In the Absence of Struggle

Call Off the Struggle
by Adyashanti

Most people are in a constant state of struggle with themselves. Tremendously burdened by the past and in constant anticipation of the future, most human beings are rarely able to be fully present for more than very brief moments. The tremendous openness and intimacy that is required to be fully present is beyond most people's ability to sustain for more than a few moments before they habitually contract back into the familiar condition of separateness and struggle that so characterizes the human condition.

This constant state of struggle manifests as a compulsive and addictive relationship to the movement of thought, emotion, and time. There is great reluctance to stop struggling because in the absence of struggle you suddenly begin to lose your boundaries and definitions of who you are. For many people this causes fear to arise as they experience the loss of their familiar sense of self. Struggling is how the ego-personality maintains its existence. When you cease to struggle, identification with the personality begins to break down and you become aware of your emptiness and lack of boundaries.

The most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is to stop struggling, striving, seeking and searching. Why? Because in the absence of struggle you don't know who you are: you lose your boundaries; you lose your separateness; you lose your specialness; you lose the dream you have lived all your life.

Eventually you lose everything that your mind has created and awaken to who you truly are: the fullness of freedom, unbound by any identifications, identities, or boundaries. It is this locationless freedom of being that spiritual people are seeking, and at the same time are running away from because its faceless nature gives no fixed reference point for the personality to hold onto or to seek security in.

As long as you remain identified with the personality, you will always be seeking security to the exclusion of the Truth, and will remain in a constant state of struggle. It is only when your love and desire for Truth outweighs the personality's compulsive need for security, that you can begin to stop struggling and be swept up into the arms of an ever unfolding revelation of the Truth and Freedom of Being.