The Ordinariness of Awakening

Today I live a very ordinary life. I like to walk, I enjoy a good movie, I like a good meal, I love being in nature, and I often enjoy the activity of the world. Before I met Poonjaji, every activity in my life was a search for some kind of self-fulfillment or self-definition. Whether it was searching in the peace of nature, or in the excitement of relationship, or in the mundane thrill of acquisition, it was always a search for who I was, most of the time looking for a positive answer and running from a negative one.

I am not searching now. I know and I continuously realize deeper every day that no thing can define me. However great the joy is of spending time in a in nature, however harmonious my relationships are, however delightful the experiences of the world, that from which it all arises, that omnipresent field of pure consciousness, is so much greater, so much more profound, blissful, and sublime.

On the outside, much of my life looks the same. Eli is still my husband, Sarah is still my daughter, and I know some of the same people. What’s different is that I am not looking to any one or any thing to give me what I want. I know what I want, and luckily what I want is what is already here. It has always been here, because it is who I am.

Many people have asked how it was possible to integrate these realizations into my day-to-day life. My response has always been the same. It is not possible to integrate truth into anything else because truth already exists as everything and it always has. You cannot take vastness or infinity and integrate it into some object in life, such as a day or a workspace. What you can recognize is that your life is already inside that; it is already a part of that integral whole. Then every situation in life is an opportunity to recognize the ground of beingness that holds it all.

Gangaji