Wake Up Now Read Online Free PDF Page B

other words, is seeking to awaken to itself through you, to see itself everywhere through your eyes and taste itself everywhere through your lips. “That which you are seeking,” wrote an anonymous sage, “is always seeking you.”
    Ultimately, your every desire—the desire for material things, relationships, career success, sexual gratification—is really the desire for the peace you experience for brief moments when you attain the object of your desire. Of course, such conditional peace is fleeting, and you move restlessly on to new objects and new desires in the hope ofrecapturing it. Until you know who you really are, know the freedom from desire that’s the true aim of every desire, you can never recognize the peace that can never be disturbed or lost.
ESCAPING FROM THE PRISON
    Though many people seem to “effort” and struggle for years to rediscover their innate awakened nature, others just seem to stumble on it inadvertently, without intensive meditation or deep inquiry. One friend of mine realized the emptiness of self quite unexpectedly while boarding a bus. Another asked the question “Who am I?” just once and penetrated through the illusion of a separate self. Still another woke up one morning without her accustomed identity; instead, pure awareness seemed to move through her body and experience life through her senses. But if you’re like Rumi, you need to exhaust yourself with the knocking.
    There’s a traditional story about a man imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit who attempts to dig his way to freedom with a spoon—rather like the character played by Tim Robbins in
The Shawshank Redemption
. After years of bone-wearying struggle, his hands calloused and bloody, he finally realizes the futility of his efforts and gives up. Tears of frustration and desperation streaming down his cheeks, he leans back against the door of his cell, only to discover that it’s been unlocked all along. No doubt his surprise and relief are similar to Rumi’s. As implausible as this story may seem, the point is clear—the prison that you imagine constrains you doesn’t really exist.
    Indeed, the one who tries by every available means to escape from the prison is the prison itself, as my teacher Jean Klein used to say. This formulation points directly to the source of our imprisonment—the mind that believes we’re imprisoned! Whether you can look directly at the source of the prison and release yourself from its grasp in the looking, or need to wear yourself out pounding on the bars, depends more on your karma than on your intentions. Even those who attempt to go directly to the source may suddenly find themselves confused and disoriented, standing once again outside the gate. “The only obstacle to complete realization is the thought ‘I have not realized,’” said the great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi, but dispensing with that pesky thought can be the work of a lifetime.
THE OPEN SECRET
    Some spiritual traditions, including Advaita Vedanta, refer to the core paradox as the “open secret”: The truth of your being has never been hidden from view—indeed, it’s as plain as the nose on your face—yet it remains a secret because you don’t know how and where to look, and the teacher’s job is to point you in the right direction. Instead of being advised to storm the barrier or crack the code through intensive practices, you’re counseled to listen to the teachings and allow them to point you gently in the right direction. Then, in a moment out of time, the secret reveals itself to you.
    In fact, the nose on your face is actually invisible when you’re looking straight ahead; you have to maneuver your eyes in a particular way if you want to see it. You’re accustomedto focusing on external objects but rarely turn around to look at the one who looks, the source of all seeing. “The eye can’t see the eye,” the sages say, because it’s the medium through which you see. Yet you can come to know