Every sincere seeker eventually falls into the same paradox. We want awakening and we want it badly so we try everything. We chase peace, love, stillness. But the very effort to get there soon becomes the obstacle.
So many of us strive for awakening, happiness, fulfillment or love as if they’re distant states we must achieve. However, they are not something we can force or manufacture.
In truth, light doesn’t even need to be created; it’s always there. Our work is simply to remove the layers that obscure it. This is at the heart of nearly every wisdom tradition. The Buddha called it “removing the defilements.” The Sufis call it “polishing the mirror of the heart.” In the Christian mystic tradition, it’s “cleansing the doors of perception.” And because there seems to be work to do, we tend to think there’s something wrong with us that we must fix. We start our journey from a misguided assumption that one of my former teachers used to call “the myth of our imperfection”.
Think of it this way. If you were in Hong Kong but believed youself to be on the moon, how might that error of orientation make your journey to Greece more difficult if not seemingly impossible? If we believe we are somehow imperfect at the very start of our quest, we are already operating with or from a powerful falsehood that will usurp and expend a lot of unnecessary energy.
We cannot quicken our awakening for the same reason the heart can’t be commanded to love and a flower can’t be commanded to blossom. All of our efforts to “perfect” ourselves must be kept in perpective. The mind can only prepare the space, but the flowering happens on its own, through grace.
We must first and foremost be willing to consider that we might actually be perfect already…in our True Nature. This doesn’t mean that we stop our practices and sit back and do nothing. It means we work skillfully on what we actually can do: clearing the clutter and misunderstanding that blocks what’s already present. Awakening happens naturally when the obstacles to awareness are released. Peace arises when resistance softens. Love flows when the fear of our imperfection is no longer guarding the door…when we stop taking everything including ourselves personally.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to
seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
— Rumi
The Art of Removing Obstacles
Is it not obvious that the sun is always shining, even on a cloudy day? You are the sun, not the clouds. Each obstacle we remove be it an old story, a self-judgment, or an unprocessed emotion, is like a cloud. Removing it allows more of our natural state to shine through.
In practical terms, the work of healing might look like:
- Acknowledging pain instead of bypassing it.
- Breathing into tension instead of resisting it.
- Choosing gentleness over constant self-improvement.
- Seeing others as mirrors rather than enemies.
- Being disciplined in our practices.
None of this arises from the idea that we are inherently flawed. None of this forces awakening. But all of it invites it. The work isn’t glamorous. It’s daily, patient, and humble: noticing tension, meeting resistance, and allowing space for life to move again. But this is the real alchemy…removing what is false so the true can shine. That is what these alignments are all about.
Consciousness Is Not an Achievement
Trying to make ourselves enlightened is just another form of wanting control. Awakening turns into just another egoic self-improvement project disguised as spirituality. You already are Divine. That’s the Truth of your Being. But that divinity is covered up by all that other stuff you think you are. But genuine awakening is an undoing, not a doing. It happens when we stop defending, pretending, and forcing. Modern neuroscience and ancient wisdom are meeting around this shared insight: consciousness expands through integration, not domination. Imagine that!
Living the Practice
This month, when you catch yourself striving to overcome yourself, feel better, or push away what is, ask yourself what feeling you are pushing away or against? That question alone can bring you back into alignment with what’s real. And often, right there in the softening around what is uncomfortable, a quiet peace arrives.
As our practice this month, I offer up music as medicine. Simply listen to the following in a meditative state, taking in the lyrics and more importantly, the energetic transmission of the message.
Journal Prompt:
Am I ready to embrace or at least consider the notion that I am essentially perfect already?
What am I trying too hard to make happen right now?
What would shift if I stopped forcing and started allowing?
In Closing…
This world doesn’t need more people trying to be spiritual or prove how spiritual they already are. It needs those committed to knowing and disciplined enought to merit the grace of knowing. It needs more people willing to simply be spacious enough to let the light through. When we stop building walls, awakening walks in on its own.