During my morning walk today, doubt crept in once again. Have I simply swept ‘awakening’, or ‘non-dual realization’, under the rug? I cannot deny that I sometimes envy people like Miranda Warren, Robert Saltzman, and so many others who describe a kind of revelation after which their lives changed dramatically. Have they found something I am still missing? And am I now explaining it away with my Dioramics?
Lifeworlds are never absolute, there is no ‘viewpoint from nowhere’, and an absolute truth about life, the universe, and consciousness cannot be proven. That is my reasoning, and I stand by it. But am I perhaps also using it to keep something at a distance that I still long for?
After all, many ‘awakened’ people say they have found that truth. As they describe it, there is no suffering in their lives, or much less of it. They experience calm, a sense of being centred, love. Of course, I do not know what their lives feel like from day to day, but what they say touches on something I would like to experience myself.
What is also true: during my search for enlightenment, I have not really done much to bring about that realization. I am quite lazy in that respect too. Years of meditation? I lasted just one morning of a three-day Vipassana retreat. I have done a bit of therapy here and there, and that is about it. I have done all the more thinking, reading, and talking. But have I really given it a chance that way? Perhaps I hoped the insight would come of its own accord once I understood how it all worked.
But of course, there are also people who say it simply happened to them. Without meditation, therapy, satsang, whatever. Without even suspecting that such a thing was possible. So how much does my laziness really explain? Apparently, realization is not something you automatically get if you practise enough either. That does not make things any clearer to me. Should I have done more, or was I caught up in the very idea that there was something to attain? I do not know.
Officially, I still think you cannot order a non-dual realization on demand. As far as I am concerned, that applies to every change of lifeworld: you may do all sorts of things to bring it about, but that still does not give you control over whether or how your world changes. Unofficially, I know absolutely nothing for certain, and I trust no one who says they have found IT. And yet I sometimes envy them. I do not trust their certainty, but apparently I do long for the peace I associate with it.
The only certainty I have is this: I am typing this text on my laptop right now. I can hear the hum of an appliance in another room. There is a slight soreness in my throat. And meanwhile, there are these thoughts about enlightenment, doubt, and whether I am missing something. Those are here too, right now. Whether this is what others mean by IT, I do not know.