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The foundation of the spiritual life is curiosity.
Questions.
A thirst to discover some deeper truth or meaning.
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Without that passionate search,
it’s not possible to pierce the miasma of thought
that protects the illusion of selfhood
and defends the impulses of selfishness.
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Before awakening,
questions serve the spiritual identity—
a kind of battle armour
to stand against the flow of the normal.
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Time is involved.
The acquisition of knowledge drives the questioning,
in the hope that at some indeterminate moment in the future
there will be enough understanding to Do It—to Be It.
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It’s an illusion, for sure.
But a necessary one.
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For while the ego is dressing up as a spiritual saviour,
deeper truths are quietly landing in the core
and gently undermining its foundations.
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After awakening,
questions become tools of deconstruction—
dismantling stale structures
that cover the heart,
deaden the spirit,
and encase freedom in a shell—
like the caddis fly larva’s riverbed home.
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There is no time.
The dismantling is active and ongoing.
Even as new structures arise, they are taken apart,
always uncovering the ever-fresh intimacy
of isness and nowness.
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And in the end,
all questions dissolve
into a profoundly simple, ever-present:
.
?
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No words.
Just an unimaginable receptiveness to what is.
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Unquenchable.
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No waiting, however subtle,
for things to get better.
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Only answerable by
eternal openness
and a perpetually filled emptiness.