Truth Is Radical

In this post I would like to give you a frame for my future posts that are going to tackle topics that are likely to trigger certain emotions and reactions within you. A great opportunity to outgrow your own self-imposed limitations.

Picture Credit Joel Filipe on Unsplash

"With great freedom, comes great responsibility"

- Peter Ralston -

By doing Consciousness' work you will realize that Truth, that is what we are looking for in this journey, has nothing to do with our self agenda and with what we think we are. Awakening can definitely alleviate most of human suffering and it can help us creating and constructing a better life for ourselves and for the people around us. However, this journey does not consist in one single realization as some spiritual teachings seem to suggest. This journey, as far as I know, is endless and it includes an infinite number of insights and ah-ah moments, some of which being pretty hard to digest.

Awakening is the process of unfolding reality till the bottom line and often what it is revealed to be true is not aligned with your self-interest and self-agenda. There are plenty of implications coming out of this work and it is up to you how deep you want to go.

I can tell you from my personal direct experience that some of these realizations are liberating. They have the ability to free you from burdens that you were not meant to carry, they make you live life in a much more lighter and joyful way, they remove many fears that were blocking your actions in your daily life, they give you the opportunity to behave more consciously, they help you to understand why people around you behave in the way they do rather than judging them, they give you the ability to deal better with mental and physical pain, they allow you to re-contextualize reality. By simply self-reflecting and looking within you ("Look Within You", "Neti-Neti: Who Am I?", "No-Self: The First Step Towards You"), your life will change enormously.

So why it is so difficult to do this work? Why does not every single person on earth do it? Why people are looking for other alternatives when there is the possibility (for-free!) to simply introspect to solve all our problems? What prevents us to sit and simply grasp who we truly are?

What is often omitted in most of the teachings I have heard about non-duality is that Consciousness' work, if done deeply enough, is not all unicorns and roses. It is an extremely hard and tortuous path and it can make you experiencing period of depression. By doing this work you are putting everything you know under the microscope for a meticulous investigation. You are voluntary accepting the possibility that everything you know and that everything has been told to you might not be true. You are willing to drop all your self interests and self agenda for something that feels right to do but of which you have no certitude to be right. By committing in this work you are voluntary stepping into your own self interests.

The last 3-4 years of my life I have been totally committed in the search of something that I only read about. I have decided to stop my scientific career because not anymore in line with my vision of reality and I have decided not to work for a while in order to be able to immerse myself into this work as much as it was necessary. And during this time I had many hard moments to face because of my personal choice to trust the intuition that there was something more to be discovered. I am not talking about the pressure I felt in not knowing what to do next in my life in term of building up a new career. I am not talking about the pressure and discomfort I felt when asked about my future plans by my family and friends. I am not talking about the inevitable pressure due to less and less money in my pockets. I am talking about the challenge I had to face by realizing my true nature and the difficulties in accepting the numerous implications this realization included.

This work shifts your daily life perspective from being a human being to be "someone" without any particular identity and form, it dismantles the belief of reality being physical into being mystical. It questions basic assumptions that you would have never questioned such as the fact to be physically born, that one day I will physically die, that objective reality exists, that true reality is only what appears to be in front of your eyes. This work will label indelibly whatever you thought to be absolutely true as relatively true. All your certitudes will crumble down and a certain amount of time will be needed to ground yourself in this new reality. Mind will not like you doing this work because for the majority of people what we call "I" and "mind" are the same entity. And as long as the illusion is not revealed the mind will use all its powers to keep you in prison, to keep you immerse in an imaginary world full of assumptions and beliefs. Mind has an agenda to follow and it will get really pissed off if you do not stick with the plan.

By committing yourself to the Truth, the illusion will gradually break down and a sort of light will (metaphorically speaking) reveal the sneaky attempts of mind to make you fall back into the darkness. If before awakening mind could work without being caught and undisturbed, after awakening a constant light will be shining upon it, making more challenging its attempts to fool and deceive you. Imagine a thief trying to make a rubbery in an empty bank devoid of cameras. The thief will have the possibility to act freely, without caring too much about being caught. But the presence of cameras and of other people changes the game. The thief will have to become more sneaky, more creative and skillful to attain its goal. And it will, trust me. It is fascinating to witness the infinite ability of mind to fool you no matter how conscious you are. It is a constant battle between being caught and getting away.

The most challenging aspect of this journey I had to face (and I am still facing) is to find a way to relate to people that have no interest in doing this work. I have found extreme difficulty to relate to people that I consider to be friends because the person I was in the moment I met them has now vanished. When you realize that whatever you thought to be was a concept, a mental construction imposed by your family, culture and by the need to survive as someone specific and you eventually are left with nothing, I assure you that you will face some dark moments especially in the social world. Many aspects of life lose their importance: what other consider problems make no sense to you anymore. Material gaining, success, money, physical perfection have no meaning to you after realizing that there is no physical you and no physical reality. You will probably feel the urge to talk and share these insights with others but chances are that you will have to deal with these stuffs by yourself.

This dark period can last for a while and only by realizing that it was still your mind to create this suffering you will be able to open up to a new level of consciousness that will help you to ground yourself into this new reality. I can claim with a certain certitude that every time you will experience an insight that significantly changes your way to hold reality, you will have to go through a dark moment until reaching the next level. It is a sort of universal law that allows you to access to a new level of consciousness. Suffering, whether you like it or not, represents the only gate you need to go through to evolve and grow. No shortcuts are possible. It is important not to rush during this process because bigger the realization, bigger the suffering you will face (even though bigger the suffering, bigger the growth). By doing this work you will find yourself literally living in a new reality that looks the same but it "tastes" differently and you will have to coexist with people that are not willing to change their tastes.

Blaming, being judgmental, pointing finger, mocking, ridiculing, calling names, physical aggression, manipulation and lying are some of the most common defensive mechanisms put in place by other minds that have not been illuminated yet by the light of Consciousness. Always new and more sophisticated mechanisms will be put in action to make you desist in claiming whatever non-sense realization you had. Even your closest friends, wife/husband and family will fight you if you threaten their agenda. Do not expect support and comprehension from others by doing this work.

Importantly, Truth is a radical thing and by doing this work you need to be aware that everything you are currently doing in this world to survive as a human, the way you are relating with others and your daily actions will have to change to not experience a huge sense of misalignment with what you have realized to be during the journey. By discovering who you truly are, you set your reference point and whatever action or thought distant from That, will cause you suffering.

Deeper you investigate reality, closer you will get to Yourself but expect to get some distance from others that are not understandably interested in this work. By discovering your true nature, all your tricks and manipulation techniques will be observable and it can be a quite shocking realization. Everyone does it, so do not feel special. If you feel as such, that is your mind trying to protect itself, to sustain whatever identity it has given to You.

All this to say that I am pretty sure that what I will be telling you in the future is going to trigger some reactions in you because you, as a mind, are currently holding many beliefs that are creating your reality and that are essential to keep alive whatever structure you have created. In these years I have came to realize profound insights about reality that I would like to share with you. Some I have already shared but many are still to come. I am not doing it to brag myself but to make you conscious of what triggers you and to start from there to remove all the boundaries and limitations you are imposing to yourself. I am far to be immune to this process and still a lot of work is needed for me. I will be always working on myself to be able to be more accurate in what I am sharing with you.

Becoming aware of the Truth gives you the enormous power of becoming your own authority. It offers you the freedom you have always been looked for, a freedom that cannot be bought. However this freedom comes with a cost, that is, to behave and to act according to the Truth and sure enough, mind will not accept it. It takes a great sense of responsibility, discipline, commitment, love, honesty and integrity to not to fall into the temptations of the mind. I have always cared for those values with the difference being that before I sticked to them for the fear to be punished by others or by an existing God up into the sky, and now because I know they represent the most accurate expression of the nature of reality, of You.

So wishing you a Happy New Year I would like you to observe yourself 24/7. Observe your reactions, observe your own tricks, observe your way to manipulate you and others to catch the mind doing what is able to do best: fooling, deceiving and distorting reality.

Thanks for reading.