back Texts

This is an interesting question, one which we ought to ask ourselves regularly throughout our lives and especially after we have been practising a spiritual path for a few years. It’s important to rediscover the state from which the question originally sprang and reconnect with the call from the deepest part of our being which originally moved us to begin the search. At times during the journey, we can forget the real question and lose ourselves in form, where we find a certain measure of satisfaction and security. This is why it becomes interesting to ask the question, "What am I really looking for?" in all honesty.

Often we find either a state of suffering or a state of extreme frustration at the origin of our quest. We sense that absolutely nobody and no specific situation can possibly calm our utter turmoil or make up for the enormous lack which threatens us. We have finally come in contact with a state of dissatisfaction and absolute distress in which all our beliefs and security are shaken by the evidence that no external situation can fill our immense emptiness, the void we keep trying endlessly to fill. This frustration and suffering have to come to a point of total paroxysm in which we can no longer find any relief. They will not leave us, they tip us into a kind of absurdity, so untenable is the situation. At this point of absurdity we find ourselves faced with the impossibility of finding a solution. This is a fine starting point for the mystic quest. However as long as the point of absolute distress has not been reached and we still hang on to the notion that we may be fulfilled by a new job, a new lover, a new computer, by the idea of belonging to a spiritual tradition, the essential conditions are missing. As long as the point of no return has not been reached, we are missing the main engine which will take us beyond our personal story.

Basically what we are looking for, what we all carry within us, is a profound yearning to find inner peace. Depending on how much maturity we have reached, we look for it in (and project it on) situations, or external material or spiritual acquisitions. Then, if the necessary maturity flowers in our bodymind, our search redirects itself towards our own heart and we may feel the need to meet a spiritual tradition and an authentic master to accompany us in our return to the source.

Going back to the origin of our search we discover a nostalgia, sometimes very attenuated, almost imperceptible. We have forgotten how long it has been with us. Some of us have buried it so deep we think it isn’t there. However if we examine our own life carefully, and our frantic rush to find what we think is missing, this sensation of profound nostalgia will come up—a nostalgia for a state of fulfilment, of non-separation in which we once felt ourselves to be one with our environment. Our bodymind understands that it already knows this powerful fulfilment which is beholden to no object. In growing up we have lost this sensation and the nostalgic feeling has become stronger. Sometimes, to our surprise, a breach opens in our superficiality when we’re not looking. We get a glimpse of the source, and the underlying peace and relaxation which spring from it are all we have expected and hoped for. It can even happen that we are not consciously aware of such a moment because it may be very short, only a few milliseconds. At the time we think we have had a moment of distraction or mental absence. It is in fact an absence, but not the kind we usually mean. Really it is the absence of the one who does the commenting and controlling.

This nostalgia for fulfilment has been with us since we were little children; it is curled up at the bottom of our hearts. Initially we think we can rediscover it in passionate relationships, in melting together with another. These relationships bring us right up close to the source—we can sense its delicious fragrance—but they hopelessly prevent us from diving in because we remain attached to an object. In this way we spend our whole lives heading in the wrong direction. We stubbornly latch onto each new object of passion in the hope that this time it will be the right one, the one which will bring us an absolute fulfilment which we painfully lack, but time after time we pass by the true fulfilment which our leap of passion has brought us close enough to touch.

There is another state which may lie at the source of our quest, a vague impression of drying up, becoming arid, a feeling of very slow dying which gently but irrevocably invades our whole being. We have lost the folly of childhood and adolescence, we’ve turned into serious adults full of certainties and precepts about what is right and good. We drum these ideas about right and wrong into our children who really only dream of one thing, which is to laugh and fool around and have a good time with us. Once in a while we let go and dare to be silly for a moment, but our children eventually get fed up and think we’re boring. We get sadder, drearier, greyer and more tiresome. This drying up can also come from a desire to protect ourselves when the hypersensitivity of childhood becomes a social handicap and we put a survival system in place, cutting ourselves off from our feelings before they become disturbing. And so we slip slowly into a taxidermist’s version of ourselves. We certainly become more effective socially but we are steadily dryer, sadder and more isolated inside our fortress. Sometimes, in the midst of this irremediable taxidermy operation on our feeling nature, something jars us and we drop what we’ve spent years building to find some fresh air. Here too, though, a trap awaits: the illusion of a new freedom due to a change in profession, relationship or social milieu. The feeling of having come back to life won’t last long if its only foundation is new objects.

Frustration, suffering, nostalgia and advanced dessication are therefore essential conditions. They boost us into the search for an absolute, without an object. At this point we are ripe for the fatal meeting with an authentic spiritual tradition and a master. In this meeting, something very deep within us comes alive and vibrant again, and at the same time calms down. We have the vague feeling of having come home at last. But a final, formidable disappointment awaits. The teachings bring back with force the deep inner crisis which has been wreaking havoc in us by destroying our last attachments and hopes, so that we really dare to drop our clinging to external circumstances no matter what they are—even if these circumstances are wonderful teachings or an authentic, traditional, millennia-old path. With the absolute liberty and nonconformism which is typical of a Tantric master, our own master declares that he has nothing to teach us and nothing to transmit. Faced with this utter and complete loss of hope, we give up. We’ve lost all our signposts, all our beliefs, all our certainties; the Tantric teachings have broken our last toys. If, instead of running away, we dare to stay with it and touch this utter poverty and hopelessness, our search will undergo a reversal. It will turn towards our own heart, our own source. An authentic tradition and master offer only this, basically: the return to our own source, to discover that we are what we seek.

Fulfilment needs no external situation. It comes by itself when we quiet down and taste life in perfect simplicity. Peace and calm are always available in the heart space within and we find them when we stop wanting to grab things, whatever they may be. Happiness, felicity appear when we abandon ourselves completely to the movement of life. True autonomy and liberty can only be found in this abandonment, since any freedom which depends on outside conditions is not real freedom. If we are really and truly free, then we can continue to feel this liberty even if we are physically imprisoned; otherwise we will always have to free ourselves from something. We get in touch with true freedom when we stop making and maintaining personal stories using our environment, using the scenery. Events play out according to their nature, they are what they are without our commentaries or preferences. Sometimes they resonate with this bodymind, sometimes they don’t, but we don’t make a personal story out of them. If something happens we let it happen, if something ends we let it go.

To become truly free and autonomous is to accept all situations unconditionally, understanding that they are only a play of energies over which we have no power. Events and objects are subject to the universal law of impermanence. They are in perpetual random mutation and beyond any form of control. Yet in the absurd belief that our happiness depends on them, we try like maniacs to cement specific relationships or situations, chosen according to our own expectations, into our personal landscape. Convinced that they represent an ironclad guarantee, we obstinately hang on to them even though life incessantly shows us how foolish this is. One day, though, unforeseen, the necessary maturity flowers and leads us to understand that we no longer need to define ourselves with reference to a situation, or find ourselves through a relationship. All that remains is receptiveness, openness, attention and relaxation. In this attention, in this openness, at last we can breathe. Here we find the space that our entire psycho-corporal system has been missing for so long, imprisoned in its own fabrications and scenarios. Once rediscovered, space and breath continue opening endlessly. Peace and joy emerge. At last our bodymind rediscovers its true nature and function. At last we recognize our essential nature, independent, free and at peace since the very beginning.

Yet here too, there is one last pitfall to avoid: attachment to non-attachment, to the feeling of peace and joy that doesn’t depend on any situation, goal or relationship. At this level of realization we have to remain watchful so as not to trip up and continue to maintain a protection, a subtle one but still real. Openness can be cultivated without end; it can always encompass more space, like the universe whose expansion never stops. The universe never announces that it has arrived at its destination and its expansion is over. The heart continues to surrender and open. We assent to being overwhelmed by a relationship or a situation even when our level of realization is already vast. We remain completely involved in the great play of life. We continue to appreciate the special people around us, we continue to take great pleasure in what comes up, without being fooled. Underneath it all we know that our joy does not depend on these external things but we consent to play the game and get caught. We are never safe from an attack of pride! Free of the final concept—that we should be free of all attachment—true freedom is attention, openness, obedience to all that comes up. The ultimate independence is an understanding that develops in the heart. Practice leads us nowhere, it has no goal. Practice is the fruit and the fruit is the practice. The path is the goal and the goal is the path. There is no end of the line which we get to thanks to our realization of the teachings. We are never safe from an upset. Presence, humility, simplicity, wonder at what is… the individual awareness melts into the universal. In this union the right to exist is total because everything is an expression of the source. Everything is perfect as it is.