No matter what spiritual path you've walked or what teachings you've followed, they must lead you back to no path and no teaching. A true teaching is like a blazing fire that consumes itself. The teaching must not only consume you, but consume itself as well. All must be burned to ash, and then the ash must be burned. Then, and only then, is the Ultimate realized.
As soon as you believe that a label you've put on yourself is true, you've limited something that is literally limitless, you've limited who you are into nothing but a thought.
The most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is to stop struggling, striving, seeking, and searching. Why? Because in the absence of struggle you don't know who you are; you lose your boundaries, you lose your separateness, you lose your specialness, you lose the dream you have lived all your life. Eventually you lose everything that your mind has created and awaken to who you truly are: the fullness of freedom, unbound by any identifications, identities, or boundaries.
A spiritual teaching is a finger pointing toward Reality; it is not Reality itself. To be in a true and mature relationship with a spiritual teaching requires you to apply it, not simply believe in it.
The willingness to not bypass illusion is very important. We come to nirvana by way of samsara. We come to see the true nature of things by seeing through the illusory nature of things. We don't come to nirvana by avoiding samsara. We don't come to clarity by avoiding confusion.
I often describe the Absolute as Pure Infinite Potential, prior to being or becoming anything. It is forever unborn, yet gives birth to all of existence. About our ultimate nature nothing can be said; it must be revealed.
If you tell yourself a sad story, the body reacts to that. And if you tell yourself a self-aggrandizing story, the body feels puffed up, confident. But when you realize it’s all stories, there can be a vast waking up out of the mind, out of the dream. You don’t awaken, what has eternally been awake realizes itself. That which is eternally awake is what you are.
Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate 'me,' and in turn the sense of 'me' strengthens itself this way.
Actually, all paths lead away from the truth...how's that? All paths. There's no such thing as a path to the truth. The truth's already here, where are you going?
At a certain point we need to grow up; we need to look inside ourselves for our inner guidance. There are things most human beings know; they just don't want to know them. They know deep down that certain things in their lives are working or aren't working, that certain parts of their lives are functional and others are dysfunctional. But sometimes, as human beings, we don't want to know what's not convenient. So we pretend not to know.
The biggest embrace of love you'll ever make is to embrace yourself completely. Then you'll realize you've just embraced the whole universe, and everything and everybody in it.
The moment that you are willing to step outside of tomorrow, outside of needing more time, or having more time, everything becomes possible. And you may finally notice where the Buddha has always been.