Adyashanti – Spiritual Awakening: A Radical Shift in Identity – Opening of Wake Up Festival 2012
In this eye-opening video, Adyashanti discusses the key ways one can experience a radical shift in identity by the awakening process. He points out that everyone is on their own journey and each journey varies in the way it looks and feels. People define awakening in many different ways and one way is not necessarily better than another.
As we undergo a spiritual awakening, one’s reality will change as they undergo an evolution towards enlightenment. Questions like, “What is real? What is truth?” will become quite important, as we tend to have hundreds of veils we can get lost in. After all, the self or ego is a composite of many selves together, so getting through them is a journey that ought to be embraced.
Getting to the point
It’s getting to the point where we find ourselves interested in really waking up that is interesting. Many start out thinking that they want to awaken, but have no idea the journey that takes them on. Many of us have human agendas and things that need to be addressed. You don’t necessarily get to awakening as a final destination; awakening is a process and journey and many transformational moments occur along the way.
At the very core of each person is a yearning to know oneself fully. To experientially know oneself as part of existence. The more we clear ourselves from self-images and open up, the faster we get to that authentic place of knowing who and where we are. This yearning is intrinsic to existence itself. Our personal journey is a part of that. It’s being fueled by something that belongs to existence as a whole.
“You never know when the universe will push you off the cliff”
This phrase essentially means that you may have one agenda, but the universe has another. You think going off a cliff will be the end of your world, but the universe may declare that it is a new beginning for you. It can be a time when you lose what you’ve been so tightly clinging to that has been holding you back from truly awakening. Maybe it’s greed or pride. Or perhaps its fear or worry. Surely there are things that could be holding you back from really shifting and experiencing yourself in a whole new, spiritual way.
A fundamental shift in identity
What we are seeking and what we will experience as we move forward on this journey is a fundamental shift in identity. As we do we will have many experiences- some beautiful and some terrifying, but the result will be that you will begin to see things with a clarity. You will begin to go backward and remember who you were before you shifted in the first place: a spirit.
See, emptiness is simply the lack of boundaries. It’s not like an empty box. The lack of boundary lines in who you are is necessary for that new identity. The journey doesn’t end with you getting some grand cosmic identity. You don’t end up with some identity that you can go around bragging about. No. It’s kind of ironic because by seeking your true self, you end up with an experiential elimination of your ego self- the self you were so proud of!
Think of Jesus Christ and how he was a person willing to be whatever it meant to be one with God. The story of Jesus resonates with Adyashanti, as he was willing to do whatever existence commanded of him. That took a great deal of courage and selflessness.
The more enlightened you become, the more your spiritual life shifts. It’s not all about how you are feeling. Feelings can certainly get you off track. The more you align with God, Source, etc., the more you know without a shadow of a doubt that everything is unimaginably alright no matter what happens. You know that you cannot be moved and this can become the ground for which you live.
When you really come to realize this, life can play a different agenda. Adyashanti went through a period of intense physical problems and pain for about five years and it reduced everything down to something very primordial for him. Every shred of pretense disappeared. It was an incredibly humbling experience as he would shake on the floor with overwhelming pain in his body.
The effect of such an experience gave him a bond with a part of the human condition that he did not know before. It led to a deeper sense of compassion and humility. He experienced something a part of humanity experiences and gave him an extraordinary appreciation for life.
Today Adyashanti speaks from his life experiences and encourages many around the world. This is simply one of his astounding videos on the spiritual way.