Stop trying to be spiritual

Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: the idea that causes suffering

What does it mean to be spiritual, and what are people trying to attain? For many, spirituality is an alternative to formal religion. It’s an attempt to make sense out of life rather than to blindly accept a concretized version of life’s meaning along with a problematic set of dos and don’ts. The problem, however, is that there is a tendency to fall out of one trap and into another, spiritually speaking. Spirituality, like religion, is often institutionalized and riddled with commonly accepted beliefs and practices. This doesn’t make it bad, per se, but it certain does not make it free of the mind.

As with any endeavor, people seeking spirituality may find it most helpful to identify their goals. What is it you want, and why? Do you want to know who you are devoid of any ideas or feelings? Nowadays people are smitten with the idea of enlightenment, an ultimate state of reality beyond religion, spirituality, ideas, and belief systems. But what is enlightenment and why do you want it?

Enlightenment is an idea that is most commonly connected with ancient India, although its apparent that every corner of the earth is replete with so-called enlightened teachers, saints, and sages. But what the heck is it?

Enlightenment is an idea, a concept, and nothing more than this. The egoic self, which is the conditioned mind that produces a sense of “me” and “you,” can never be enlightened because it is just an accretion of thoughts that creates a belief system based on individuality, traits, characteristics, fragmentation of reality, conditioned thoughts and behavior, and more. Without the egoic self, the “I,” what remains is consciousness, which is unconditioned and whole; therefore, consciousness cannot become anything at all, including enlightened.

If you want to see the world as a whole, unfragmented, pure, continuous, all-inclusive system of movement, then you have to stop trying to do so. It is only the egoic self that tries. Stop trying and just be. This sounds easy on paper, yet nearly everyone has a problem with it, because the mind is so conditioned that it believes it must work, try, exert effort, attain, obtain, and discover some sort of deep secret that leads you to your goal of some ultimate state of beingness. But this is just not true. If knowing the ultimate truth took effort, information, learning, practice, prayer, or hard work, then that would mean that it is not accessible right now in this very moment.

Stop trying and just pay attention to what IS. There is no path, no study, no prayer, no words, no lectures, and no money involved. There is only you and attention, and you are already equipped with this.