What’s the goal of spirituality?

Nowadays, there is a huge amount of teachings, teachers, gurus, guides and spiritual educators. Often, they present very conflicting ideas. Sometimes to a lesser degree, sometimes to a greater degree. But to give people something very simple and yet very potent, that’s what there is a lack of and that’s why I am writing these blog posts. So what’s the core of the whole spiritual business? What’s there to realize and what’s there to gain?

There is nothing at all to gain. What’s to be revealed is the true nature of the very reality we’re inhabiting right now. To realize that we are what we seek for. There is no gaining in this business.

Or in the words of Ramana Maharshi, “There is no greater mystery than this — viz., ourselves being the Reality we seek to gain reality. We think that there is something hiding our Reality and that it must be destroyed before the Reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.”

Alright, but if we are that which we seek for, why do we feel the sense of lack? Why do we feel the spiritual impulse? And why do we have to meditate in order to spiritually mature? Adyashanti says, “We can’t see things in their true nature until we stop seeing things in their untrue nature.” That’s the purpose of spiritual practice right there. What needs to be done away with are our ideas about ourselves, the world and reality. Then, and only then, what’s true will reveal itself.

Naturally, the next question is — what’s gonna be in it for “me” at the end? And that’s a very good question indeed, for we need to know what we’re getting into. Unfortunately, awakening is a destructive process. The one who wants to be more spiritually awake/mature is the one standing in the way. It’s the one from whom the Reality wakes up. As another great sage said, “Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the Reality, but not Reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown…”

So that’s it for a short, direct and hopefully potent introduction into the business of spiritual awakening.