Beware of being a spiritual seeker. There are implications to it. First and foremost, to seek is to lack. ‘I haven’t achieved’. ‘I need more’. ‘I long for that which is not here’. See what is involved here. Seeking implies time, distance, separation. It makes you like an entity separate from the object of his or her search, which can only be attained in the future. And that puts you in the position of a believer, and a sufferer. No. Don’t be a spiritual seeker. Please don’t.
Dare simplicity. Trust nakedness. The power of being lies in its raw, empty, and natural fabric. It doesn’t need to show off with the etiquette of a seeker. Don’t extend your mistaken sense of self by feeding it with your searching activities. Don’t keep your sense of separation alive by staying in the comfortable but ultimately uncreative and barren position of being a seeker. Seeking is not what you need. Being is. And being is your own, relaxed self — not lacking — not seeking — not projecting — not longing — not needing — not believing. Being suffices to itself. It is whole. It is your one and only place of rest.
Seeking will make you clothe your naked sense of being with fancy, elaborate, and ultimately unnecessary garments. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by seeking. It is the most unfruitful activity. Everybody is doing it — and to no avail. Seeking will place you where you do not want to be. Happiness is not in the lacking, in the wanting. Happiness begins in being. Happiness comes where seeking ends. This is the true destination of the activity of searching: to be a non-seeker. All what you have sought until now is to come to the end of your search. So don’t run ahead of yourself. Being is a simple affair. Being doesn’t require anything that you do not have here and now.
To not have to seek. What a relief this is! To bathe in the simple joy of being. Ultimately, being a spiritual seeker is a bore. It is not what you truly want. The thrill of it is bound to fade, and its tiresome nature will have to be revealed. Remember this: You are seeking to end the search. This is where seeking finds its worth and its resolution. Make the search sink into its object, which is in being — where seeking ends. Sink in being. Try it once and experience how the rough sea of your suffering life, with its endless craving, will find its original and unfathomable nature as stillness. Rejoice in it. Abandon this ongoing agitation at the surface of your life. Searching is this agitation — let it be behind you. Seeking is this battle — being is its underlying peace. Being is the ultimate answer to your search. Pacify your seeking through being.
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Text and photo by Alain Joly
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Other ‘Ways of Being‘ from the blog…
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The Dawn Within 
I agree that “seeking” for truth ultimately has to be abandoned, but it took me many years of seeking to get to that understanding. I do not know how I could have possibly moved from a completely materialistic point of view to an “enlightened” point of view without all of those years of seeking, unless it was by some sort of “instant awakening” which did not happen for me. In ways, I still “seek”, but now it is generally without attachment to finding anything…I think I will always seek to move closer and closer to a complete harmony with what “is”. A life’s work? Thank you.
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Thank you for your comment. I completely agree. My writing here is rarely pedagogical, and the text is playfully provocative. Of course the process of seeking or enquiring is both useful and necessary. But anywhere along the seeking process, there is room for relaxing the tension involved in seeking and fall back into just plainly being. I think this tension in seeking is often counterproductive. Awareness, being, relaxing, letting go, always come when seeking is not. Seeking is the ultimate obstacle in the search, it seems. That’s quite a conundrum isn’t it? 🙏
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