Learning and transformation along a spiritual quest

 Whether you like it or not,

whether you know it or not,

secretly, all nature seeks God

and works towards Truth.

Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

Before we address learning and transformation we have to ask, is there a spiritual quest? Everyone is on a spiritual quest—consciously or subconsciously. Even if we strive for power, meaningless sex and material riches, we are on a subconscious journey that is bound to demonstrate sooner or later that these things also don’t make us happy. Everyone searches for the inner Bliss.

We may call those who look for a new way to be on a conscious spiritual quest, but nobody is “better” or “worse” than the other. Our perceived identity is the interference that gives us the feeling that we are away from Home, whether it is the identity of the greedy CEO who abuses people and the environment or the spiritual seeker. Everyone is just one insight away from the realization that we are Home.

The missing step in the Home-coming is to look through the apparition into the essence of things. There is no one around after the coin has dropped! A Course in Miracles writes, “All of his miscreations can literally disappear in the ‘twinkling of an eye’ because they are merely misperceptions.” That is true. The breakthrough is a new way of seeing, but the subject-object-knowing connection disappears with it. 

Take the sea that is visible to the traveler in the desert or the rope that got mistaken to be a snake. Is the observer who was fooled before learning or transforming if even his existence was never real? Learning and transformation belongs to a lower plane of consciousness that the spiritual seeker aims to leave behind altogether. In the “body-mind-world matrix,” the “learner” aims to see the rope while realizing his own non-existence too!

The transformation is the switch from mind-centered living to heart-centered and the learning opportunity is to see through the illusions of pride, greed, lust, jealousy and anger, but be mindful of the identity of the spiritual aspirant which might be growing with every break-through. The direct path is understanding that there is no learning nor transforming; in fact, there is not even a spiritual path. We are part of That in which body, mind and the world appear.