Awakening—Two step forwards, one step back

 I have been a passionate man all my life and have always been quite proud of my German work ethics. Perhaps my proudest moments were ten years ago when I had both feet in the professional life, was a newly minted dad and also found the time to write spiritual books in my spare time. The occasional dark night of the soul tried communicating that not all was kosher, but I took this down as little periods of exhaustion from working too hard.

 

The Hindus contrast three energy states in the Bhagavad Gita, tamas, rajas and sattva. Tamas is the lowest, the dull, restless and conflicted, rajas is the expressed energy, and in the highest form can be the noble path of passion and purpose, and then sattva is the purest state altogether, the cessation of self; Awareness in short. As mentioned, I was always quite content with the state I was in, seekers love it it when you manage to express passion and purpose and when you manage to lead others on a similar path.

 

Alas, there was depression and conflicted energy in me which got conveniently pushed under the carpet in the spiritual quest. Awakening is non-linear, it’s not even a process to speak of, it’s just a series of here and now that extend as long as we are around. All interferences to “self-less” living are brutally exposed, so that it appears that we are taking a step back instead. In my case, I realized that the craving to be “no-body” was in fact a hidden quest to be somebody. The journey of passion and purpose was an inner conflict instead.

 

There is no process. The perceived interferences and apparent inner conflicts are wake-up calls to step out of them by unmasking our psychological self at work. Specifically, I have stopped writing spiritual books and understand now that these books write themselves instead. There is no desire to impress anyone, only the desire to connect with the friends who find my insights helpful on their journeys. Let’s stop classifying people, the opportunity to connect with the higher energies is always here and now. We neither take a stop forward or backward, we realize that the step is the Way.