The core theme is that true spiritual awakening leads to insights that are often incommunicable through ordinary language, and attempting to share them directly can cause confusion or misunderstanding. Instead, awakened individuals learn to embody their insights and share them through presence and action rather than direct explanation.
Mind Map
คลิกเพื่อขยาย
คลิกเพื่อสำรวจ Mind Map แบบอินเตอร์แอคทีฟฉบับเต็ม
You know, there's something rather
peculiar that happens when you begin to
wake up. And by wake up, I don't mean
simply opening your eyes in the morning
or having a nice cup of coffee. I mean
when you really begin to see through the
game, when the veil of ordinary
consciousness starts to slip and you
catch a glimpse of what's actually going
on here. It's quite marvelous really.
But here's the thing that nobody tells
you. Once you've had that glimpse, once
you've tasted that freedom, there are
certain things you simply cannot share.
Not because they're secret in some
mystical hush- hush way, but because
sharing them would be like trying to
pour the ocean into a teacup. It just
doesn't work. And more than that,
attempting to do so can actually create
more confusion than clarity.
So let me tell you about five things
that if you are spiritually awake, you
should never share. Not out of spiritual
pride, not because you're part of some
exclusive club, but simply because these
things cannot be communicated in the way
that ordinary information can be
communicated. They're more like the
scent of a flower. You can describe it
all day long, but until someone smells
it for themselves, they haven't really
got it.
Now the first thing you must never share
is your direct experience of awakening
itself. You see the moment you wake up
there's this tremendous urge to tell
everyone about it. You want to grab
people by the shoulders and say, "Look,
look, I've seen it. It's all right
here." We've been looking in the wrong
direction the whole time. But what
happens when you do this? The other
person looks at you with a mixture of
confusion and concern. They nod
politely. They might even say that's
wonderful for you. But inside they're
thinking you've gone a bit strange. Why
is this? Because awakening is not an
idea. It's not a concept that can be
passed from one mind to another like a
recipe for bread. It's a lived reality.
It's the difference between reading
about swimming and actually being in the
water. When you try to describe the
water to someone who's never been wet,
what do they hear?
Just words, just sounds. The actual
feeling of water, the way it holds you,
the way it moves around your body that
cannot be captured in language. I once
knew a man who had what you might call a
profound spiritual experience.
He was walking in the garden one evening
and suddenly everything became transparent.
transparent.
He saw that he was not a separate being
walking through a garden. But rather the
entire process of gardening was
happening. There was no walker and no
garden. Just walking gardening as one
movement. Well, he was so excited by
this that he rushed to tell his wife.
And what did she say? She said, "That's
nice, dear. Don't forget to take out the rubbish."
rubbish."
You see, she couldn't receive what he
was trying to give because she hadn't
had the experience. It's like trying to
explain the color red to someone who was
born blind. You can talk about
wavelengths of light. You can describe
how it makes you feel, but you cannot
give them the direct experience of
redness and spiritual awakening is far
more subtle than even that. So, what
happens when you insist on sharing this
experience? You begin to sound like
you're bragging. Oh, I've had this
marvelous insight. I've seen the truth.
I understand what life is really about.
And immediately, you've created a
division. You've put yourself over here
as the awakened one and the other person
over there as the unawwakened one. And
in doing so, you've actually
contradicted the very insight you were
trying to share, which is that there is
no division, no separation, no you and
them. The awakened person learns to be
quiet about their awakening, not out of
false modesty, but because they
understand that talking about it is like
a finger pointing at the moon. The
finger is useful if someone wants to
look where it's pointing. But if they're
fascinated by the finger itself, they'll
miss the moon entirely. And most people
when you try to share your awakening
become fascinated by your finger. They
want to know what you did to get
awakened. They want the technique, the
method, the secret practice. But
awakening didn't happen because you did
something. It happened when you stopped
doing and simply saw what was already
there. The second thing you must never
share is the specific practices or
methods that worked for you. Now, this
might sound contradictory.
Surely, if something worked for you,
wouldn't it be helpful to tell others?
Ah, but here's the trick.
What worked for you worked because it
was right for you at that particular
moment in your life. It fit your
temperament, your situation, your
particular flavor of confusion. Imagine
you have a headache and you take a
certain medicine and the headache goes
away. Does this mean everyone with a
headache should take that same medicine?
Of course not. One person's headache
might be from tension, another's from
lack of sleep, another's from dehydration.
dehydration.
The same medicine won't work for all of
them. In fact, it might harm some of
them. Spiritual practices are exactly
like this. What brings one person to
clarity might trap another person in
technique. I might sit quietly and watch
my breath and in that watching suddenly
see through the illusion of the separate
self. But if I tell you you must sit and
watch your breath, you might spend years
sitting and watching and getting
absolutely nowhere because your
particular knot is different from mine.
There was a student who came to his
teacher and said, "Master, I've been
meditating for 5 years just as you
instructed and I still haven't had any awakening."
