Awake in This Life

Life after death, or life after life, depending on how one looks at it, is one of the more fascinating aspects of spiritual practice since we’re not really sure what happens when we die. There are plenty of scriptural teachings to suggest that reincarnation exists. Maybe it does. Certainly, this would make things easier on each of us since we get to live all of this over again and again until we get it right. But aside from faith, scripture, and suggestion, there is little if any authentic empirical evidence to suggest that reincarnation actually happens. There are undoubtedly cases suggestive of reincarnation, but in our conventional world, we just don’t have the tools to determine if reincarnation awaits each of us or not. But does it really matter?

I’m sure many of my more traditional Buddhist friends will disagree with me, but to debate whether or not something is true in relation to any tradition, dogma, or scripture misses the most sacred aspects of any great spiritual teaching and certainly misses the point of Awakening into an enlightened perspective. Freeing ourselves from the entire cycle of birth and death is available to us in this lifetime at this moment. No one needs, therefore, to bother with any future speculation of rebirth as we walk the Path.

As we’ve discussed, when we attach to the faith and religiosity of any wisdom tradition, we diminish its ability to assist us on our climb. This weakening occurs because when we are caught by any attachment our limited egoic view begins to think of itself as something Infinite. For example, consider how the view “I get to live another life all over again” can be a wonderful place for ego to maintain a perceived sense of control over the ultimate chaos of death. The sense that an “I” exists is the very unconsciousness from which we wish to awaken. Awakening, in this sense, is seeing beyond all that the mind, or small self or ego, offers. In the most common views of reincarnation, this delusion of the fixed, and persisting “I” is bolstered by the belief that something separate survives the clutches of death when, in reality, all objects of the mind are subject to time and therefore must succumb to the clutches of death.

On the other hand, the experience of the Witness points to that which in us is never touched by time. Since the Witness can be aware of time, it can’t be caught by it. This is perhaps one of the most useful keys in opening the doors of perception, which, in turn, will support our practice at an even more expansive level. Since the Witness can be aware of whatever is arising in the mind, it cannot be caught by the mind. As we uncover this Witness, we are afforded the chance to experience that which is never born and will never die. From this point of infinite awareness, there is nothing to reincarnate, because that which is Infinite in us is exactly the same as that which is, was, and shall always be Infinite in all things. This eternal Infinite, in other words, is never touched by time. In this vast eternal opening, we uncover the already awakened core of each of us and everything else, and we see that everything is perfectly aligned with everything else. When this realization unfolds in us as us, we become a seamless monument of an embodied Awakening that never needs to be reincarnated because it has always been right here, right now … and it will not move. This Knowing is our practice as well as our ever-present Freedom from which we’ve never been apart.