the most common of these traps is a sense of meaninglessness. From our new view of reality, we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego’s desire to find meaning in life is actually a substitute for the perception of being life itself. The search for meaning in life is a surrogate for the knowledge that we are life. Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone disconnected from life will look for purpose.

happen, and it’s not uncommon for them to happen for some people. What people usually see, if their experiences are real, is what needs to be seen, what needs to be freed. As one great Buddhist abbess said to me, “You usually don’t have a past life that shows you what a sterling example of enlightenment you were, because enlightenment leaves no trace; it is like a fire that burns clean. There’s no karmic imprint it leaves behind.” She said if you have any past lives, you’re probably going to see what a grade-A jackass you were—which I loved, and which has corresponded to my experience. I didn’t necessarily always see what a grade-A jackass I was, although in some cases, I saw that I was a lot more than a grade-A jackass. Most of the past lives I saw were moments of confusion, moments of unresolved karmic conflict.

With a true and authentic awakening, who and what we are becomes clear. There’s no longer a question about it; it is a done deal. In this way, one of the hallmarks of a true awakening is the end of seeking. You no longer feel the momentum, the push and the pull. The seeker has been revealed as the virtual reality it always was, and as such it disappears. The seeker has in some sense accomplished its task.

In ancient times, people having this experience entered protected environments such as monasteries—places where those around them would understand. They’d be put in a nice little cell and left alone to let the process happen. They were fortunate to experience awakening in a context in which it was understood, seen as normal, and given the space it required. In today’s society, most of us having these realizations are not living in monasteries; we are not in a particularly supportive environment. In fact, in our society it is possible to have an amazing realization on Saturday and be back in the office on Monday morning. If your mind is still blown out in bliss, this can be very disorienting! Yet it’s the reality of the situation we live in. Most modern people do not have the luxury of sitting in a cave for a few months and letting things shake down naturally. This is the state of our world, and it can be a challenge for some people.

It's just natural. It's not better than or higher than anything or anybody. It's simply the natural state of being. It's totally democratic. It's the inheritance of everybody.

If we are being sincere and honest with ourselves, there is an intuitive sense of what we are avoiding. If we can find the capacity to be honest, we'll start to feel in ourselves when we're being called to make effort.

Part of being awake is being willing to be crucified. If we think that to be awake means the whole world will agree with us, then we are in a total delusion.

I can't do that." Those belief structures are by their very nature based in unreality.

kind of thing. I don’t want to talk to a lot of people about past lives, especially the radical nondualists who say that there is nobody who was born, there is nobody who has past lives, there are no incarnations, and so on. Of course, that is all true; it’s all a dream, even past lives. When I talk about them at all, I talk about them as past dreams. I dreamed I was this person; I dreamed I was that person. Personally, I’ve never tried to gather experiences of past lives and wrap them all up in some sort of metaphysical understanding. I don’t have a clear understanding about what a past life is, except that it seems clear to me that it also has the nature of a dream; it doesn’t have objective, actual existence. Nonetheless, the experience I had happened. Since it happened, I can’t say it didn’t happen. But in my own mind, I don’t try to figure it all out. All I know is what happened.

ADYA I will try to explain what happened experientially. At the moment of awakening, it was as though I was completely outside who I thought I was. There was a vast, vast, vast emptiness. In that vast emptiness, in that infinite emptiness, there was the smallest, smallest, smallest point of light you could imagine. And

And then I noticed there were all sorts of other points, points, and I could enter each one of those points, and each one of those points was a different world, a different time, and I was a different person, a totally different manifestation in each one of those points. I could go into each one of them and see a totally different dream of self and a totally different world that was being dreamed as well. For the most part, what I saw was anything that was unresolved about the dream of “me” in a particular lifetime. There were certain confusions, fears, hesitations, and doubts that were unresolved in particular lifetimes. In certain lifetimes, what was unresolved was a feeling of confusion about what happened at the time of death. In one lifetime, I drowned and did not know what was happening, and there was tremendous terror and confusion as the body

disappeared into the water. Seeing this lifetime and the confusion at the moment of death, I immediately knew what I had to do. I had to rectify the confusion and explain to the dream of me that I died, that I fell off a boat and drowned. When I did this, all of a sudden the confusion from that lifetime popped like a bubble, and there was a tremendous sense of freedom. Many past life dreams appeared, and each one of them seemed to focus on something that had been in conflict, something that was unresolved from a different incarnation. I went through each one of them and unhooked the confusion. TS  Were you lying on a carpeted floor with your eyes closed, or something? ADYA No, actually, the strangest thing was that

I was walking across the living room when all of this happened. I can’t tell you how long I was walking. It could have been five seconds—because all of this is outside of time—I don’t actually know. I could have been walking across the living room floor for five hours, but I was, literally, just walking across the living room. And it’s not like I stood still; I was walking, and it all happened right in the midst of what I was doing. I walked across the living room, I went into the backyard, I was doing something, I don’t even remember what I was doing, and simultaneously this whole other thing was happening, too. I know it sounds odd. This didn’t happen in a moment of meditation; it was completely mixed in as a part of ordinary life. As you know, I haven’t talked much about this

TS  Was there a sense when you looked at each of these dreams that there was some kind of resolution occurring? ADYA Yes. Not only a resolution there, but also a resolution now. Because it’s all one thing. Because anything that was unresolved in one of those dreams was unresolved now. Because it’s the same; there’s a connection. One of the reasons I haven’t talked much about past lives is that some people who are extraordinarily awake have never seen a past life at all. Being aware of past lives is not a necessity. I’m not a particularly mystical person. There was a relatively short period of time, a few months, when I had these kinds of experiences happen occasionally, and since then, every now and then, but not with any great consistency. So they don’t need to happen; it’s just that they did

TS  Part of the reason I am bringing up the topic of past lives is that I have heard several people say something like this about you: “Adya must have been a realized being in a past life, and that’s why he’s had such tremendous breakthroughs at such an early age and is able to articulate teachings on awakening in such an original way.” What do you think about that comment? ADYA If you ask me point blank, then yes, I’ve seen myself doing something similar to what I’m doing in this lifetime many times before. But again, I don’t know the whole metaphysics of past lives and how they work, and I don’t see things happening in terms of linear cause and effect. In fact, my experience of past lives isn’t that they are actually past. I call them that, because that’s how people relate to them, but if I were to say what my real experience is, it’s more like simultaneous lives.

Box 8010

How can I/we be truly, deeply happy and at peace when there is so much intense suffering, as I am one with all? A: The key is to be present to the sorrows of the world without entertaining any attending thoughts or judgments such as, This shouldn’t be this way, or How terrible this is, or I don’t want it to be this way, etc. While such thoughts may seem justifiable, they are simply the way that the ego mind resists or dualistically discriminates between good and bad, right and wrong. While such forms of discrimination may be useful at other times, they are not inherent to the world as it is, and end up closing the heart instead of opening it.

Selflessness is what everyone fears, even those who are intrigued by it. In a very real sense, you become (or are revealed to be) that which everyone is afraid of—the abyss of infinity. There you can bring no preferences, no agendas, and no certainties. It is the end of your inner world. Perhaps that’s the best way to explain it. Okay, now, do you still want it? And no, you cannot be assured of being of service, at least service as it is usually thought of. No certainties can come along for the ride—everything must be surrendered, no exceptions.

[...]in a true awakenin, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the "me" waking up, what we are wakes up from the "me". What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.

Spirit never asks itself, “How do I stay within myself?” That would be ridiculous. It just makes no sense, coming from the true nature of things. What makes more sense is to ask how you unenlighten yourself. What is still held on to? What is still confusing? What situations in life can get you to believe things that aren’t true and cause you to go into contradiction, suffering, and separation? What is it specifically that has the power to entice consciousness back into the gravitational field of the dream state? We should not ask, “How do I stay awake?

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.