The Courage to Simply Be

Why honesty trumps profundity and what awakening is really about

“Hey Shiv - What does an awakened person look like? Teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Michael Singer and Rupert Spira seem like such nice guys. I don’t get that same vibe from you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you aren’t nice! lol. But I get a feeling that you get frustrated or upset just like everyone else. Some time ago I would have taken that as a sure sign that a person is not awake. But now I’m not so sure. What say you?”

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***

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Sure, I get upset.

Not often. But when I do, I get fucking livid.

I’ll give you an example.

Some years ago, when living in Japan, I had to renew my driver’s license. Japan is a highly bureaucratic country, and so official processes typically take quite a bit of time to complete. I had already learned my lesson from the first time I had had to apply for a driver’s license of just how structured and inflexible the licensing agents could be and so I double and triple-checked to make sure I had every item of documentation that was required, in order to make the process a smooth one.

One of the required documents was an official translation of my Canadian driver’s license details into Japanese. This could not be translated by just anyone. The license had to be submitted weeks in advance to a governmental organization called JAF which would translate the license for a hefty fee. I procured this document and added it to my folder for the day long visit.

My wife and I both took the day off work (since she had to renew her license too) and we drove at the crack of dawn for two hours to the nearest licensing office from our small town. We arrived in time for the submission of the artifacts. The agent looked both our sets of documents over and nodded, informing us that the renewed licenses would be ready for pick up later that afternoon. And so, my wife and I spent the next five hours roaming the city awaiting the pickup time to arrive.

We stood at the counter at the designated time waiting for the agent to provide us our new licenses. The man sauntered over to us and handed an envelope to my wife informing her in Japanese that her license was ready. He then looked at me and said,

“Your license could not be processed.”

“Why?” I responded in Japanese, incredulous.

“There is a mistake in the translation,” he replied.

“What mistake?” I asked.

“Your date of birth in the translation is recorded as 19 June, whereas in your Canadian license it shows as 16 June.”

I blinked at him in disbelief.

Still speaking in Japanese, but struggling because my command of the language at the time was quite weak, I said,

“Dates are numeric. Numbers are the same whether in Japanese or in English. Clearly you can tell what the actual date of birth on my Canadian license is. If the translating agency (that you recommended) messed up, I don’t see how this is my fault. Just put the right date of birth on the license and give it to me.”

He looked at me with an expressionless face, “Sorry I am not allowed to do that. You must get it re-translated.”

I stared at him and, speaking in measured tones, responded,

“Look. I live far away from here. I have taken a day off from work without pay for this. It is a minor and obvious correction that needs to be made that you yourself have been able to identify. Help me out here.”

“Sorry I cannot do anything,” he replied dispassionately.

“Can you at least get me someone who can speak English?” I implored him, having reached the limit of my Japanese language ability in negotiating with the man.

“Sorry we don’t have anyone who can speak English here. Please leave and come back when you have the right documents.”

I walked away in shock at the sheer unwillingness the agent and all his colleagues, who had been watching, had displayed. As I began to walk out of the building with my wife, a feeling of fiery indignation arose within me. Before I was even aware of it, I had turned around and was walking back into the building.

Now, if you have ever travelled to Japan, you will know that the number one faux pas a person can commit is to make a public scene. As a long-term resident of the country, I had always adhered to the expectations of public decorum, never displaying anger or upset in the presence of my Japanese counterparts.

As I stormed towards the counter, a puzzled look crossed the agent’s face as he beheld my dark expression. I slammed the documents down on the counter and began speaking at a volume that reverberated across the entire department until every head in that place was turned towards me. I shouted in English this time,

“I am not fucking leaving this place, until you give me my fucking license, or you get me someone who can speak some FUCKING ENGLISH!!!”

The color drained from the agent’s face, and he stood there paralyzed unable to speak or move. Whether he understood me or not, I was pretty sure he could tell I was furious. The building went silent, and everyone’s faces became transfixed in a look of horror.

I noticed a movement behind the agent. A lady in her mid-fifties, his superior, who was seated a few feet behind him at a desk approached the counter.

“May I help you?” she said in perfect English.

“You speak English…” I said incredulously.

“Yes, I do,” she replied.

The words, “then why the flying fuck didn’t you say anything the whole time I was talking to this moron, asking for a translator” were on the tip of my tongue, but I withheld them and instead opted for:

“Please help me then.”

“Yes, you see there’s nothing we can do as we are required to input only the information that is on the JAF translation,” she began, not even attempting to conceal the fact that she had been privy to the conversation between the agent and myself the whole time.

“Even if you know that the date on the translation is wrong, and you can see what the correct date is?” I confirmed.

“Yes, even then,” she replied with a look of fake sympathy.

“Do you have a phone?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” she replied looking confused.

“Then pick it up and call JAF and ask them to fax over the corrected version.”

She looked astonished at the prospect of such a revolutionary action.

“I’m not sure we can do that…” she stalled.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because we have never done it,” she replied simply.

“Ah! But would you be willing to give it a try, perhaps?” I said with a pained smile, using every ounce of restraint I could muster.

“I…can…” she hesitated. “But it probably won’t work,” she hedged.

“That’s ok,” I nodded with feigned understanding. “Just try anyways. And if it doesn’t work, I promise I will leave.”

The agent in the meantime had been watching this interchange, still paralyzed, perplexed by what was transpiring.

The woman picked up the phone, spoke at great length and then listened silently for a while. Her facial expression began to change, her eyebrows raised, she nodded a few times, then set down the receiver. She walked over to me as if in a daze,

“They said they will fax over the corrected version,” her voice sounded distant, and she had a faraway gaze in her eyes.

“Fuckin’ right,” I mumbled to myself.

“Pardon me?” she replied.

“I said, that’s very good,” giving her a thumbs up.

Twenty minutes later, the agent held the envelope with my new license out to me, his face barely concealing the utterly shattered worldview that lay behind it.

…

There is nothing as insidious in the world of spirituality as the expectation of what a spiritual person, an awakened person, a wise person looks like. This is the #1 trap that trips people up and prevents them from being able to develop a clear perspective on themselves. We have, over centuries of religious indoctrination, been conditioned to project a certain image of ‘holiness’ on the wise among us. And those images endure even if we have left those schools of religious thought behind and moved on to subtler perspectives on life and self.

It doesn’t help that most spiritual teachers of Buddhism and Non-duality today continue to propagate these subtle fabrications - skewing their personas and their outward presentation in a manner that wholly endorses such stereotypes. But in doing so, they do not only their followers, but also themselves, a great disservice. For to adhere to any static form of expression is to deny the very spontaneity that life seeks to express through each being in every moment. The enlightened/awakened/wise persona is the very barrier that denies that intimacy and separates the being from the experience of what is.

My friend

Joan Tollifson

recently wrote about this pressure that many in the spiritual community, especially spiritual teachers, face to conform to this “enlightened ideal”:

“I’m thinking to myself that I don’t know if I should publish this article. It might ruin my career and my credibility as a spiritual author and teacher. (I don’t call myself a teacher, but I hold meetings and have led retreats and workshops over the years, so in a real sense, I do function as a teacher even if I reject the label). And I depend on the income from all of this, including the donations many of you are generous enough to send me. But who wants to read books by, or meet with, a non-teacher fake teacher who admits to being a totally neurotic, fucked up mess? Other teachers seem to have it much more together than this.”

Joan’s brilliant article confessing to her own often messy humanity, is one of her most popular articles on her Substack, with comments overwhelmingly in support of her honesty. Why?

Because honesty is the simplest display of truth. We recognize this at a fundamental and instinctive level. We trust, and are drawn to, those whose intentions we feel are truthful. The words that emerge from their mouths are only secondary.

Many have begun to realize that true-sounding words do nothing to orient a person towards perceiving life with clarity. It is only by witnessing individuals who are courageous enough to embody themselves as they are, that people feel inspired to do the same. Because being as you are IS an act of courage. In a world that is perpetually pressuring you to conform to its expectations, simply being oneself is the greatest act of rebellion.

All these ideals about awakening, enlightenment, equanimity and such are kindergarten notions that appeal to those who have yet to develop a subtler sense of how reality operates. They are like children who cannot bear their suffering and so turn to those “grown ups” who seem to have life figured out, to have suffering beaten, and to have peace mastered.

They are not ready for the cold harsh truth - that no one ever masters peace, no one ever beats suffering, no one ever figures life out. At best, we divest ourselves of any delusions we may hold of getting a leg up on this thing we call reality. And in doing so, we learn to bear our suffering with a matter-of-factness, and engage life with an openness that does not hold it ransom to our infantile expectations.

For, as they say in Vegas, “The house always wins.” There is no gaming reality.

The wise among us are not those who hold some superior knowledge of self and reality that others don’t. The wise among us are not those who no longer feel the sting of heartache, the pang of desire or the stab of fear. The wise among us are not those who know how to respond perfectly and equanimously to the situations that life conjures. The wise among us are not those who are unperturbed by suffering and conflict.

The wise are simply those who plainly see that life is as it is, and we are as we are. There simply can be no argument with what is. Reality as it unfolds is unpredictable, spontaneous and unknowable. It cannot be limited to a preconceived image. It may look like a warm sunny spring day, or it may look like a nuclear holocaust. It may look like Shiv espousing profound words on his Substack, or it may look like Shiv espousing even profounder profanities at the driver’s license department. Awakening has nothing to do with orchestrating what things look like. It has everything to do with seeing things just as they are.

And this especially includes oneself.

For you can only see yourself as you are when your vision is not skewed by your expectations of how you should appear to be. The more powerful the expectation, the more skewed the vision. And yet, even the power of these preconceived expectations is not absolute. For if one simply observes matter-of-factly that one has succumbed to such a skew, then in that very moment that power dissolves, and one is once again wholly oneself.

That is the potency of awareness. It can dispel a lifetime of delusion in a single instant.

It seems almost laughable. And yet, to simply exist is the greatest spiritual aspiration. How that existence manifests is irrelevant - whether as peace or conflict, as equanimity or rage. It matters not one iota.

For, this is all we are here to do. To exist. To be. That’s it.

And, in the face of every social and cultural pressure that attempts to capture our attention and distort our perception in favor of its own agendas, it takes great courage to simply be.