Ending Your Search For Enlightenment
with Dorothy Hunt
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The Question
What is life when seeking ends? Just what is, nothing more or less, an ordinary person doing ordinary things, not wishing to be more or less, content to simply be herself. – Dorothy Hunt
Do you ever feel as if your spiritual search is getting you nowhere? That despite sincere intention and effort, you’re reaping frustration instead of fruit?
There are many pitfalls along the spiritual path, spiritual ambition, by-passing, over practicing all included. Not least of course calling it a ‘journey’ to begin with.
If you’re frustrated with your efforts or keen to understand the roadblocks to awakening, this episode is for you.
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Our Guest
Dorothy Hunt
Meditation Teacher and Spiritual Author
Dorothy Hunt is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and serves as Spiritual Director and President of Moon Mountain Sangha, Inc., a California non-profit religious corporation. Dorothy currently offers meditation and satsang gatherings, weekend intensives and retreats, and also sees individuals for both psychotherapy and dokusan (private meetings with a spiritual teacher.) Her teaching is centered in the San Francisco Bay Area, but is offered elsewhere by invitation.
Following a series of ever-deepening realizations, Dorothy was invited by her spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, to teach within his lineage. While Adyashanti was trained in the Zen tradition, Dorothy’s spiritual path led from Mother Teresa of Calcutta to the Advaita teachers, Ramana Maharshi and Ramesh Balsekar, and eventually to Adyashanti. Each one of her teachers appeared to her totally unexpectedly, yet profoundly.
She is the author of Ending The Search: From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness.
Truth. Is. Beautiful.
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The Talk
In this episode we discuss our deep spiritual impulse to awaken and the ways our future-focused mind “co-opts” or veils what is timelessly free, loving, and ever present.
To awaken, Dorothy argues that we are invited to search not for an idea of something “out there,” but for the true identity of the seeker, the unnamable Mystery that is compassionately aware, existing right now in each of us. What is required is a process of embodiment and surrender and a need for “ruthless honesty” without self-judgment.
We speak about the ego’s spiritual ambition, its search for its idea of ‘enlightenment,’ its struggles and its eventual fate as seeker becomes the sought. In reality we don’t need to fixate on a goal or practices to get towards it, we just need to realize what we are.
As she says: “The spiritual search is a call to remember who or what you essentially are. What ends the search is actually present from the very beginning, beckoning you to come home. In truth, you are what you seek, yet you must make the discovery for yourself.”
The awakeness we are is nowhere else than here and now. We can neither gain it by our seeking, nor lose it in our confusion. We can only realize we are the Mystery in its undivided totality, awake and intimate with all expressions of Itself.” It is not a “person” who wakes up to his or her true nature, but awakeness itself that wakes up within a body-mind in its own
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The Questions
- How much of the spiritual path do you think is hindered by the description of it as a ‘journey’ and the implicit assumption of a time-bound journey from A-B.
- How problematic is it that we look at the acquisition of ‘truth’ the same way as the acquisition of intellectual knowledge?
- A large part of the seeker’s challenge is that we can soon start to develop a spiritual identity. How can we work towards dissolving this idea of self?
- Can you talk a little but about practice obsession and the guilt connected to it?
- How does desire coming into play when we are awakening?
- The most cherished illusion is the one of a self in control of destiny. How do you dissolve through that?
- How do you think our concept of death challenges our spiritual progress?
- How do you think our relationship to peace causes problems? Do we really like peace?
- What do you see as the correct inner attitude towards the ego?
- Can you talk about the difference between being the experience that comes up versus being someone experiencing the experience?
- How can we resolve the issue when we feel like two selves our forming?
- What is your best advice for people waking up?
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