Waking Up
Waking up to my true nature was the catalyst for a profound change in the direction of my life.
Up until my thirties, I was—as most people are—busy with building a career, forging relationships, making a home, and exploring creative outlets. Yet underneath all that, there was a quiet sense that it would never be enough.
As my father had felt before me, there was an urge to travel and see the wider world. I took it as an impulse for adventure, but in retrospect, I think a deeper longing was beginning to stir.
It was, in truth, the longing to return home—to my true home, my spiritual heart—though I had no context to understand that at the time.
On one of those journeys—now clearly a pilgrimage—I had an encounter with the Hindu god Ganesha. That meeting ignited a passionate spiritual search that has shaped my life ever since.
Read the poem: Ode to Ganesha
This path has taken me up and down, in and out of many experiences. What finally catalysed a deeper realisation was reflecting on a phrase by the sage Ramana Maharshi:
“Rest in choiceless, effortless awareness.”
In asking myself what, in my experience, was truly choiceless and effortless, I suddenly found myself standing in—and as—pure awareness: that which I already am, before the arising of any experience, untouched by whatever may come and go.
It was a moment of radiant illumination.
The ultimate aha.
And yet, here’s the paradox:
It has taken a great deal of effort—and the ongoing exercise of choice—to find any stability in that realisation.
Slowing down the momentum of grasping at the separate self-image has required enormous and repeated effort—the choice to live with integrity, vigilance, passion, trust, honesty (especially self-honesty), authenticity, and the willingness to stay real and keep listening to the subtle longing that first ignited the search.
And perhaps most importantly: spiritual companionship.
“The truth is that this is it, right now – there is never another time – nothing has ever been missing.”
“Enlightenment”—whatever that word may mean (I’m wary of spiritual terminology these days; meanings shift and can be deceptive)— is in one sense instantaneous. We are already that which we seek.
But to live in the full austerity of not-knowing-anything, to truly allow the all-embracing presence that needs nothing and knows nothing—well, that demands everything of us.
Read the poem: Instant Enlightenment
And still, for all the effort involved, the discovery is that this is the most natural way to be.
Being is who we are. We’ve added becoming as a way of turning our lives into a project—an arc of self-improvement that never quite arrives.
The simple truth is: This Is It.
Right now.
There is no other time. Nothing has ever been missing.
We’ve simply been looking in the wrong place—
elsewhere, and in the future— instead of right here, right now.
Read the poem: Are You Ready?
Waking up to my true nature was the catalyst for a profound change in the direction of my life. Up until my thirties, I was—as most people are—busy with building a career, forging relationships, making a home, and exploring creative outlets. Yet underneath all that, there was a quiet sense that it would never be enough.
As my father had felt before me, there was an urge to travel and see the wider world. I took it as an impulse for adventure, but in retrospect, I think a deeper longing was beginning to stir.
It was, in truth, the longing to return home—to my true home, my spiritual heart—though I had no context to understand that at the time.
On one of those journeys—now clearly a pilgrimage—I had an encounter with the Hindu god Ganesha. That meeting ignited a passionate spiritual search that has shaped my life ever since.
Read the poem: Ode to Ganesha
This path has taken me up and down, in and out of many experiences. What finally catalysed a deeper realisation was reflecting on a phrase by the sage Ramana Maharshi:
“Rest in choiceless, effortless awareness.”
In asking myself what, in my experience, was truly choiceless and effortless, I suddenly found myself standing in—and as—pure awareness: that which I already am, before the arising of any experience, untouched by whatever may come and go.
It was a moment of radiant illumination.
The ultimate aha.
And yet, here’s the paradox:
It has taken a great deal of effort—and the ongoing exercise of choice—to find any stability in that realisation.
Slowing down the momentum of grasping at the separate self-image has required enormous and repeated effort—the choice to live with integrity, vigilance, passion, trust, honesty (especially self-honesty), authenticity, and the willingness to stay real and keep listening to the subtle longing that first ignited the search.
And perhaps most importantly: spiritual companionship.
“The truth is that this is it, right now – there is never another time – nothing has ever been missing.”
“Enlightenment”—whatever that word may mean (I’m wary of spiritual terminology these days; meanings shift and can be deceptive)— is in one sense instantaneous. We are already that which we seek.
But to live in the full austerity of not-knowing-anything, to truly allow the all-embracing presence that needs nothing and knows nothing—well, that demands everything of us.
Read the poem: Instant Enlightenment
And still, for all the effort involved, the discovery is that this is the most natural way to be.
Being is who we are. We’ve added becoming as a way of turning our lives into a project—an arc of self-improvement that never quite arrives.
The simple truth is: This Is It.
Right now.
There is no other time. Nothing has ever been missing.
We’ve simply been looking in the wrong place—
elsewhere, and in the future— instead of right here, right now.
Read the poem: Are You Ready?
