no one's life

Many of the great spiritual teachers awakened in a radical fashion. By radical I mean their state of consciousness expanded all at once, as if going supernova. Afterwards their former sense of self was wiped away, transcended. They were reborn into wider awareness.

This same process occurs in all of us. We all wake up to wider awareness again and again in our lives. Life permits no other outcome. As long as we believe we are somehow separate from life, we are due for more awakening to rid us of our latest illusions.

In most people, the process of awakening is ongoing, seldom completing itself in one fell swoop. It can take many years for the process to unfold, progressively deepening its claims against our false impressions of who we are, aside from being Life itself.

Meanwhile, in almost every case, mine or yours or humanity's collectively, the process is also reiterative, requiring us to work through the same issues and hang-ups over and over, in ever-tightening cycles, before the core of the matter sufficiently clarifies.

Until it does, our freedom won't last, but periodically gives way to surprising relapses into attitudes and behaviors we believed we outgrew. Then it's time to stand up, dust ourselves off, and see where the next omitted nuance of our spiritual work is.

Eventually the repetition of this pattern yields the essential insight that all problems are the same problem, repeating in various forms. There is only one problem and everyone has it. Everyone's life is about seeing through it for good. No one's life is apart from all life.