The Dialectic of Enlightenment

The spiritual life involves a dialectical interaction between our relative selves and our true nature. The embodied human ego seeks its home ground and its liberating release, while our true nature seeks its conscious embodiment in the world of time and space. These two spiritual instincts are the enlightenment impulse experienced from the relative and absolute dimensions of our being, which move in cyclic relationship to one another within the human psyche.

In this live intensive at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Adyashanti explores the nature of the enlightenment impulse, which seeks to consciously embody both the transcendent and immanent impulses of our true nature.

Talk Topics Include:

• The Inner and Outer Relationship of Every Aspect of Being
• How Buddha and Quan Yin Represent Two Spiritual Instincts
• The Relationship between Samsara and Nirvana
• What Is the Deepest Spiritual Impulse?
• Two Sides of Wholeness
• The Collapsing of “You” into Nothing and Everything
• Using the Function of Ego to Go Beyond Ego
• The Importance of the Relative in Awakening
• The World as an Extension of Your Being
• Bringing the Inner and Outer Together

Q&A Topics Include:

• Recognizing Various Forms of Ego Identities 
• How Awakening Exposes Challenging Aspects of Ourselves
• Facing Fears When Going Deeper
• The Dark Side of Self-Consciousness 
• Everything Is the Face of God—Everything

Quotes:

“Dialectic is a way of using the term relationship.”

“Psychological wounding doesn’t heal if you pick at it; you need to kind of dance with it.”

“The God that everyone is looking for is the ground underfoot and the foot walking on it.”

“Pushing things away makes them come closer.”

“Part of being spiritually clear is that it puts focus on the parts of your life that are dysfunctional.”

“The deeper sense of freedom is to dive headway into the world of time and space.

“Forgiveness comes from a healthy acknowledgment of limitation.”

“Awakeness is a depth of consciousness—a ground-level shift in the way we see ourselves in the world.”

“Both sides of the spiritual instinct need to be expressed—being never touched by the world and being totally immersed in the world.”

“The funny thing about emptiness is that it’s not about an inner experience of being nothing, but it’s the bottom of separateness falling out. When you investigate one thing, you find everything else.”

“The love of dharma, the love of truth, is the element that, in the end, becomes absolutely essential.”

“Be what you are—the whole world is waiting on you and depending on you.”

Recorded in Woodacre, California on September 14, 2019.
© 2019 by Adyashanti. All rights reserved.