Ask anybody on the street what they are looking for, and they’ll probably say they’re looking for peace, happiness, success, popularity, power, love, acceptance, understanding, fame, glory.
Someone who identifies themselves as a ‘spiritual person’ might be looking for an altered state of consciousness, or some kind of transformation, or an enlightenment experience, or they may be seeking to no longer seek anything anymore!
Everyone is looking for something. This seeking takes many forms but really it’s all the same seeking. It seems as though everyone is looking for different things, but actually what we are looking for, deep down, is the same.
Basically, everyone is in pursuit of the same wholeness (or oneness, or completeness, or whatever you want to call it) – a wholeness that is already here, but is ignored in our pursuit of a future completion. That’s where it all begins: looking for something better in the future.
Looking for the next moment that will be a better moment, a more full moment, a more complete moment. And of course, non-duality could just become something else you are looking for. We could turn non-duality into our new goal. But the word ‘Non-duality’ actually points to what is already present here and now, within this present experience, as this experience. We’re not talking about a new goal for the seeker. We’re talking about life as it already is. non-duality is not in time.
If life ‘as it is’ is already perfect why do we continue to seek?
The real question is ‘Who is seeking?’ What is this seeker? Where is it? Can I find it now? And is this seeker who I really am? I seem to be a separate individual who is looking for something to complete myself, but is that really who I am?
Does this seeking really define me? Am I really something that is incomplete, something that seeks completion in the future? You pass through all these different layers of questions and ultimately you get to the fundamental question: ‘Who am I?’ That’s where everything leads to in the end.
So, who am I?
If you ask most people that question, they’d probably reply with a story about who they think they are. They’d give you a description about what they’ve done in the past and maybe what they dream of doing in the future. When you live with an image of yourself, that image can always be improved; you can always have a better story. If you have the identity that you are successful business women and you’re making a lot of money, maybe you hope that one day you’ll make a fortune and be a famous millionaire. Or the story could be that you’re a spiritual person and one day you’ll become enlightened.
So, are you saying enlightenment is just another story?
Well, it’s always about ‘me’ completing myself in time, isn’t it? The enlightenment story is equal to the ‘one day I’m going to win the lottery’ story. Within the story you are always incomplete and always moving towards a future completion.
That goes right to the root of it all – a sense of lack that everyone is trying to escape.
Excerpted from an interview with British author/teacher Jeff Foster by Nic Higham of Nonduality Network
Jeff Foster
