Threads of Awakening:
A MULTIDIMENSIONAL Map of the Spiritual Journey
By Pierce Salguero
TABLE OF CONTENTS
RELEASING
Most spiritual traditions pick a particular spot in the deepening, braiding, and integration process as their definition of enlightenment, and therefore the goal or endpoint of the awakening process. For example, some meditation- or inquiry-based traditions identify the far end of the emptiness thread (i.e., the total emptying out of experience) as their criterion for enlightenment. Some deistic traditions identify the far extremity of the oneness thread (i.e., completely merging into God) as their goal. Traditions that value multiple threads equally will tend to speak of their full integration as the highest attainment. Traditions intended for laypeople will tend to incorporate the daily life thread as well, while those intended for hermits and monastics usually will not explicitly do so (or might even denigrate it). Some teachings prioritize the stabilization of insights, insisting that you are not enlightened unless a particular state of consciousness is present 100% of the time, perhaps even including during sleep.
Most spiritual traditions define enlightenment as stabilizing whatever endpoint they have identified as the goal. However, in this model, stabilization is not the end of the story. Many people do in fact stabilize in a highly integrated “enlightened” state, sometimes for years or even decades; however, there’s a further process that can take place for some. This can be thought of as a “post-enlightenment” process, in the sense that it involves the collapse or falling away of even the highest, most refined, most spiritual realizations and attainments. Actually, I don’t think it’s too strong to say that this process involves the diminishing and eventual disappearance of every last trace of what you once called awakening or enlightenment.
I call this process “releasing.” As was the case in the other chapters, there are different components to releasing, and different people might notice aspects of it showing up in a different sequence than how I’ve written it here. As usual, things manifest with an extraordinary amount of diversity according to the individual, and this chapter is just a pointer summarizing some generalities. In sum, I think we could say that a thread’s release takes place when its perspective is so fully integrated that paying any attention to it as a separate thing, process, or feature of reality is superfluous. No longer receiving any particular attention, the thread ceases to be a major factor in one’s experience. With full release, the thread disappears altogether and one may even forget what it was like to have given it any importance in the first place.
In order to make clearer what I’m talking about, let’s go through the threads one by one, starting with emptiness. The insights learned from this thread all centered around deconstructing the relationship between the subject (i.e., awareness, consciousness, presence, etc.) and the objects of perception (i.e., concepts, thoughts, sensory phenomena, etc.). This thread’s release takes place when the deconstruction of the final, most subtle layer of subject-object duality is finally integrated. This is characterized by a marked lack of concern for understanding, interest in investigating, or ability to even locate subject-object duality anymore. Gone is the desire or capacity to monitor, scrutinize, or even know what is arising in experience. As one ceases to pay attention to the subject-object distinction — which once seemed so centrally important to the awakening process — one eventually forgets what it was like to ever think it was meaningful in the first place.
Before we move on to the other threads, let’s underscore that releasing the threads is not a single event that takes place at a specific moment and then is permanently done. It’s a process, and like the other processes discussed in this book, it unfolds over time. One might let go of all the threads at once, one thread at a time sequentially, or bit by bit of each in a more random piecemeal fashion. One might feel like one is doing the releasing intentionally or like it’s spontaneously happening to you. The releasing process might begin to take place with certain threads while others are still not fully integrated. It might happen gradually or suddenly. The release may be partial or more all-encompassing. There might be a period where there’s a pushing away or a rejection of certain threads. There might be exasperation or boredom with certain threads. There might be a feeling like they were taken away too soon, or they may be greatly missed. For some people, the release of the threads might feel like backsliding, falling out of enlightenment and a return to a completely ordinary pre-awakened way of being. There might be big fireworks, sheer panic, a small sigh of relief, or one may not even notice this process happening at all.
However it takes place, there will no doubt be complexities in the releasing process. It’s likely that one will think one has let go of or even completely forgotten about a thread only to find oneself taking it up again months or years later. To give an example related to the emptiness thread, one might spend a long period of time without caring or noticing whether one was conscious or aware at all, when suddenly the old feeling of monitoring experience might pop up again. There might be a sudden return of a sense of presence, or an abrupt realization that one is “awake.” This seems to be perfectly normal.
Even while this awareness, presence, consciousness, or subtle witness was off-line, so to speak, one’s body still apparently was doing things: talking to people, thinking thoughts, using words, feeling sensations, and performing all sorts of other activities. But, these things just happen, without the overlay of resistance, analysis, or any particular kind of attention. It’s like the flow state of an athlete or musician working at the top of their game, or as if it was all running on autopilot. If we go with the latter metaphor for a moment, then we might ask who is flying the plane when no one is there to watch the controls in the cockpit? What I’m referring to as “the autopilot” in this metaphor is simply the sum total of the conditioned behaviors, responses, and habits of the unconscious layers of the psyche that are running automatically in the background without needing conscious monitoring.
When you got to the end of the psyche thread, you already saw and fully surrendered to the realization that one hundred percent of what you think, believe, feel, do, say, and experience is a product of these unconscious processes and projections. When the psyche thread releases, there’s no longer a question of needing to accept, allow, or welcome these unconscious materials to come forth. There is no ability or desire to take any stance toward them. Everything is simply there, autonomously running without any ego or self needed to manage, control, repress, welcome, surrender to, or otherwise relate to it.
This doesn’t mean that on-the-fly tweaks to conditioning can’t be made. Nothing is set in stone. On the contrary, new skills can still be learned, and bad habits can still be reprogrammed with seemingly more ease. The physical body often seems to take center stage at this point. All kinds of psychosomatic ailments can emerge, and EMDR, somatic work, or other therapeutic modalities for treatment of underlying psychological wounds or traumas can fruitfully be undertaken. However, since subjectivity or relationality have disappeared, none of this seems to have any implications for one’s growth, spiritual development, or any other kind of self-improvement project. The full range of human emotions can arise, but they flow freely without lingering around or having any long-term effect or meaningfulness. Gone is any kind of convoluted strategy to either avoid or lean into what’s arising. Deconditioning is like mere spontaneous reflexes, as if a plane’s autopilot is automatically tweaking the flight controls to respond to turbulence while the pilot remains asleep at the wheel.
Having covered the release of the emptiness and psyche threads, let’s go on to include oneness. Releasing this thread means that all of the experiences of God, divinity, sacredness, love, compassion, fullness, beauty, wholeness, intimacy, and so forth come to be seen as so many superfluous overlays. Being no longer necessary, they lose their attraction; in fact, the very ideas no longer even really make sense anymore. The whole range of states and realizations associated with this thread — no matter how central they may have been to the awakening process in the past — comes to be devoid of any meaningfulness or importance.
As these phenomena associated with the oneness thread disappear, there can for some people initially be a bit of mourning, or clinging, or nostalgia for the good old days of interconnection and intimacy. But the more this thread releases, the less it is desirable or even possible to turn toward any of these kinds of experience, or to sink into them, or to even find them anymore. Even the most basic instruction, like “focus your attention on love” does not seem to compute. To do so, one would have to find something called “attention” that’s separate from something called “love,” and then somehow turn the former toward the latter. It’s just too much work to bother with. (What a delicious irony that a certain amount separation was always required in order to experience states of oneness!)
The same can also be said about the energy thread. The subtle body and energetic pulsations that previously were so significant in the awakening process now cease to be sought after or to be invested with any particular meaningfulness. Again, in order to even find these states, it would require somehow separating out awareness from energy so that the first could look for the second. As important as this thread might have been in the awakening process, one now sees that all such states have always been superfluous constructions created by separation. They can now simply let go as well.
Of course, the reason that love and energy are not particularly important or meaningful anymore as separate phenomena is because both of them, like the other two threads discussed above, have been fully integrated into the system. As a result of all of the previous work opening, deepening, braiding, and integrating these threads throughout the awakening process, their insights or lessons or perspectives have now simply become built-in features of the autopilot. That is to say, these orientations just seem to arise as and when needed in a way that is natural, automatic, and non-premeditated, without any consciousness or awareness being necessary for their deployment. Compassion and helpfulness for those in need just arise; a surge of energy to deal with a project just appears; energetic connections or transmissions between people just occur. But, all of that occurs on autopilot — meaning it is all devoid of intentionality, all completely unconsciously conditioned, and all running autonomously without needing to be watched, seen, monitored, or responded to. (Of course, any threads that were not part of the awakening process or that did not finish integrating will not be baked into the autopilot in this way.)
Lastly, in addition to the four spiritual threads, there’s release of the daily life thread as well. This doesn’t mean that one completely checks out of ordinary society and goes to live in a cave somewhere. To the contrary, it’s the disappearance of any interest in, need to, or ability to create meaning or significance out of the mundane everyday aspects of life. Every deeply held notion of what a meaningful life is simply vanishes. The will to control, manage, or steer life on some trajectory or another simply cannot be found. The world doesn’t need to change or be experienced any differently than it is.
As one ceases micromanaging reality in these ways, there is literally no job for an ego-self to do any longer, so it falls by the wayside, superfluous and forgotten. That doesn’t mean that one can’t participate in normal activities like going to work, taking care of health needs, managing bills, looking after kids, planning vacations or career goals, or even managing one’s public image on social media. One might even become an extremely effective and efficient employee, student, social activist, boss, businessperson, or anything else. Functionality isn’t impaired in any of these arenas; they just now also all run on autopilot without any great significance, meaningfulness, or emotion, and without any monitoring or oversight required.
What else falls away as a result of releasing these five threads? Well, if it didn’t already happen previously, this process also involves the letting go of all ontological beliefs. Whereas previously one might have held onto certain truth-claims about the nature of the universe — the emptiness of things, the existence of God, the reality of rebirth, the primacy of material reality, or consciousness, or quantum fields, or whatever the case may be — all such statements become increasingly impossible to actually believe. For any of these propositions to be true, it would require taking a distinct position on reality. Whereas previously, one was able to adopt such perspectives — one at a time during braiding, and then all simultaneously during integration — now no firm footing upon which to do so can be found. Every word points to nothing in particular; every last concept is merely a construct. Having a position or perspective on anything is simply setting up another duality. One might take such a position in a provisional way for some practical purpose or another, but as a deeply held philosophy to be invested with significance and defended? Who could be bothered with that? And, how could you even split yourself off in that way, even if you wanted to?
Fully releasing the threads also involves letting go of identifying with any of them. Initially, before awakening, there was identification as a narrative self. During the awakening process, a certain kind of meta-level self emerged that replaced this identification with a much greater one. However, while previously it may have felt important to identify as awareness, consciousness, nothingness, God, Brahman, energy, light, a soul, the mind, a human being, a spiritual being, a spiritual teacher, or a million other possibilities, now such equations simply can’t hold any sway. Again, in order to identify with something — to feel that “I am that” — would require some subtle part to split off from the whole so it could turn around and equate itself with the whole once again. When there’s no interest in or ability to divide oneself in that way, such mental acrobatics are tedious, meaningless, and impossible.
Also released at this point is the tendency to fixate on anything. Focused attention on a particular task (say, reading, writing, or driving) can still happen effortlessly on autopilot. That means that all of those kinds of everyday activities can freely arise as necessary. However, any attempt to consciously grab ahold of experience in order to stabilize or scrutinize it is like trying to clutch at water with one’s hands. Everything one attempts to pick up seems to flow through one’s fingers, ungraspable, unpindownable, unfixatable. One doesn’t need to remember to let go of fixations; one has forgotten how to hold onto them in the first place. (For some, this also manifests as a loss of capacity for short-term memory.)
Along with the falling away of belief systems, identification, and fixation, comes a simple, clear authenticity. Gone are all of the convoluted pretenses and subterfuges one used to rely upon to manage one’s life, reality, or emotions. There is also a release from self-induced suffering. Make no mistake: unpleasant experiences will continue to arise. The body and mind can still feel pain. Without the ability to intentionally manage pain by dissolving it into emptiness, absorbing it into oneness, dissipating it into energy, or alchemizing it in some other way, the pain one encounters during release might even be severe. But, as there’s no longer any differentiation between aspects of the whole, there’s no more fractures, conflicts, or tensions related to unpleasant sensations. Would’ves, could’ves, and should’ves have nowhere to land. Instead, there is a fundamental equanimity regarding all experiences. It’s simply always the case that nothing can be different than it is.
After all this has been said, let’s reemphasize that releasing the threads is a process that takes time. Even years after the releasing process begins, there might be an unexpected event of a certain magnitude — something in daily life like an accident or the illness of a loved one, or something else — that re-engages them. It might feel like one is snapping back into a certain kind of relationship with a thread, or perhaps like uncovering a tangle or a snag that had lain dormant. Taking the thread back up, there may be a reconstruction of an ontology or an identity related to it. A whole world of meaningfulness, and even a self, might rear their heads again. Even fixation and grasping at experiences can pop back up, and possibly even persist for a little while.
Temporarily taking back up a thread like that is totally normal, a signal that there’s an aspect of it that has yet to fully release. It might feel like this is a problem that needs to be fixed, but in fact, what could be done? Just like you simply can’t will yourself to forget something because the more you try to push away or deny it the more you’re actually reminding yourself of that very thing, similarly, you can’t will yourself into releasing the threads. On the other hand, the more acceptance of what is, the more the whole system can just relax and unwind itself naturally. And, the more relaxation there is, the more things can simply unwind by themselves. Life can just be what it is, without needing to apply any interpretation, conceptualization, commentary, or further elaboration onto itself. Without the need to invest meaning in, establish ontologies about, identify with, fixate on, scrutinize, or otherwise separate out any part from the whole.
The further along this process goes, the more the very idea of a spiritual path becomes increasingly irrelevant. At a certain point, post-enlightenment becomes post-spirituality altogether. With no further trajectories and nothing to attain with regards to the threads, there’s no longer any point in engaging in any of the practices. There’s a gradual forgetting of what it was like to ever think that the threads were important. Consciousness and perception, sacredness and energy, conditioning and integration, pilots and autopilots — the whole thing comes to seem like a distant dream, a movie you watched once many years ago and can now barely remember.
One day, it dawns on you that the notion of awakening itself has lost all meaning whatsoever. Not because a final awakened state was ever found, but because every last aspect of awakening has simply ceased to be relevant in any way. While you may adopt certain ways of speaking in order to try to teach or help others, at this point, it is clear that mountains really are just mountains after all. The only difference between you and anyone else is that you have stopped needing to question, investigate, or suffer over this fact. You have learned to simply walk the terrain, and mapping it is neither meaningful nor necessary any longer.