The Miracle of Acknowledgment and Recognition

The difference between seeking and finding is that the former has meaning of total absence of what is and thus need to acquire whereas the latter has a prior knowledge that a search is all that is needed to look for what is potentially available here, but not seen yet.

Both of these ideas or meanings determine how we live our lives and from it our life experience are created around it. In fact, the only difference that separates the world and spirituality is found in these two roots of experience. Do you notice that many a times of our moments we are seeking rather than finding? We seek for love instead of finding what is blocking us from loving now. We seek for money instead of what is stopping money from coming in, now. We seek for happiness instead of why we are not experiencing happiness now. When we do not acknowledge what is here in the now that we are not recognizing, we are already ignoring or denying the present and hence constantly projecting our attention to the imaginative future to arrive at. Isn’t that what most of us are experiencing, almost constantly?

Thus the NOW can have two meanings of definition for two different individuals – one, not seeing what is here and thus keep seeking – for them, the now is the cause of the problem and that propels them to look further into the future, hence ignoring or denying the present. To another, the now is an effect of what they are not seeing, and that propels them to be more in the present moment so as to find what they have missed. You would have known by now why the mind is seldom in the present no matter how much you try to be aware. Your hidden idea is perpetuating your present experience – considering that it is only “hidden” because you are not noticing it. For you to notice, you have to be aware and to be aware you have to be here! Now. Ironic isn’t it?

We lost ourselves when we seek; we find ourselves when we see.

To the wise, “now” is for the sake of unravelling. To the ignorant (ignoring what is in the now), the “now” is for the sake of moving away. Many are familiar with the verse of St Francis of Asisi when he said, what we are seeking is what that seek. It is the “what that seek” is what needed scrutiny and realization, not seeking what is other than here. We lost ourselves when we seek; we find ourselves when we see. We are simply not seeing the obvious. This can only occur because we are not told to do so. More accurately is that we are constantly being taught the opposite thus the mind only knows how to live by it.

The mentality of lack is determined by our innate idea of seeking. The world direction is constantly about not enough, not getting and not arriving at. Even our education, our work, our survival is constantly plague with the meaning “there is always something better there”. Having this mentality in mind, it is impossible to see the potential of non-doing, and thus those of these genre will dispute the opposite and often than not, label them as “lazy” or “giving up the fight”. They may even hear non-doing as not-doing, unrealized that not-doing is an actual part of the game of “seeking but not finding” hence resigning to it.

And because of that mentality, our minds are most often than not, always in the future. They are results of what idea we have in mind – we can try our very best to bring our minds back to the moment, knowing from Scriptures that present is all what we have, yet in the next unaware moment, we are back to the imaginative future, if not past. Even in language expression, we tend to express what we are not instead of what we already are – we put on a facade to hide the reality we are in and project what we want to be – often unaware that what we are doing is merely reinforcing our conjured meaning of lack.

Thus the journey of spirituality is to come to acknowledge what is here, now in the mind, without sugarcoating or denying it. It is pertinent to realize that when one is impatient with what one is acknowledging, as to expect a quick result from it – do realize that this itself is the seeking mind playing its game, again. Instead of seeking the future, it now seeks the present for the future. Observe how insidious ideas can be – manipulating its way for survival. The only key to the journey of awakening is not forgetting this truth – see (as it is) instead of seek.