Unlock Authentic Freedom and Love: How Adyashanti Reveals the Secrets to True Openness

VIDEO LINK: The Resistance to Opening (Excerpt)

In our fast-paced, modern world, finding true freedom and genuine love can seem like an elusive pursuit. This insightful video from Adyashanti, a respected spiritual teacher, delves deeply into the essence of these profound experiences and the internal journey required to attain them. His teachings illuminate a path to deeper awareness by challenging our habitual tendencies and encouraging a fearless encounter with ourselves.

Adyashanti begins by touching upon what it truly takes to be free and to love—simply to be open. He introduces the notion that these states are not complex in themselves; rather, they become complicated when our minds get involved, questioning and resisting the simplicity of just “being open.” This resistance often manifests as an incessant need to understand the ‘how’—how to be open, how to let go. Spiritual practices and meditation can be powerful tools to foster openness, but they’ve also been known to be misused as mechanisms for control.

Adyashanti then dives into the core of our resistance to openness. This resistance reveals itself through various levels: the openness of the mind, heart, and perspective. The essence of being open is the relinquishment of grasping or clinging—be it to ideas, perspectives, or even the awakened state itself. The mind’s tendency to define and hold onto experiences can undermine our genuine openness and freedom. In essence, we cannot maintain control and be wholly open at the same time.

The challenge lies in confronting the raw, unfiltered experience of our own contractions and discomforts without fleeing. This is the transformative potential of meditation. Adyashanti advises against pursuing meditation merely to excel at it. Often, meditation is misused to assert a subtle form of control, which in itself becomes a sophisticated means of evading our true nature.

True meditation, Adyashanti asserts, involves sitting in stillness and opening ourselves to whatever experience arises at that moment, be it pleasant or unpleasant. The mind tends to question and seek escape from discomfort – a disguised appeal to remain in control. Conversely, if the experience is pleasurable or blissful, there’s no urge to question it. This distinction highlights the ego’s desire to experience openness, freedom, and love while simultaneously wanting to remain in control—a fundamental resistance rooted in fear.

Adyashanti makes an important observation about the nature of security in the awakened state. True awakening offers no conventional sense of security. Attempting to use the awakened state as a means to grasp onto security transforms it into a delusion. The awakened state, characterized by profound openness, cannot be leveraged to satisfy the ego’s craving for control or security.

Furthermore, he addresses the misconception that realization imparts a perpetual state of pleasure or specialness. The ego often aspires to remain in a special, highly pleasurable state continually. Yet, true spiritual realization does not work that way. Over thousands of years, people have employed various techniques to attempt this, often as a means of evading the full truth of themselves.

This video invites us to examine our own resistance to openness and challenges us to embrace the raw truth of our experience without the usual filters and defenses. It’s a reminder that the genuine paths to freedom and love are rooted in the simplicity of being open and present.

For a more immersive understanding, I encourage you to watch the video linked at the top of this post. Adyashanti’s words hold wisdom that can be deeply transformative for those willing to engage fully with their own inner process.