Beginning the True Spiritual Journey

The beginning of the spiritual journey is what I call 'life after awakening.' Instead of a life lived from a separate ego, from the illusion of the egoic personality, it is a life lived from the conscious recognition of our true nature as awareness. And that's truly a new life. It's a beginning. It's an end of the identification with thoughts, feelings, and the egoic personality, but-contrary to what some people think-it's not the end of spirituality. It's actually the beginning of the true spiritual journey, the beginning of a new way of life. It's the beginning of an ongoing discovery of what it's like to live from the recognition that you are spirit appearing as a human being.

This is the core of spirituality: awakening to who and what you are. In my experience of working with many people over the years, I have found two elements to be the most helpful and most powerful when it comes to awakening. The first is developing a meditative attitude, in which we let go of control on a very deep level and allow everything to be as it is. The second is a serious engagement with our own inherent curiosity and intelligence through meditative self-inquiry. Either one of these two separated can be incomplete: inquiry separated from meditation can become intellectual and abstract; meditation separated from inquiry can result in our getting lost in various different spiritual states. Combined, they provide the necessary energy, the necessary impetus, to produce a flash of recognition of your true nature. And in the end, that is what spirituality is all about.