“We are all already enlightened”, the guru mumbles.

And you reflect on your dubious life.

Your bleak career.

Your measly bank account.

Your bad relationships.

Your lack of happiness.

Your shitty habits.

And you think:

“Yeah fuck you, guru person!”

And that makes sense.

Because what does it even mean?

Spirituality, the process of realizing the Self, should be a ladder, not the top of the wall.

It’s so much more than lofty one-liners.

But it also should be pretty down-to-earth.

Because ‘Waking up to your true nature’ or however you want to call it, is utterly attainable.

It is.

I have seen many people experience awesome revelations and clarifying realizations, stuff that changed their lives forever or at least provided a powerful opening.

But in order to make it practical, usable, and tangible, you need stuff and information and pointers that make sense.

Not just an endless amount of Instagram quotes.

Self-realization is never out of reach and it’s not even the result of hard work, but the mind will always make it complicated and endlessly far away.

A really good teacher or an excellent good coach will respect that.

They will never underestimate the paradoxes and the confusion and the self-inflicted pain, but they will also not take it too seriously.

Helping people to wake up is a delicate, weird, and magical art form.

You are talking about the most abstract thing in the universe, while it is abundantly there, in the room, all the time.

So, okay, fair enough, enlightenment is mostly a direct and uncluttered realization of something that is already there.

But until you experience that for yourself, it sounds like bullshit.

I know, I know.

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(Photo by @christianbuehner, for Unsplash)