Seeking, Avoiding, and The Holy Dance of Waking Up

“This awakening trajectory - this business of Is-ness - has an Intelligence to it. Trust it”.

Years ago, I heard a teacher talk of waking up, and he never did it in a way that sounded far off or impossible. This was something human beings had done for years, and it felt possible.

One day I just knew. As I began meditating and would touch moments of what was spoken about in his dharma talks, I knew that this was possible.

I had a sense I couldn’t shake; a sense that in this life, I would know this thing called waking up. Whatever it was. And it terrified me. It felt like I was flirting with something dangerous. Yeah, it was dangerous to the ego, to the mind, to the sense of “me”.

Looking back now, thinking that remaining separate and totally run by my conditioning and trauma was more appealing than awakening makes me laugh. It shows how little we really know about what waking up actually is, no matter how much we talk about it.

And it also reveals how little we know about what it means to be fully human.

I mean, I had no idea what any of it meant in a lived way back then. I just knew: a) it was coming and b) I didn’t want to give up my humanity.

Ah, what we think we know.

Waiting in my trailer on set for a TV show, circa 2012. Clearly I had become quite serious and very spiritual.

Nothing has happened according to the mind’s ideas.

I felt there were things I was here to do in this lifetime. I could sense it as a deep knowing, like the way a soul knows, and I thought that awakening would make it impossible for me to do those things.

And according to the Theravada tradition, which I started in, I was aware there were stages of realization. So I was open to waking up just a little bit. And then a little bit more. Glimpses, openings, flashes, getting cozy with actual realization. More freedom and expansion and well-being would be experienced and I’d say “OK, that’s enough for now”, thinking I could control it. I was playing this game. A game with the enlightenment impulse that has probably been present as a mighty force in many lifetimes.

I began to have past life memories arise out of nowhere while meditating. Ah, yes, I had played this game before. I had been a student and teacher and everything in between. And still am!

And God/Source/Reality played along. I was playing a game with my Self, my Being.

Until one day when it cracked and it happened. And everything was turned upside down. It did indeed blow my world apart, but I continued to actually function as a living, breathing human. Who knew? And I learned that when you awaken, you awaken to everything, not just your True nature, or your Spirit. You awaken to what you’d been asleep to. Not all at once. No, no, that’s too much. Grace is a part of this, thankfully.

But I had shit to unpack. A lot. And if you’ve heard my story and think that awakening means a really bumpy ride, I have to say that it was for me because I’m stubborn and because I hadn’t done much cleanup work prior to the initial awakening.

So healing work was needed. Stabilization. Integration.

When a later, even deeper awakening happened, I knew by then how to be with the post-awakening terrain. I knew the drill. Open, unpack some stuff. Realize some more, unpack some more stuff.

And so more cleanup work took place in my outer world — in the circumstances of my life — than ever before, which took time. It has been a movement of alignment, of Truth being given the freedom to shine through every aspect of my lived life as a human. This will go on until I leave this body, as it will for all people who have realized the ground of being.

There is alignment with the flow of my dharma, my unique path.

I was playing games with waking up. With What Is, you could say. I thought I would lose my humanity.

But the joke’s on me because I’m a fuller human than ever before. I am really here. All of me. Humanity and Spirit - right in one spot. Goofy and silly and deep and wise. Flawed and fearless, limited and limitless. Imperfectly perfect, as a cheesy coffee mug I saw in line at a Ross Dress For Less once proclaimed.

It seems now I get the chance to be totally human in a way I couldn’t have. And at the same time, I’m glad awakening happened both quickly, and took its time.

There was some intelligence to waiting if we could call it that; to playing that game. I had karma to engage in. Situations to finish, as traumatic as they were. Lessons to learn. If I had woken up earlier in my life I would have missed out on some highly dysfunctional relationships and situations. Whee! And they were a gift in ways I may never fully understand. I see it was all a Grace. It happened as was needed, as it was meant to. A sort of beautiful and painful perfection.

So there is an intelligence running the show, moving through you. There is Grace and compassion, and you are held in something larger that knows how to do this.

On the night the “I” that I had come to know died, and I realized I was everything and everyone in this location and all seeming locations; and time collapsed, and the ground of being shone as all there is, and it could not be shaken, no matter how much I jumped up and down in my cabin at the Zen Center in the mountains or tried to remember what I had for breakfast that morning, or looked at the dirt and the sky outside the window and tried to find something that was not who I was too; I felt the presence of beloved Guru Rinpoche, and a knowing broke through the thick, empty, luminous silence and said: “Relax. People have been doing this for centuries.”

And that is the damn truth. I exhaled.

This awakening trajectory - this business of Is-ness - has an Intelligence to it. Trust it.

Even when we meet what we think we’ve been seeking we can feel as though we are just not equipped. Mayday, mayday! Hell no!

But it’s here and something was ready. Nature has a way about it.

Seeking and avoiding can be holy movements when rooted in wisdom. When rooted in ordinary mind, they are impulses of obscuration. Who’s to say what was holy and what was conditioned reactivity on my path? I don’t even think I’m capable of seeing them as separate at this point. There have been many levels operating at once.

It’s been a great big all-of-it.

So I ask you: how are you seeking and avoiding? What are you seeking and avoiding? Is there wisdom here? Is there also habit? Both are welcome. But just look…be curious. And maybe, just be.

If you’re seeking, see that. Let it be. If you’re avoiding, OK. See that, let it be. Just for a breath. Maybe for a minute.

We think we know best. But what if it’s all a holy dance?