The Evanescence of a Spiritual Path

One Life Tutorial for October 2020
The Evanescence of a Spiritual Path
Spiritual paths are evanescent. They seem at first to be concrete and predictable, but soon become the ineffable, indescribable notion of an inner guidance that is always present, but mostly intangible. A spiritual path unfolds before you. It does not follow a plan because there is no plan, there is no pre-existing map, there is simply the sense that a next step reveals itself in the present moment.

When you really take a deep look at this, what you come to know is that a path that unfolds before you moment-to-moment cannot be designed to get you what you want, or to help you to avoid what you do not want. The true spiritual path is simply an ever extant acknowledgment of your state of Presence or Awareness.  Your spiritual path is where all your encounters with reality take place. Your spiritual path is where you take all of your theoretical learning and put it to the test by applying the learning to your experience.  We might say that your spiritual path is your arena for developing practical wisdom. It also compels you to be who you are beyond all your stories and definitions of who you are.

Much of this lifetime has been an attempt to create an identify for yourself, and to create a reality that could enhance who you believe you are. Then at some point, you decided to be on a “spiritual path.” You may not have understood what that really meant, but your inner guidance showed you the relevance of discovering aspects of yourself which were not known or not developed at the time you were introduced to the idea of being on a spiritual path. Most of the time, at the beginning of being on a spiritual path there is great excitement at the possibilities for big changes to occur in your life. We would suggest that most of you, in a more relative sense, have been driven to leap on to a spiritual path with ideas of becoming free, of becoming happier, of achieving enlightenment, healing pain and wounds, and even becoming rich. In other words, most of you have in some way considered being on a spiritual path as the antidote to suffering. Often, a teacher appears in either non-physical or physical reality as a guide or collaborator on the spiritual path with you. Spiritual teachers assist you in many different ways, from pushing you to discover your deeper, true nature, to helping you to uncover One Life Awareness, to transmitting knowledge and understanding of spiritual principles and daily practices. A spiritual teacher and all of life teaches whatever you might need until you recognize who you are. Ultimately, every experience is your teacher, and every experience is your evanescent path unfolding before you.  

At some point, however, another motivation to be on a spiritual path may unseat the “remedy for suffering” motivation. This is when the spiritual path loses its material sense of existence, when it becomes evanescent. Then, the ego gives up on its enlightenment project. The stories have been told so many times before, they are no longer of much interest. The quest for particular outcomes is put to rest, and it becomes clear your spiritual path is just One Life unfolding before you. It is The All That Is without a sense of anything that is not the spiritual path. It no longer matters how you got where you are, it just is where you are. The path is life, experience, wisdom and knowing. Once accepted as such, it all becomes quite simple. Just live with the volume turned up high enough that you can live deeply. Just love with the volume turned up so high you can feel deeply, and just be with the volume turned up as high as possible so you are One Life expressing in every moment.

​Truly, the “volume turned up high” just means filled with Awareness—there is actually no high or low when it comes to living life with awareness. We are just suggesting that as you mature, as you continue on your journey of Presence, you will likely find the markers which had previously defined your path have shifted and become less concrete—more ethereal perhaps. You begin to explore the nuances, the edges are softened, the experience is appreciated in a new way. Trust, have confidence in this process. No matter where you begin, you end up at your starting place because there truly is no beginning nor end to a spiritual path. This is why we call it evanescent—disappearing from your practical sense of reality and dissolving into One Life Awareness: the spiritual path is the non-dual knowing of All That Is.

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