The path we travel is the path of the seeker. As you traipse down the long road of practice day after day, year after year, you have to have a deep yearning to see through the thick fog of delusion and confusion. When and exactly how the seeker manifests is a mystery. I am not sure that it can ever really be taught. It must arise in the heart of the one who asks. Like fiery magna deep inside the core of the earth, the seeker dwells within, longing to be free of petty thinking and the sticky ties that bind. Without the search, people get hoodwinked by the things of the world and become possessive, intolerant, greedy, and desperate. Without aspiration, longing and perseverance it is impossible to make progress on the path. How strong is your seeker?
Inspired to learn, to discover and to know you must seek everywhere—high and low, far and near, inside and out. Like a miner panning for gold, you must sift through layers of sediment— layers of expectation, doubt, attachment, and desire. As you mine the ways of the spirit, there is always anticipation that the gold, the realization, is just around the corner. But at some point, you must turn your lantern of awareness on the search itself. It is a strange and mysterious thing that after travelling miles and miles, with your seeker as your guide, you realize that the search itself is in the way. You realize that at long last you must relinquish your seeker. Like the parable of the two monks who cross the river on a raft, you must leave the raft of your seeker behind.
When you shed your seeker, it is like a snake coming out of its own skin. When all trying becomes needless there is nothing between you and the world. Without the agenda of the seeker you become the open space in which everything happens. But you can’t jump ahead. You can’t pretend that you have exhausted your seeker when you are still secretly motivated by craving, loathing or worry. So dig in. Be relentless and unswerving in your quest to see it through. In your heart of hearts, don’t let up until you tap the source, until the original energy of the universe flows through every pore, every cell and every bone in your body.
