The door to God is
the insecurity of not knowing anything.
Bear the grace of that insecurity,
and all wisdom will be yours.

INHERENT IN THE IMPULSE TO BE FREE, IS INSECURITY. The impulse to be free comes from outside the mind, and because of this, it makes the mind feel very insecure. Most spiritual seekers move away from this insecurity by seeking and striving for a distant spiritual goal. That's how they avoid feeling insecure. In an effort not to feel insecure, in an attempt not to directly face the Unknown - which is where the impulse to be free originates - the ego creates a spiritual seeker as a means to avoid it. It is a very intelligent play of the mind, a show, a fantasy.

Q: It's almost like a contradiction.

A: The impulse to be free, since it comes from outside of the mind, outside of the "me," is completely unknown to the mind, to the me. So the way the mind deals with this vast Unknown and this insecurity is by seeking. For many people, the impulse to be free simply solidifies the sense of a separate self rather than taking them beyond it. Seeking happens, but the seeker who is separate from the sought is purely a creation of the mind. You are not the seeker; you are the sought. You are the Self.

Q: Is the illusion of the seeker simply a disguised form of resistance to the impulse to be free?

A: Yes. Do not seek outside of yourself; you are the sought. Be still and all will come to you. It is only the seeker that has absolutely no interest in stopping, but you are not the seeker.

You have to become more interested in the silent background than in the foreground, the phenomena: thoughts, emotions, sounds, smells, etc. The Self is the source from which the phenomena spring and the ground in which this display of phenomena is happening, from the subtlest feelings and experiences to the grossest matter. When you rest as this background, you can taste your Self. You just give yourself to it. Actually, you're giving your idea of yourself to your true Self. The idea comes out of the Silence, so you give the idea of who you are back to the Silence.

Q: I am interested in the seeking prior to the solidification of the seeker. It seems natural to move away from the overwhelming bodily sensation intiated by the impulse to be free . . . like when heat gets too hot, we move away. It also seems that the impulse has an inherent desire to move us or perhaps evolve in us or through us. How do you reconcile that natural tendency toward movement with the need to be still in the face of the impulse?

A: What needs to be seen is that for the impulse towards freedom to come to fruition, what you need to do is to jump into that heat. Jump into that fire. Do not give in to any tendency to move away. If you want to be cooked, you have to stay in the oven, in the fire of the impulse to be free.

Q: Since the Unknown stimulates a human being to feel insecure, how does anyone avoid this trap of the insecurity of the Unknown?

A: The insecurity of the Unknown is the very thing that you don't want to avoid. Within the insecurity, within the Unknown - the Mystery - lies the fulfillment of all seeking. Not until you come to absolute rest in that insecurity, in the Unknown, will it show its true face . . . which is beauty itself, beyond all fear. Total security arises out of total insecurity. Both security and insecurity refer to a personal, separate sense of I. Who is this I? In the absense of the personal I, all fears cease.

Q: When I look for myself inside the insecurity, there's absolutely nothing there.

A: But there is something there. Consciousness-ing is there. Awareness is there. That which has no image is there. That which is timeless is there. Eternal being-ness is there. Love is there. It is only the mind that looks into emptiness and says, "Nothing's there." What that really means is, there is no individual "I" there.

Q: That's what I was looking for.

A: (Laugh.) That's right. And the not finding of the I is freedom. It shows you just how much interest the mind has in anything other than itself: none! (Laugh.) It shows you just what the mind is focused on.

Q: You rarely speak about God. What is God to you?

A: In order to find what the concept of God is pointing to, you must let go of your image of God and every concept you have about God. You must dare to be void of all concepts and enter into perfect Emptiness, perfect stillness, and perfect silence. You must forget everything you have ever learned about God. It won't help you. It may comfort you, but such comfort is imaginary; it is an illusion. Let go of all the false comforts of the mind. Let them all come to an end. The end must be experienced fully in Stillness. When you let all images, all concepts, all hopes, all beliefs end, Stillness is experienced.

Experience the core of Stillness. Dive into it and surrender fully. In full surrender to Stillness, you directly experience That to which the concept of God points. In that direct experience, you awaken from the dream of the mind and realize that the concept of God points to who you truly are.

If you choose Freedom, life will become magical. The life you'll step into is one in which the Self is in hidden agreement with your humanness. The Self begins to harmonize with your life, and it may proceed in a way that you could never have predicted. The magical part is that the more you let go, the better it feels. The more you step into insecurity, the more you notice how secure and safe it is. Where you just stepped out of was unsafe.

Realization is the medicine given
to the disease of suffering -
and it's the only medicine there is.

~Adya

© Adyashanti 2003

The material in this three-part series comes from Adyashanti's book The Impact of Awakening: Excerpts from the Teachings of Adyashanti (Open Gate Sangha).

Please join me next month for the final installment of this series, as we move beyond the impulse to struggle into "A Love Greater Than Oneself."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A native of Northern California, Adyashanti (which means "primordial peace") is a teacher of growing recognition and popularity in the United States. After a series of transformative spiritual awakenings, he began teaching in 1996, at the request of his Zen teacher with whom he had been studying for 14 years. Adya's teachings have been compared to some of the early Chan (Zen) masters of China as well as teachers of Advaita Vedanta in India. He teaches extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area, offering weekly satsangs, frequent intensives, and silent retreats. He also travels to teach in other areas of the United States and Canada. His retreats are very popular and have become known as profoundly liberating events which open the heart of realization and true understanding. To learn more about Adyashanti's work, and to purchase his books and tapes, pleasse visit his website at: www.zen-satsang.org.

If you'd like to stay up-to-date with information about events with Adyashanti and Open Gate Sangha, please send a note with your personal information to: opengate@pobox.com.