This Amazing Opportunity

Let's remember why we're here at retreat: for this amazing opportunity to really look into the core of our own existence, the core of life itself that is so easy to overlook. It's so easy not to pay attention to it, because it's not noisy and it's not clamoring for attention like all the other aspects of the human mind. Egoic consciousness is always pretending to be the most important thing that is happening.

And yet there's this thread, this sense of something other than, deeper than, more real than, more essential than this scattered and divided noise that so many human beings live in, in their minds. And right in the midst of all that, there is a presence, there is an awareness, an unconditioned awareness, an unconditioned consciousness. Right in the middle of this conditioned mind, conditioned consciousness, is this shining, unconditioned essence. Essence doesn't mean a little part hidden somewhere in us, the little teeny kernel of essence. Essence means the totality, the whole thing. Essence means the truth of you as opposed to the untruth of you.

Essence isn't a small thing, essence is an immense thing. The essence of you is everything you ever see, taste, touch, and experience. Everywhere you go, every step you take, every breath you take is actually happening by the essence, of the essence, in the essence, and to the essence. All the rest is noise and chatter.

So we come here to give our attention, our affection, our time. Our most highly prized commodity is our time. Anything or anyone you give your time to shows immediately what is most important. And I want to remind everyone that what you really are, what the person next to you is, what the children in Africa scraping up the little grains of rice are, this timeless essence, is not hidden. It's not hidden at all. It's in plain view. Everywhere you look, that's the essence. And the mind would say, "Where? Where? I don't see it. All I see is a car, a billboard, a tree, the person in front of me, the funny man on the stage. Where is this essence?"

It's easy to grasp for it, isn't it? "Where is it? What is it? I want to understand it. I want to know about it. How can it work for me? How can I utilize it?" But it doesn't come upon us through the grasping of it, through the striving for it, and through the struggling for it. There's no merit gained through wasted effort, through excess struggle. There are no merit points for the people who drove themselves the craziest along the way to self-realization. For most people it's so obscure that it seems very intuitive to grasp and to struggle instead of relaxing, not grasping, letting something come to you, letting the truth of your being reveal itself to you on its terms, in its way, letting it happen. 

It will happen. It's always happening. It's always trying to show itself.

- Adyashanti