When you focus on integrating your awakening, your lived experience of awakening is translated more fully into your life.
Integrating Your Awakening With A Greater Degree Of Presence
For us to integrate our experience of awakening, there must be a degree of wakefulness. We must:
- Exercise a greater degree of presence
- Take time to pause and be still
- Make sure we are connected
- Make sure we are consciously engaging with ourselves, with the moment, and with life
These are not just internal, imagined landscapes – they are a whole living field of being present.
Integrate Your Awakening, There Is No Division, We Are All Interconnected
It is imperative we understand that everything that is happening is a part of this field. My ancestors call this the dreaming, the Tjurkurpa, the law.
In this law, there is no division, there is no separation between the idea or the notion of a self and other.
There’s no division between this unique instrument that appears as an individual, and the earth, the landscape, the country, the trees, the creatures, the rivers, the sky, the cosmos.
There is no division between form and formlessness, between past and future. There’s no division at all, we are all interconnected.
Therefore we must give equal attention to all of these expressions, to all manifestations of creation. Otherwise, we may as well be living in a box!
Are You Living In A Box?
What happens if you live in a box for too long?
You start to suffocate, your life force is depleted, your ability to see and understand the world is dramatically reduced. You become so conditioned to the box that even if someone shreds the sides of that box, you find yourself sitting there. The sides may have come down, yet, out of deep conditioning, you’ll be terrified by what you see. Because it will seem foreign. It is the unknown you have come to fear.
If you become so conditioned to this box, you will falsely assume it is real, it is a place of safety and security. You could try to build up the sides again, you might even imagine that if you could just get the perfect box, all will be well!
We Are Radically Disconnected
This is the human condition today, metaphorically and literally. We are living in boxes, not just internally in the mind, but physically in our world.
When the whole field of our being is radically disconnected from existence, it makes it almost impossible to “see” the truth, the true nature of an interconnected world.
If we truly see, the truth is revealed and we can see how things actually are. If we are truly seeing, there is nothing to explain, nothing to be defined. Because in this seeing, all is.
How Do You Integrate Your Awakening And Strip Back The Veils Of The Box?
How can we aid ourselves in this awakening, to strip back the veils, to remove the blindfolds, step outside of the box?
Undoing the conditioned habits is essential. Meditation, and all of the yogic practices, aid this process. They stretch our being and awaken channels that have been dormant and asleep. This is critical for the true integration of your awakening.
To integrate our awakening we need to be wakefully seeing and experiencing. We need to integrate the internal realisations with the world around us in order for our awakening to have relevance and meaning.
We must be consciously engaging, wholly and fully to the panorama of existence.
Step outside the box, reconnect with nature, and realise you are a ‘360 degree happening’ in every moment.
Is Your Mind Accustomed To The Box?
What if your mind is accustomed to the box? And what if you have the sides of the box suddenly flung open, and someone says
Hey, come on, there's more, get outside of this box?
It can seem overwhelming or terrifying because you have even come to identify yourself as the box. You have lived so long in a confined space.
Could you possibly imagine instead that you can cope with the infinite? In truth, you already are the infinite, so you don’t even need to cope with it! There is no line between you and the infinite, no boundary, no division. You are the infinite.
It Takes Great Courage For You To Step Beyond That Which You Know
If you shy away from this seeing, this integrated awakening, if you turn your face from this, or ignore this, you will keep returning to your box, and remain attached to your box.
Maybe you think…
I can just live in my box forever, can't I?
Or, maybe you could just close your eyes and meditate inside the box and imagine the infinite field of oneness.
Yet still, you are not integrated with the whole of life.
It requires great courage for us to step beyond that which we’ve known, or that we thought was the way; to welcome the unknown, to welcome the possibility that there is so much more.
The Childlike Curiosity Of Indigenous Elders, Sages And Masters
There is something I find so endearing about my indigenous relations and my elders, despite their profound wisdom and connection. And likewise for the Buddhas, the sages, the great masters.
There is always a childlike curiosity, innocence and newness. There is more to learn, more to discover, more to see, more to understand.
There is humility. There is an honest recognition that life is teaching us something new, something profound, in every single moment. There is always more. We really are children in this great cosmos.
Your Quest For Enlightenment… Integrating Your Awakening
At times someone may approach the quest of enlightenment, with the preceding notion that:
I'm going to know, I'm going to get there, with enlightenment I can finally ‘arrive’ and I'll know it all.
But if this is the preceding motivation, you will be destined for failure, there will be disappointment.
Herein lies the paradox, because the Buddhas, theMasters and my elders all embody this presence so deeply that nothing seems to escape their embrace of all-reaching awareness.
Until You Surrender The Box, You Will Not Comprehend The Paradox
Until you surrender the box of conditions and you are willing to step beyond the known, to let the unknown flood into you, you will not be able to comprehend the paradox.
Only by direct experience and integrating your awakening with all around you, is this truly understood.
No matter how we might want to point to the true nature of ourselves and our existence in every single direction, we will still be met by this dichotomy, the paradox of life.
“What is this? Is it empty? Is it full? Is it everything? Is it nothing? It's empty, full. Is it form? Is it formless?”
Rupa eva shunyam, shumyam eva rupa… This is the Truth. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. And over and over and over, we meet this paradox.
So there is no ground for ‘success’ according to the mind. For this mind, the ego, that demands to ‘know’… The notion that I will get to know if I can be enlightened. There’s no ground for success in that.
The More You Let Go The More Joy And Freedom There Is
The wonderful thing is, the more one let’s go, the more that is renounced, then the more joy and freedom there is.
And all of the initial fear, uncertainty, and hesitation just vanishes into this delightful field. A field of play, of mystery, and wonder, and beauty and perfection. That’s all here.
The Journey Of Integrating Your Awakening Is Mysterious
It’s so strange to see the state humanity is in, and that this wondrous field of play, this paradise, this planet has been defiled.
Yet, paradise is still here. For those who have the eyes to see. And guess what? We all have eyes to see, we just need to engage them, we just need to open them.
But they’re a bit different than just the ordinary physical eyes that are just mere instruments. They are the eyes of fully engaged awareness. They are the eyes that welcome the mystery. And so it is, the journey of integrating your awakening, is mysterious too.
