Is the Seeker Real?

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.’ (Matthew 7:7)

Many of us seem to view ourselves as ‘spiritual seekers’ or ‘seekers of truth’ and perhaps even build their lives around spiritual practices in order to reach that end goal of what it is we are searching for.

Of course the turning to God, the metanoia, the prayer for help and the action of seeking truth is good and noble and necessary.

Is this seeking itself actually an impulse from grace?

Is this searching itself actually an inner pull from God, that leads us to discover more genuine peace and joy?

Yes – and…

When I was a child I wrote a poem that went something like this:

‘When I get my boyfriend I’ll be happy – it’s loneliness that makes me sad’,

‘When I become wealthy I’ll be happy – having lots of money can’t be bad’,

‘When I get that fast car I’ll be happy, or climb to the top of that peak’,

My friend you will never be happy, if it is happiness that you seek’

Somehow it was sensed, in childhood, that if we are not already resting as happiness right here and right now – then we are in a state of waiting, hoping, seeking. Waiting and searching with a belief perhaps that one day the promise of happiness will be fulfilled, through a change in circumstance or by a goal being reached.

That waiting felt like a kind of torture, however. Being out of the peace. Being out of the bliss of being and the love. Waiting and hoping for one day when we are finally to be let into the gates of Heaven.

‘Don’t build your House outside the Gates of Nirvana’

(Mooji)

Many a time I have heard Mooji say this.

Waiting, hoping and seeking have always felt like ‘not there yet’ and therefore fulfilment will be in another time – but not now.

You might say – ‘how can heaven be here within? – with all this mess, grief, disaster, death, injustice and suffering on earth?’

Good question – but somehow we do sense, don’t we, that it IS possible to discover a true and lasting peace, in amongst these apparently disastrous conditions and in this miraculous existence.

Suffering itself perhaps even can lead us to peace and fulfilment we could say – but who is this ‘me’ that finds peace? Does the separate self, this seeker self ever get questioned? Is it real?

Sages and prophets and Buddhas and indeed Christ appear to point to a seeing that is of a heavenly and brilliant, radiant dimension. Beings today like Rupert Spira, Mooji, Eckhart Tolle, Gangaji and many more testify to a bliss that is here and is natural and is fully present in and as this Life.

Jesus says ‘Nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Luke 17:21

St Francis of Assisi says

‘What you are looking for, is what is looking’

Isn’t this searching in some ways a kind of painful state of unfulfillment when all along what we are seeking is actually the fulfilment of who we truly are.

The waiting feels a bit like saying to a child – ‘guess what – you can have an ice cream!’ They smile and reach out their hand and then you say – ‘in five year’s time!’ ‘what?’

Spiritual Paradox

So it seems a paradox that on the one hand we have to apparently start seeking somehow and in searching for happiness or peace, we appear to have to do something, listen to someone inspiring, read words that seem to bring us closer to God. This searching we could say is God calling us home.

Yet this urge itself is a reinforcement of the illusion that we are a separate self that has to get somewhere!

Yet this calling is also crucial it seems to awaken inside this yearning for a deeper truth and for a more full and liberating awakening! What a spiritual paradox this is.

Bentinho Massaro says this

Yet it seems the spiritual search leads to the realisation that we have actually never been apart from God. We only dreamed that we were. In truth, there is only God.

God, we could say, as infinite, formless awareness is the source of everything and permeates all things – how can ‘I’ not be of that awareness, in essence?

The fall from grace therefore happens now, when we continue to believe that we are a separate seeker – a ‘person’ making effort to meditate or do spiritual practise in order to get back to God.

Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with meditation, prayer, spiritual practise. They are all tremendous and fully good, profound, needed in our world. But where are all these practices leading?

Who are the practices for?

For the apparent seeker – are they not?

Perhaps salvation happens NOW in this very moment, we could say – by fully realising our true place. Through faith in truth.

Nirvana (another name for Heaven) is recognising the One God Self within, the unity of being, the infinite, timeless, boundless presence of pure awareness that we have never not been!

Not as a conceptual recognition only of course – for that would not be a recognition rooted in the heart. A merely intellectual awakening is not awakening at all.

This is not just as a nice idea, this is the end of ego’s rule! Adyashanti wrote this wonderful book called ‘The End of Your World’.

Is seeking therefore a belief in the separate self rather than the True Self? Therefore it could be seen to be a betrayal of the true knowledge that we are already one with God and eternally in harmony with the one True Self.

Yet until this is known, the ego (the illusory sense of self) keeps taking apparent seekers on journeys that promise fulfilment. That carrot is always dangled at a distance from the Donkeys nose, isn’t it?

In truth, we can never not be Home.

Why? Because the one we have believed ourself to be is the conditioned, constructed, imagined, false, psychological identity and we have been cunningly tricked into believing that there are many mountains to climb and many rivers to cross.

However the revelation is that we are not this one.

We are the only indivisible One being.

Unknowable, formless and True.

Peace is here my friend, you ARE peace, you are the light of this world.