The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment

What we call ego is simply the mechanism our mind uses to resist life as it is. In that way, ego isn’t a thing as much as it is a verb.

orientation. If there is an orientation, it is the orientation of a deep sense of relaxation, of allowing everything to be. Literally, you find your orientation through

There are a lot of influences that come to our aid when we’re willing to be on our own—seen and unseen, known and unknown. The point is not to get stuck on the idea that it is all about being alone. That is a particular experience of a moment of aloneness, of facing oneself, of not grasping on to the teacher or the tradition or the teachings—includ

Ultimately, no tradition, no teacher, no teaching is going to save me from myself. I realized I can’t abdicate that authority.

ADYA I will try to explain what happened experientially. At the moment of awakening, it was as though I was completely outside who I thought I was. There was a vast, vast, vast emptiness. In that vast emptiness, in that infinite emptiness, there was the smallest, smallest, smallest point of light you could imagine. And that smallest point of light

In one sense, I think almost everybody has experienced this still, small voice. The example I often give is when you are dating some man or some woman and it ends badly. Something inside you says, “Don’t do that again.” But then we meet someone new, and we don’t listen to the voice. We are attracted; this person is sexy, and we just want to be with

Everything I tried failed. It doesn’t mean that the trying didn’t play an important role. The trying did play a role. The effort did play a role. The struggle did play a role. But it played a role because it got me to an end of that role. I danced that dance until it was extinguished. But I failed. I failed at meditating well; I failed at figuring

a totally different manifestation in each one of those points. I could go into each one of them and see a totally different dream of self and a totally different world that was being dreamed as well.

otherwise—the trajectory of our spiritual lives and of all spiritual awakening is toward surrender. Ultimately, that’s the name of the spiritual game. Everything we do spiritually is leading us to a spontaneous state of surrender—to letting go. That is where it all leads, no matter what the path is, no matter what the practice is.