The Apple Falls When It's Ready
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A reflection on the desire for a future shift in identity, and why the event of awakening is a consequence of growing alignment with truth, not a cause to be pursued.
The Apple Falls When It's Ready
A reflection on the desire for a future shift in identity, and why the event of awakening is a consequence of growing alignment with truth, not a cause to be pursued.
There is a common sense that a shift is going to happen in the future, that something will occur and you will go from one hundred to zero. That is not true.
The event and what it actually reflects
Something can happen, and it is an event: the seeing that what you are is not the body-mind. But all that can happen with that realization is that, in any given minute of the fifteen hours of your day, you believe it less. Basically, you go from ninety percent of the minutes of your day believing you are the body-mind, and that number starts going down.
What usually happens is it starts going down, and then at some point there is a rebalancing where the center of gravity shifts. Before, the tendency was to be identified. Now the tendency is to be unidentified. When that shift of gravity happens, people report, "I had an event." But then you think the event caused the shift in the center of gravity.
Waiting for the shift keeps it in the future
This is like crossing the road: you cross it when you cross it. The shift will happen when it happens. But if you are looking into the future for that shift to occur, you are basically sitting on one side of the road waiting for it to be crossed, because it is always going to be in the future. Whereas if you look at the belief now and start questioning it, if you choose not to believe it, those minutes of identification are going to start going down. There will be something experienced like a change in the center of gravity of identity, but trying to pin down what caused it is a chicken-and-egg problem.
The apple and the tree
Think of it like an apple falling from a tree. Did the apple at some point decide to fall? Yes, there was an event: it fell from the tree. But is the event of falling what caused it to fall? Or is it because the tree was growing, the apple was growing, it got big, and at some point it simply happened? The other apples are looking around saying, "When is the event going to happen to me so that I can be free and roam the land?" But it is not by waiting for a freeing event that the apple falls. It falls because it is developing and growing, and growing in the right way.
Practice over event-chasing
Trying to produce an event, trying to create a shift, is not practical. What is practical is to look at reality, to inquire and to see. How are we living in ways that are not truthful? How are we choosing to play games? Why are we choosing to stay identified? What is that serving?
The tree and the apple growing is a metaphor for living more and more aligned with truth. If our true passion and motivation is truth, that love of truth will take the awareness that is living in identification and, at some point, shift the center of gravity toward disidentification, toward non-identification.
The falling is a confirmation, not the maturity itself
In a sense, when the apple falls, it is a confirmation that the growth was fruitful. But the falling is not the maturity. The apple's falling from the tree is not the act of maturity; maturity is what brought it to separate from the tree. We tend to try to produce an event, to reach some experience that others report. I cannot honestly say that is how it was for me. Looking back, it seems like having come to a point where the inevitable happened: the steps, the glimpse, the liberation, all of the things I could report and describe. And if I look at that, I could say every moment of inquiry, every moment of passion for reality and what is true, is what removed whatever was holding the identification in its place. Until at one point there was nothing left that could hold it.
Those events are consequences, not causes. That is why the question "When will I fall from the tree?" only has one answer: when you fall from the tree. When it happens, it will happen.
Being here now
In the meantime, be here now. And whatever comes with that (how to be here now, what to do here now) is the art of living, which is what we are doing. It involves meditating, loving, having fun, discovering what our passions are, what we want to do. What does consciousness want to experience right now? What does it want to live and experience right now?
I will tell you the answer to that. It is what is experiencing right now. What it wants to experience is what it is experiencing right now, and that includes planning for tomorrow to be different than today.