03.01.10

The End of Seeking – by Michael Dawson

Posted in Musings at 3:09 pm by miracles  Print This Post

Love waits on welcome, not on time,
Release is given you the instant you desire it.
Innocence is not of your making.
It is given you the instant you would have it.

A Course in Miracles T-13.VII.9:7, T-18.VII.4:3,T-15.IV.9:3-4

Sometimes when I am waking in the morning, I may receive some helpful advice. It’s that time when one is partly awake, and partly asleep. The thinking mind hasn’t fully started up, and this seems to give spirit a chance to get in. It seems spirit will take any chance that it is given! Recently, I was given a picture of the spiritual seeker on his journey back home. He was walking along this very long path, which eventually led to the top of a mountain. He was tired, but kept on moving. However, as he was moving along the path, there was a hand reaching down from above his head. This hand was trying to lift him up, into peace and joy. But the seeker could not see this hand, for he always had his eyes on the distant goal of the mountaintop. One day the seeker was so exhausted by his search he stopped on the path. He had surrendered, he had given up his search. It was then he looked up and saw the hand above him. To his amazement the hand reached down and lifted him back to heaven.

Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all.
A Course in Miracles Lesson188

When people cannot find peace and happiness following the goals of the material world, they often start a spiritual search. After all, if you don’t search how can you find it? When I was in my 20s, I lived in London and had access to some of the best spiritual bookshops there were. I felt if I looked long enough, I would find a book that had the truth in it. I found that this searching was both pleasurable and exciting. All I had to do was follow this path and it will eventually lead me to the truth that I was seeking.

One of the teachers I was drawn to was Jiddu Krishnamurti. I had been following Buddhism for about five years before I first came across his books. As I was reading his first book I was delighted to see him putting organised religions into the dustbin. But then he put Buddhism into the dustbin! I found that very disturbing, as this thought system had given me security. Krishnamurti seemed to be against all forms of organised thought. Later I was to read the following:

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief.

From part of the speech made by Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1929 when he dissolved the Order of the Star (his own organisation).

A path can only lead to a fixed object. What if truth is not fixed? What if truth is ever new? Our minds dislike things that cannot be labelled and categorised and nicely ordered. Minds like to be in control, it makes them feel secure.

Recently I received the following guidance:

We use our concepts of God to direct and redirect ourselves and the direction of our lives. It takes humans a long time to realize that there is no concept for God and no direction to Him. The oneness we crave dissolves the moment we set ourselves on a path. To stop in the oneness requires dissolution of ourselves, so we keep moving on our path hastily.

This guidance made it very plain that our identification with the ego – the idea that we are separate – is kept safely intact whilst we pursue the seeming noble search for God. As I get older I have a great respect for the cleverness and the subtlety of the ego. As the Course points out:

…. the ego’s maxim, (is) “Seek but do not find” T-16.V.6:5

To seek something we must know what we are seeking, otherwise how would we recognise it? Truth is not objective, is not “out there”. People who spiritually awaken, who have lost a sense of personal identity, are often surprised by what they find. It is not as they imagined.

The mind cannot know truth; it’s not designed for that purpose. The mind is a wonderful tool for our day-to-day living. You could not be reading this now without its help. The American teacher Adyashanti refers to this type of mind as the “toolbox mind”. If you want to study science then you will need to reach into your toolbox mind and get out the tools of reason and logic. You won’t get far without them. If we try to use the toolbox mind to find truth, we will condemn ourselves to a lifetime of fruitless search and desperation.

I think most people who desire to discover their spiritual reality will embark on a spiritual search. I certainly did. By the time I was in my 30s I had collected about 1500 spiritual books. My mind had become a spiritual library. Books can be very helpful at the beginning, but at some point they become a block. This also applies to A Course in Miracles, as we can see from the following quotation from the Course:

Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.
Lesson 189

Perhaps many of us do need to seek so we can discover that it’s fruitless and put it aside. The sooner we can see the trap of spiritual seeking the happier we will be.

This is the irony, the great cosmic joke, the great secret of “enlightenment.” When the person who searches for enlightenment dissolves, then and only then is the object of the search revealed – having been obscured all along by the “me” who wanted it.

The discovery that “personal enlightenment” is a myth can be received as quite a shock. From my own experience I can verify that the mind and personality does not happily embrace this discovery when it is first glimpsed, for it makes one look somewhat ridiculous. All the searching, all the practicing, all the trying to “get” it, is seen as worthless, is seen as having per perpetuated the illusion of “me,” as having obscured what was and is already here, what all this striving and practicing is occurring in-one’s own limitless Self.
Surprised By Grace by Amber Terrell

If we are honest with ourselves we will see that we want to attain enlightenment. We want to add enlightenment to ourselves. I am now enlightened we say. In the Bible this is referred to as sitting on the right-hand side of God. Notice however that you are still there. Now it’s you and God together in heaven. This is very comforting to the ego, because the ego is still alive. The ego has attained enlightenment. But enlightenment is the absence of the ego! Only when you, the me story, is gone can your spiritual reality dawn upon you. This is why we keep moving on the spiritual path. It’s as if God can’t hit a moving target. Seeking truth can become a game and we are happy to seek as long as we don’t find it! We are no longer a material seeker but are now a spiritual seeker.

Once you forget yourself, God remembers you: once you’ve become His slave, then you are free.
Rumi

One is more likely to awaken through surrender than through seeking to waken. The effort to awaken is the effort of ego, whereas to surrender is to give up all efforts and to place oneself in the hands of a vast force that is more powerful than any realization of non duality. When one finally gives up one’s futile attempts to make reality conform to one’s own wishes, and allows it to unfold on its own terms, all the energy that was tied up in foolish attempts to manipulate the universe is freed up.
Halfway up the Mountain – the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment by Mariana Caplan. Hohm Press 1999

All the above leads to the eventual conclusion that if you want to avoid truth, seek it! It is the ego’s arrogance that thinks it knows the way to God. It first decides what God is, and then designs a path to Him. The ego is happy for us to work with A Course in Miracles for it can make our desired goal appear a long way off and thus ensure we will remain faithful to the ego and its advice. The Course, however, thinks otherwise.

We don’t know the way to God.

From Lesson 189

Is it not He Who knows the way to you? You need not know the way to Him. Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between the Son and God the Father to be quietly removed forever. God will do His part in joyful and immediate response. Ask and receive.

We do not remove the obstacles, instead we become aware of the obstacles and agree to release them. These are the first two steps of forgiveness, the third is automatic – the removal of the guilt by spirit.

But do not make demands, nor point the road to God by which He should appear to you.

Our demand of God is to make us happy here in the ego’s world. We resent God for not giving us what we want especially if we think we are faithfull students of His Course

The way to reach Him is merely to let Him be. For in that way is your reality proclaimed as well.

We must forget about trying to change God into the one we want – a God who treats us special. Humility is needed – we have been wrong about everything – we know nothing about how to be in a constant state of peace and quiet joy.

And so today we do not choose the way in which we go to Him. But we do choose to let Him come.

We realise we have made a mistake in letting the ego be our teacher.

And with this choice we rest. And in our quiet hearts and open minds, His Love will blaze its pathway of itself. What has not been denied is surely there, if it be true and can be surely reached. God knows His Son, and knows the way to him. He does not need His Son to show Him how to find His way.

Father, we do not know the way to You. But we have called, and You have answered us. We will not interfere. Salvation’s ways are not our own, for they belong to You.

We need to admit we have been wrong and we know nothing of the way to God. Our job is to find the obstacles to God and let them be removed.

What can we do?

If seeking is going to get us nowhere what can we do? To we just give up? Is there anything we can seek? Yes! It’s not the truth, but the obstacles to truth.

An ancient Zen master nicely summed it up when he said;

Do not seek the truth, simply cease cherishing illusions

The Course states it this way:

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false.
T-16.IV.6:1-2

So here we are back on the seekers path! However, now we are seeking for something completely different. We are now seeking all that blocks the awareness to truth, love, joy and beauty. Thank God we can give up the search for the truth! That’s what we already are. No need to find love, that’s how we are created. What a relief!

All that is asked of you is to make room for truth. You are not asked to make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do is let it in; only to stop your interference with what will happen of itself; simply to recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave away.
T-21.II.7:6-8

Of course, for our egos it’s much more pleasant to search for truth somewhere in the future. Searching the obstacles to truth does not sound so glamorous. It’s uncomfortable to look within and find anger, guilt, shame, fear, lack of self-worth, and a whole collection of unpleasant thoughts that the ego would want to deny and project onto the world.

Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else, called by another name, or hidden by deceit of any kind, if it would be escaped. It must be seen exactly as it is, where it is thought to be, in the reality which has been given it, and with the purpose that the mind accorded it. For only then are its defenses lifted, and the truth can shine upon it as it disappears.
Lesson 333

“Lead us not into temptation” means “Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance.”
T-1.III.4:7

The truth, peace and joy we all crave is there and will be revealed to us when we do our part. We cannot find this by our personal striving. Humility teaches us that we need help from outside our ego’s thought system. The ego wants to do everything by itself as it seeks to stay in control.

In the Course Jesus states that if you think you are a body then you are insane. The insane need help from the sane. We have that help and is just waiting for us to ask. It won’t go against our free will. We do not even have to heal the obstacles we find. That will be done for us by spirit.

Do not hide suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt, and let Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His light, and search your mind carefully for any thoughts you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.
T-13.III.7:3-6

We are being asked turn our daily life into a classroom of forgiveness. The seeker’s path continues, and now it’s in the mirror of relationships. Our daily interactions will often bring up what’s unhealed in our minds. Underneath our unforgiveness lies the truth we have been seeking. It simply needs to be uncovered by forgiving the judgement that overlays it. Putting it simply, forgiveness is looking without judgement at our egos and other people’s egos. We are not being asked to change our egos or other people’s egos. That would be to make them real. Nor are we being asked to love our egos for that would repeat the same error. The ego is nothing but a thought that we still cherish. That thought is that we prefer separation and being a special individual to unity or oneness with all. However, it’s only in unity we will find what we crave for.

The speed at which we return to the awareness of our spiritual reality is up to us. We could have it now if we wanted to. We need only let go the hand of the ego and hold the hand of the Holy Spirit. This would mean giving up our victimhood, judgement, justified anger, the desire to blame others, the desire to be separate and our individuality. Most of us are not ready to give up all that at once. Jesus is very aware of that and is happy to lead us step-by-step on our forgiveness path. To feel guilty that we still want to hold onto these “gifts of the ego” is to allow the ego to come back in again through a back door in our minds. Jesus asks us to gently smile at the ego and not to take it seriously.

With a sigh of relief we can now take off our truth seeker’s hat and put it down. We still have something to seek, but it will be easy to find! As we notice these daily obstacles and learn to gently smile at them they will dissolve. And then the light that is underneath them will start to show through. This will encourage us to follow the path of forgiveness. No need to think anything more about enlightenment. That will come in God’s time.

Grow as the flower grows, unconsciously, but eagerly anxious to open its soul to the air. So must you press forward to open your soul to the Eternal. But it must be the Eternal that draws forth your strength and beauty, not desire of growth.
For in the one case you develop in the luxuriance of purity: in the other you harden by the forcible passion for personal stature.
Light on the Path by Mabel Collins

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From ACFIP Newsletter – Issue 23, Dec 2009
with permission of the author Michael Dawson

Michael is based on Stradbroke Island, Queensland Australia and runs many workshops on the course both in Australia and Europe.
Please visit his website for further information, details of workshops and other articles.

Email: mdawson@acfip.org
Web site: http://www.acfip.org

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