As you have explored and followed The Direct Way, I hope you’ve come to realize that true spiritual awakening marks the end of the restless search as well as the end of the seeker identity. However, it is not the end of continuously deepening understanding, and it’s not the end of developing and embodying one’s insight in daily living. In this sense, enlightenment is not a goal with a finish line; it’s a way of being and living in a conscious and heartfelt manner. It is the way and activity of love and freedom, but it is also the responsibility and deep caring for all of life. The Direct Way is a means of opening the door to spiritual awakening, which in turn opens the door to these possibilities but in no way guarantees them.
Although awakening is a life-altering event, it’s also the beginning of a profound and demanding journey. It’s not for the faint of heart, nor for the easily discouraged, but it is unfathomably profound. It will take every bit of courage and humility that you can muster to have more than a brief glimpse of awakening. If I told you otherwise, I would not be telling you the truth, and if spirituality is about anything, it’s about finding and telling the truth. It’s about waking up from every illusion that you have, even the ones you want to hold onto. It’s about encountering and stepping through resistance and fear again and again, more times than you can imagine. It’s about being on guard for becoming a spiritually inflated ego, while also having the courage to stand up in this life and claim your true being. It’s about truly seeing and experiencing the face of God in every person and creature, every event and encounter that you have. It’s about realizing and coming to grips with the living fact that life or the Divine or God does not fool around and is not always (or even often) opening according to your preferences. Fortunately, what matters to the Divine is that we wake up. The Divine gives each of us all we need to wake up in this lifetime—have you noticed? God isn’t playing softball. We suffer to the exact degree we resist allowing our eyes and hearts to open.
Don’t assume that every insight and every revelation is going to be wonderful, because they’re not all going to be. In fact, most of them won’t, but they will hold the possibility of opening you up to an experience of being that is beyond your wildest imagination. Many people are called to an awakened life, but few choose it unconditionally. That’s been my experience. It is more than they bargained for, but it is there and it’s real and it’s available. The whole world is waiting for you, depending on you, depending on each one of us, to awaken to our shared reality and to live it as clearly, honestly, and humbly as possible. We are not called to be perfect, just awake and undividedly whole. We’re called to bear witness to the unity of being. This alone is one of the most powerful forces in existence. So guard your mind, heart, and self from the anger, resentment, and blame so common these days; stand up and embody your life as consciously and courageously as you can.
In “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” one of my favorite poets, William Stafford, put it like this:
For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.1
I hope the teachings of The Direct Way benefit you; that’s the whole reason for doing them. I hope you carry them with you and put them into practice whenever you feel called to do so. All it takes is to penetrate one of these pointing-out instructions to awaken into a new dimension of being. Don’t ever forget that it is your birthright to live an awakened life. This is not something for the rare, for the few. If you believe that it is, then you will probably live that belief out, but I can tell you that it’s not exceptional, it’s a real possibility—not only that we can awaken, but that we can live and embody that awakening to an extraordinary degree. Something within us, some deep primal instinct, truly desires this. It longs for more than having a powerful revelatory moment, as amazing and necessary as those moments are. There’s an instinct to humanize our insight, make it real, bring it back here to earth, to our lives, to the essence of the human experience. Remember, it’s not about perfection. We’re not going to do it perfectly, but we can embody this wonderful truth of our being in ways we never imagined. It’s the ultimate journey. It’s inside of us already; all we must do is open to it and embrace it.
Thank you. I’ve loved sharing these teachings. It’s been a wonderful journey for me, and I hope it has been for you. May you be blessed and bless in return.