I used to believe that spiritual awakening meant becoming more spiritual.
More peaceful, more mindful, more “high-vibration.” I would clean up my habits, speak gently, meditate with disciplined fervor, read volumes of sacred texts, and try to emulate the mystics who inspired me. I wanted to be like Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, or Nisargadatta Maharaj. I wanted to become a spiritual person.
But somewhere along the way, the seeking itself began to collapse.
Watching this video titled “Spiritual Awakening Has Nothing To Do With Becoming More Spiritual” was like being handed a mirror I hadn’t realized I was avoiding. The message was raw and direct: Trying to become more spiritual is exactly what prevents awakening.
As the video states:
“Trying to become more spiritual is like a wave trying to become more ocean.”
It hit me—so much of what I thought was “progress” on my spiritual path was actually the ego in disguise, polishing itself up, craving a better version of "me." Even my reverence for saints and sages had become another costume of the self, the same "I" chasing purity and perfection.
But awakening, true awakening, is the death of that "I."
It’s not the ego improving itself. It’s seeing through the illusion that the ego ever had substance to begin with. It’s the fall of identity, the stripping away of everything I thought I was supposed to become, until all that remains is awareness itself—nameless, formless, without agenda.
Ramana Maharshi said:
“The only thing that exists is the Self. If you realize the Self, there will be no difference between what you are and what you have always been.”
That’s the paradox, isn’t it? Awakening doesn’t give you anything. It takes away what was never real. There’s no “awakening mode,” no blissful costume to wear. In fact, awakening often feels more like unraveling. The “me” dissolves. The labels fall. The striving ends.
“Awakening is not always blissful,” the video reminds us.
“It can feel like death—the death of who you thought you were.”
And in that death, a new kind of life begins—not as a person trying to act spiritual, but as life itself, moving effortlessly, not owned by anyone. As Rumi once wrote:
“Try to be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.”
In this emptiness, I discovered a vast fullness. I still stub my toe. I still feel emotion. I still live in a world of bills and conversation. But now, the “I” that used to cling to these things has softened. Life arises. Life passes. And underneath it all, there is only the silent witness—consciousness without story.
Nisargadatta Maharaj put it this way:
“When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that’s wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that’s love. Between these two, my life turns.”
I no longer want to become more spiritual. The word itself—spiritual—feels like another mirage. What I want is truth, and that truth is already what I am. It is what you are. It is what we all are—before the story begins, and after it ends.
Lalleshwari, the fierce Kashmiri mystic, once whispered through her poems:
“I saw that He was within me, and I was within Him. What more is there to seek?”
If you're on the spiritual path, consider this: What if the path is not forward, but inward—and ultimately, a falling away?
Call
to Action:
I invite you to pause. Let the story fall silent. Watch the video here,
not with your intellect, but with your being. Let the words wash over the
conditioned mind and slip into the space behind it. Reflect. Meditate.
Then ask: What am I, really,
without this story of becoming?
And when the silence answers, stay there a while.
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