It is perfect to be agnostic and attain unconditional peace, happiness and enlightenment. In fact, in many ways, it makes attaining enlightenment much easier.
For would you rather believe in enlightenment or would you rather be enlightened? Would you rather believe in unconditional peace or would you rather live in a state of unconditional peace?
For if you want to live enlightenment and unconditional peace, you have to truly become agnostic.
It has always been said that happiness and peace is your very nature. So to attain enlightenment, you have to experience yourself as you truly are beyond all beliefs, concepts, opinions and dogmas.
It is not about becoming something, but rather to truly experience yourself as you are in this moment. To be honest about what is here in this moment.
Here’s an example: Say you are sitting on a park bench, a stranger walks by, steps on your foot, doesn’t say anything and keeps on walking. That is the truth of it in that moment. Someone stepped on your foot and kept on walking. Now it has passed.
But there are a thousand thoughts that come rushing forth: “How rude of that man to step on my foot and not apologize,” then “He must hate me” then “Why is everyone so mean to me?” then “He is everything that is wrong with this world.” Then “It would be justified for me to run after him and step on his foot.” Then “He probably would try and hit me but then I would deck him and it would feel really good…”
On and on it goes. Most of the thoughts you are not even aware of but still they deeply effect you because you are identified with your thoughts. But all of the thoughts are untrue, all of it is nonsense. The truth of it is that a man stepped on your foot. Then it passed. Everything else is untrue. Whatever you say about why the man stepped on your foot is pure speculation, whatever scenarios you imagine about what might happen next are all fantasy.
And the man stepped on your foot once. But you replay the scene in your mind hundreds of times. So one step on your foot turns into someone stepping on your foot hundreds of times. But it has passed; no one is stepping on your foot now! Quite funny if you think about it.
So you see in this, all thought about the incident has no truth. The only true part was a man stepped on your foot. The truth now is you are simply sitting on the park bench.
A woman once asked a great enlightened teacher named Sri Anandagiri “I want to feel love. I want my heart to open.”
Anandagiri asked “Which is true: That you want to feel love, or that you do not feel love now?”
She replied “That I want to feel love.”
“No” He said, “You know the truth. The truth is that right now you do not feel love. What you would like to feel is not the truth.”
Because the idea that she would like to feel love was simply a thought. A thought that she made important, but it had nothing to do with her experience in the moment, it was only a resistance to what she was experiencing in the moment. And that is stressful.
Because peace, happiness and enlightenment is not about becoming something. It is about experiencing yourself as you are in this moment. The idea from the ego is that you should be different than you are. But you are as you are. That is the truth. The truth simply is. And in being aware of what is, there is peace, there is happiness.
So I ask you to look in this moment, purely agnostic. What is your experience in this moment?
And you might say “I want to feel peaceful.”
But that is not what you experience in this moment, that is only a thought that you identify with. It has nothing to do with what you are experiencing right now.
You say, “I feel unhappy.”
Better, more honest. But still, that is just a label, a judgment on what you are actually experiencing. What does unhappy feel like?
“There is a tightness in my chest.”
Good. Can you allow yourself to experience that tight sensation in your chest? Because if you can allow yourself to experience that tightness, as sensation, then there is peace.
“The tightness is there because I got in an argument with my wife this morning.”
But that is just an idea. Can you prove that? There is a tightness sensation in your chest, that is what you know in this moment. Why it is there is just speculation. The reason for it being there is just a thought.
The truth is this moment, not what you remember. You keep carrying your past with you. But your past is past. This moment is fresh and new. Life is happening here and now. Your responsibility is simply to notice what is here and now. To be honest about what is here and now.
“But I don’t want to feel this tightness in my chest.”
But who doesn’t want to feel it? Is that not just a thought that you identify with?
“But I thought that thought.”
But who is the ‘I’ that thought it? You assume that you are that thought. But if you look, the thought came by itself. If you look, the thought arises and there is the action of identification, you grab hold of that thought and make it you. But you are not a thought. The thought will come and go and you will remain.
“There is resistance to feeling the tightness in my chest.”
Yes, very good. Be aware of the sensation of resistance. That is all you have to do. There is a sensation in your chest, there is a sensation of resisting that sensation. Can you allow all this to be? If you do this, the resistance will fall away. Then all will be left is that sensation in your chest. That will eventually change too. But you remain as awareness.
If you investigate this moment like this, seeing what is true and what is untrue, you will see that all thinking is just that, thought. It has no truth in what is actually happening. You will see thoughts come and go, sensations come and go and change, but you remain aware of everything.
The one thing you cannot deny is this awareness. In fact, you cannot separate you, this moment and awareness. If you are here, you are aware. And you are always here.
You seem to get caught up in thoughts. If you get caught up in thinking about where you grew up, it seems you are there where you grew up. But the moment you realize you are caught up in your thinking, you will see, you are here and you always were here. It was just an idea, an illusion that you were somewhere else.
So you know awareness is the truth. You cannot deny awareness. Whatever arises or disappears there is still always awareness here. So if you rest in awareness, in being aware of whatever arises, you remain true to this moment. And you will find that the very nature of awareness is peace, love and happiness. And that the realization that you are awareness and that all arises out of awareness is enlightenment itself.
So in questioning everything, you come to the conclusion that you truly know nothing. That any commentary about the moment is just thought arising.
But you remain as awareness. There is always awareness. And the nature of awareness is unconditional peace. Peace that is here for no reason. Happiness that is here for no reason. Simply because you are.
So to be truly agnostic is a perfect guide to finding unconditional peace, happiness and enlightenment.
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