Why does some paths to/in awakening seem easy and some hard, and some quick and some slow?
This question sometimes comes to me since I know many who seem to have a relatively quick and easy path to what appears to be a stable awakening. And for me, it’s been long and – at least the last several years – painful and difficult.
Here are some things that come up for me:
For people with a lot of trauma in their system from this life, the process can be more painful and prolonged. As the wounds surface, the trauma can get retriggered, and we get into a cycle of surfacing wounds and reactivity. This makes it more difficult to see through it and allowing it to heal. It’s also possible that patterns from previous lives surface to be seen, felt and loved, and people may have more or less “baggage” here.
There are different “levels” or phases or awakening, or different “soul centers” that awaken. For me, the head and heart awakening happened relatively quickly and easily. And the belly awakening seems to be much more challenging. That’s where wounds surface to be seen, felt and loved, and that’s also where reactivity gets triggered on my part to what’s surfacing, which often makes a real resolution challenging and elusive. At the very least, the reactivity makes the process more painful and drawn out.
For me, there may also be some resistance to the process. I tell myself I didn’t ask for it. It just came out of the blue in my teens, uninvited. And I didn’t ask for life to give me “lessons” so I could “awaken” or “mature”. As I write this, I notice a deep resentment towards life for putting me in this situation. And all of this is good to take to inquiry.
A part of the invitation here is to question my ideas about it – my ideas of time, difficulty, ease, struggle, reactivity, delusion, awakening, an end point and so on. What do I find when I investigate my thoughts about it? (The Work.) Can I find any of these when I look? Can I find time? Struggle? Ease? Reactivity? Resistance? Awakening? An end point? Can I find the one who is having a difficult time? The one who is struggling? The one with reactivity? The one who is not clear enough? Another for whom it’s easier? (Living Inquiries.)
I see that it’s all lila. It’s part of life (Spirit, Buddha Mind, Brahman, God) exploring and experiencing itself in its richness, in always different and new ways.
And I see that I really don’t know. It’s a mystery. All of these thoughts, and any other I have about it, are just my own images and thoughts. It’s all created by my own mind, in an attempt to make sense of it and perhaps find a temporary sense of comfort and security. None of my images or thoughts about it are inherent in reality.
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– trauma, this/past lives
– depth of awakening, belly center, cleaning out, realigning
– question thoughts about it, look at ideas of time, difficulty, awakening etc.
– don’t know, mystery