Awakening is a paradox

Awakening is a paradox.

Depending on who you speak to:

- There is no path to awakening, nobody becomes awakened, there is no progress and no time. There is nothing you can do to be what you already are since there is no 'you' at all. This is true, from a certain perspective.

- Awakening is a process, a journey. There is an apparent path. Over time, problems dissolve, suffering falls away, deeper and more subtle insights come, your centre of gravity shifts away from the mind-made identity, to your true nature as consciousness itself. This is also true, from a certain perspective.

Who could deny the already-present nature of consciousness? Who could deny that you are already what you seek? Who could deny that, from the perspective of who you really are, nothing has ever changed? Who could deny your primal identity as Life itself? Who could deny the impossibility of awakening being a time-bound event?

Then again, who could deny that, over the years, you've suffered and seen through that suffering? You've met challenges and come through them? You've had deeper and deeper insights as to your true nature? Things that bothered you no longer bother you? You feel more alive, more deeply connected, more stable? Who could deny the ever-changing nature of form? Who could deny your humanness? The change you've seen? The healing? The connection you now know?

Who could deny either aspect of this living truth?

Let awakening be a paradox, then, and realise that the need to rest on either side of awakening's knife edge is just the mind's need for a fixed position. Let the mystery be the mystery.

Let the teachers say "there is no path and no person" and understand what they mean. Let the other teachers say "there is a path and a you who walks it" and understand what they mean. Realise that, when it comes to awakening, there is no war. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong. There are only perspectives, and no fixed truth, except the truth that allows all these perspectives to play.

Stick with what resonates. Follow your gut. Love the dance of it. You can't win, you can't lose.