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by
Arjuna
Ardagh
Robert had it all: the
beach house in Malibu,
the latest SUV, designer
clothes, the right connections. He also had a small drinking problem, and
a few personal difficulties to resolve at home. He had made his money
in California real
estate, and when the
market crashed in the
late eighties, so did Robert. He went from a net worth of millions
to bankruptcy. He lost
the house, many of
his friends, and his
confidence. By 1992
he was thinking about
killing himself.
Late one evening, he was
out taking a walk.
He stopped and stood
motionless, his mood
blacker than the night.
He had a thought, a simple thought. “I am finished,” his mind announced.
He still has trouble
explaining what happened next.
“I was overcome by a
sense of relief,” he reports. “A sudden feeling of inexpressible freedom.
I even began to laugh out loud. My body was filled with happiness, as if I
was suddenly getting a joke I’d been missing. For the first time I was
feeling really good for no reason at all. I was totally here, in this
moment. I could feel the trees around me, and hear the sounds without
having to listen to thoughts telling me things needed to be different in
some way. Everything was being experienced, but the ‘me’ was gone.”
Robert’s friends warned
him it would pass, that he had tasted a fleeting glimpse of a state only
great yogis could attain. “It didn’t pass, though,” Robert says today. “I
still have ups and downs, of course. But this mysterious sense of
well-being I found that night, this feeling of lightness for no reason,
has stayed with me for more than ten years. I couldn’t get rid of it if I
tried. In fact, it only seems to grow deeper and deeper. It is not
happening to me, it is who I am.”
A
similar thing happened to Mary, while she was working the early shift at a
vegetable-canning factory. Stephan was driving on the freeway, while
Jacquelyn’s awakening came in a hospital, after she gave birth to her
third child. Michael went through a similar shift serving an
eighty-seven-month prison sentence in a cell with thirty-two other
inmates, and Douglas was hiking in the Himalayas. Some have come to this
awakening through contact with a teacher, some from entering the depths of
despair and coming out the other side, and others after years of
meditation. It can occur in a one time light-bulb moment or as a gradual
marinating over many years.
Over
the last twelve years, I have spoken to thousands of people who have
passed through similar shifts of consciousness. Their awakening has
changed who they know themselves to be and the nature of the world around
them. While some are notable teachers and writers, the majority are
ordinary people leading everyday lives. I’ve checked with dentists,
hairdressers, housewives, and hobos.
These awakenings initiate
a gradual metamorphosis, which is both evolutionary and endless. A
spontaneous generosity of spirit, an impulse to serve, and a willingness
to transform living into art gradually replace the normal relationship to
life marked by fear and acquisition. I call this endless process of
evolution and transformation
“translucence.”
Webster’s dictionary
defines translucent as “letting light pass through, but not
transparent.” A transparent object, like a clean sheet of glass, is almost
invisible. You see everything through a transparent object as if it were
not there at all. An opaque object, on the other hand, blocks light
completely. A translucent object allows light to pass through, but
diffusely, while maintaining its form and texture. A crystal is
translucent. So is a sculpture of frosted glass.
Translucent people also
appear to glow from the inside. They have access to their deepest nature
as peaceful, limitless, free, unchanging, and at the same time they remain
fully involved in the events of their personal lives. Thoughts, fears, and
desires still come and go; life is still characterized by temporary
trials, misfortunes, and stress. But the personal story is no longer
opaque: it is now capable of reflecting something deeper, more luminous
and abiding.
Contemporary translucents
defy many of the spiritual concepts we have inherited from religious
traditions. They are not recluses. They play vigorously in their
relationships with others, their work, their creativity, and their
political and environmental causes, but they play to play more than to
win. Translucents display an above-average generosity of spirit. Giving to
other people and to the environment replaces old habits, based in lack,
desire, and need. Above all, translucents have a humorous and often
irreverent relationship to their personal life, beliefs, and identity.
They generally don’t
follow one particular teacher, teaching, or group, although many have in
their past. They are not “spiritual” in any way that can be obviously
recognized through lifestyle choices. As a group they display as wide a
variety of occupations, appearance, and educational and cultural
backgrounds as humanity itself. They generally don’t identify themselves
as “enlightened” or as having attained anything, and they are also not
trying to become enlightened. They are not overly materialistic or
spiritually cynical. Translucents are not uniformly vegetarians, political
liberals, religious zealots, new age hippies, or self-improvement junkies.
And they don’t all wear Birkenstocks.
Over
the last three years, I have interviewed more than 170 translucent writers
and teachers. By asking them what they have experienced with their own
students, I have also had indirect access to the experiences of millions
of people around the world. Finally, with the help of sociologists like
Paul Ray and Duane Elgin, I have studied numerous polls and bodies of
research that suggest a radical change in collective consciousness.
Conservative estimates put their numbers at three to four million
worldwide.
Many
of the people I interviewed feel that it is in the first buds of this
emergence of a new kind of humanity that we have realistic grounds for
optimism for our race. Open a newspaper today, switch on your TV, and you
will hear one tale after another of terrorist threats, global warming,
growing economic disparity and corruption, the depletion of natural
resources at a rate completely out of proportion to anything in our past.
Each of these disparate and complex problems seems to demand a unique
solution, in most cases still out of our grasp. But they can also be seen
collectively as symptoms of a mind set that is now dying: one which simply
cannot continue because it is unsustainable.
Are you translucent? If
what has been briefly summarized here sounds familiar to you, then you are
already a part of this evolutionary current. You are probably more a part
of the solution on this earth than a part of the problem. What you do,
and how you live, is not as trivial as you sometimes think. What you
choose to do in the next five minutes, and the spirit in which you do it,
contributes to the difference between nuclear annihilation and the
opportunity for this world to return to Eden. The future rests in your
hands, and the stakes are getting higher. It is time for all of us to wake
up to our natural sanity, and to live it passionately, dangerously,
intensely. Translucently.
Arjuna
Ardagh
has a Master’s degree in literature from Cambridge University. From a very
early age, he has had a passionate interest in spiritual awakening, and
began practicing meditation and yoga at the age of 14. In his late teens,
he trained as a meditation teacher and studied with a number of prominent
spiritual teachers both in Asia and in the West.. More recently, he
founded the Living Essence Foundation, which has trained over 450
practitioners to help facilitate our world’s shift in consciousness. Visit
him online at
www.translucentrevolution.org
Based
on the book
The
Translucent Revolution: How People
Just Like You are Waking Up and
Changing the World
©
2005
by Arjuna Ardagh. Printed with permission of New World Library,
Novato, CA.
www.newworldlibrary.com
Published by expressed
permission of the publisher
: New World Library
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Arjuna
Ardagh . All World Wide Right Reserved |
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