I want to be enlightened!

Questioner: “I want what you wanted”.

Adyashanti: “What did I want?”

Questioner: “You wanted to become enlightened.”

Adyashanti: “I wanted to become enlightened. Ok. It didn’t work out. Enlightenment becomes enlightened. The me, the little guy, little Steven Larry Gray, that meditated in his parent’s backyard for hours and hours a day, every single day, in the morning and the evening, and did nothing but do the good Buddhist thing, diligently, terribly, terribly disciplined, he didn’t get enlightened. He never made it. He never crossed the river of nirvana, it never happened to him.

I got so exhausted psychically, internally, emotionally, spiritually that I couldn’t keep it up anymore. And i had to see the truth. I was willing to see the truth only because I was exhausted. I can’t do it. And in that “I can’t do it,” and not as a spiritual strategy, emptiness woke up out of the seeker. The seeker didn’t wake up. Consciousness woke up from the seeker, from the personality, from the “me” that was trying so hard."

The state that so many seekers are after is a feeling. It’s an insight too, but this insight only becomes relevant when our ‘I’-identity knocks on our door again. It’s not an insight gained for life. It’s situation-specific. Communicating this insight is meaningless, what matters is to transfer this feeling of serenity, love and fulfillment moment by moment. When we say, “I want to be enlightened”, we first have to take away the want—the quest—then the ‘I’-identification and all that remains is enlightenment. Zoom in the here and now and be One with life. Go inside and be One with stillness. Leave everything else up to Consciousness. She is always near-by.