Awakening should be
a surprise. When you don’t expect something to happen and it happens, you feel
surprise. When Webster’s wife caught him kissing the maid, she told him she was
very surprised. Now, Webster was a stickler for using words accurately
(understandably, since he wrote a dictionary), so he answered her, “No, my
dear, I am surprised. You are astonished!”
Some people make
awakening a goal. They are determined to get there; they say, “I refuse to be
happy until I’m awakened.” In that case, it’s better to be the way you are,
simply to be aware of the way you are. Simple awareness is happiness compared
with trying to react all the time. People react so quickly because they are not
aware. You will come to understand that there are times when you will
inevitably react, even in awareness. But as awareness grows, you react less and
act more. It really doesn’t matter.
There’s a story of a
disciple who told his guru that he was going to a far place to meditate and
hopefully attain enlightenment. So he sent the guru a note every six months to
report the progress he was making. The first report said, “Now I understand
what it means to lose the self.” The guru tore up the note and threw it in the
wastepaper basket. After six months he got another report, which said, “Now I
have attained sensitivity to all beings.” He tore it up. Then a third report
said, “Now I understand the secret of the one and the many.” It too was torn
up. And so it went on for years, until finally no reports came in. After a time
the guru became curious and one day there was a traveler going to that far
place. The guru said, “Why don’t you find out what happened to that fellow.”
Finally, he got a note from his disciple. It said, “What does it matter?” And
when the guru read that, he said, “He made it! He made it! He finally got it!
He got it!”
And there is the
story about a soldier on the battlefield who would simply drop his rifle to the
ground, pick up a scrap of paper lying there, and look at it. Then he would let
it flutter from his hands to the ground. And then he’d move somewhere else and
do the same thing. So others said, “This man is exposing himself to death. He
needs help.” So they put him in the hospital and got the best psychiatrist to
work on him. But it seemed to have no effect. He wandered around the wards
picking up scraps of paper, looking at them idly, and letting them flutter to
the ground. In the end they said, “We’ve got to discharge this man from the
army.” So they call him in and give him a discharge certificate and he idly
picks it up, looks at it, and shouts, “This is it? This is it.” He finally got
it.
So begin to be aware
of your present condition whatever that condition is. Stop being a dictator.
Stop trying to push yourself somewhere. Then someday you will understand that
simply by awareness you have already attained what you were pushing yourself
toward.
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