The author of The Way of Liberations, True Meditation, The End of your World and Falling into Grace, Adyashanti, is a spiritual teacher born in the US who aspires to awake people and make them aware of the true and liberating meaning of existence.
When it comes to spirituality, Adyashanti teaches people to be honest with themselves in order to discover what is necessary in their lives and what they should let go. The spiritual teacher compares self-inquiry to a spiritually form of wintertime, a moment when you discover what you are able to achieve without your metaphorically leaves and how you can survive without them.
Self-inquiry helps people to be more honest with themselves and it allows them to have a total sense of internal integrity and that enables them to lead the lives they truly want. Authenticity is another important part of Adyashanti’s teachings. He believes that it is better to live in your truth than to get rid of personal identity in order to be part of society or to do things that people expect you to do.
He compares spirituality with a building project. In order to build a tall building, you need a strong foundation. However, before building that strong foundation you have to take the time to invest in a demolition project, one that will allow you to remove all the things you don’t need anymore. The demolition project is the part where you have to let go of everything you know in order to find out what your truth is. After finding out, you can start building the foundation of your new spiritual reality and your entire being.
“If you want to know something, go elsewhere; if you want to un-know everything, sit and listen” is one of Adyashanti’s quotes that can be found on his website and the base of his teachings. The goal his students want to achieve is balance, balance that can be achieved by synchronizing the head, the heart and the gut through awakening to our true nature. Even though the primary goal was set pretty high, Adyashanti encourages people to take moments to “just be”, to relax in the moment and to be aware of all their senses.
Adyashanti’s teachings are a mix of powerful advice, spiritual guidance and encouragement. He believes that when people get rid of their illusions and they stop thinking about what should or can happen, they are left with the truth. He does not believe in searching the truth but rather in stumbling upon it when all the illusions are removed. Finding the truth means being able to get inside of you and accepting everything that you see with no judgements. Being open and truthful is the base of his spiritually teachings and it is the most important step in the process of awakening. After all, peace and freedom means accepting the present reality and building on it in order to achieve more and more.
Adyashanti’s teachings are usually compared to those of the early Zen masters who believed that a spiritually realized life meant expressing both the simplicity and the infinite possibilities that we, as humans, have.