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Powerful Presence and Penetrating Clarity: The Superpowers of Spiritual Work

May 17, 2024

For the past thirty years my life has been devoted to two overarching goals: First, to experience enlightenment, and second, to understand the path that leads there.

As I have come to see it there are two capacities that form the heart and soul of spiritual work, presence and clarity. Our potential to realize and embody expanded awareness rests on the cultivation of these twin superpowers.

First, presence is our ability to bring all of our attention, energy, and most importantly, commitment to the experience of this very moment. As we become more and more powerfully present we find that all the riches of spirit exist right here in the experience of now.

One of the reasons it is so challenging to sustain this depth of presence is because there is no room left for thought. You can’t know anything about now, you can only experience it. We have become dependent on thought to navigate through life and that makes it hard to imagine being without it, even for a short time. Nevertheless, in the immediate experience of the present there can be no thoughts. Thoughts take time. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end, none of which fit into the instant of now.

The miracle you discover in the immediacy of now is that the experience of the moment comes saturated with knowing. You don’t have thoughts, but you still know. Every moment arrives infused with wisdom. Not with thoughts, but with a mysterious knowing that is whole and complete on its own. This is the type of knowing that is called gnosis in the ancient wisdom traditions.

You might imagine that presence alone would be enough to guide you all the way to enlightenment, however you also need the penetrating clarity that comes from radical inquiry if you want to reach the highest possibility of realization.

We are deeply conditioned to assume we exist as a someone – a human being, living a single human life. We assume our five senses are the limit of our perception, that we came into existence on our birthday, and will cease to exist when our body stops functioning. We identify with our current incarnation in ways that make us feel separate from other people and the world in which we live. We live encased in an identity, a separate sense of self, a self concept.

Unless we see through the limitations of our self concept, it will claim ownership of the power of presence that we’ve attained. A personal attainment like this is a glorious event, but it is far less magnificent than what is possible when that power resides in the cosmos itself.

Powerful presence liberates you from the limits of your self-concept. In the hindu tradition this is the first moment when we can declare, I AM THAT! I am presence, I am awareness. This is a profound awakening, but the “I” is still someone, albeit a liberated someone. This awakening reveals our personal True Self, and is reminiscent of the Hindu idea of Atman.

With the cultivation of penetrating clarity all of the assumptions that generate a sense of self dissolve. Whatever is aware, is much bigger than what was born on your birthday, and expands far beyond anything “I” ever imagined was possible.

The sense of self expands beyond all proportions, and something releases. The ability to identify with anything in particular yields in the direct knowing that nothing is outside of that which is aware. I AM THAT now becomes I AM ALL. But the all that I am, overwhelms any sense of self. My previous identity tumbles out beyond the known and into the unimaginable.

There is still a declaration, I AM THAT, but the “I” making the declaration is not a human being, not even a liberated one. This “I” is the cosmos itself, now free from the dream of being human and stepping into ITS True Self.

The final awakening is not a human awakening, it is the awakening of the cosmos from the dream of a self-concept. And we, whatever we are, were always THAT. In many enlightenment traditions, this is seen as the highest pinnacle of realization, and only the greatest realizers have reached it, but those who have inspire us by revealing the cosmic scale of awakening. We are compelled to spiritual work because we are part of an awakening universe.

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