Some messages don’t land because they’re wrong. They don’t land because they hit the same invisible filter every time.
“It’s already here” is one of those messages. For many people it doesn’t register. Or it triggers anger. Or it turns into yet another future goal: “Someday I’ll realize it’s already here.”
The speaker says the problem isn’t the phrase. The problem is what the phrase illuminates: a pervasive, pre-verbal conclusion you made long ago—life is not okay, I am not okay—and the mission that follows from it.
Once that assumption is running, everything becomes seeking. Even spiritual pointing becomes another reason to wait for later.
This talk points straight at that mechanism—and at the only thing that actually disrupts it.
The Strange Phenomenon: Pointing Gets Filtered Until It Doesn’t
A very strange phenomenon happens with this kind of spiritual pointing—non-duality pointing, new Advaita pointing, when I talk about awakening.
It’s not complicated. It’s simple.
But it gets overlooked over and over until it doesn’t.
And when it finally lands—what I’m going to point to—that’s actually the beginning of awakening, or it is awakening. It doesn’t take long after this lands.
This has to do, in part, with what I say when I say “it’s already here.”
Some people get triggered by that phrase. I get it. But it’s not about whether the phrase is true or not true. It is true.
It’s about what gets illuminated when that statement doesn’t land, can’t land, or triggers someone.
The Mechanism: “Life Is Not Okay” Becomes the Catcher’s Mitt
What it illuminates is a mechanism. Call it: life is not okay, or I’m not okay.
There’s such a pervasive feeling of not-okayness that we concluded long ago—before we knew we concluded it, before we were consciously thinking about any of this.
We learned it through communication styles with other people, primarily our parents.
What we concluded was: something is not okay with life, something is not okay with me.
Then the next thing followed:
Because things are not okay, because life is not okay the way it is, or I’m not okay the way I am, my mission is to find something to make it okay—to find something to make me feel okay.
This is pre-verbal. It’s not something you overtly think and then structure your life around.
But if you look at the ways we try to make ourselves feel better, the ways we try to become—seeking, future orientation, striving, fantasizing about the future—you can see the underlying urgency.
Things are not okay. I have to do this. I have to get to that place.
And anyone who’s seeking, anyone who hasn’t had a shift in identity, can relate: you believe something will happen in the future that will finally make you feel better.
Early on in life, it’s: when I turn 16, 18, 21.
Then: when I get the relationship, the partner, the girlfriend, the boyfriend.
When I get into college. When I graduate. When I get married. When I have a kid.
On and on.
And we see over and over it’s not any event that solves it, because the mechanism itself is flawed.
It’s always false.
It’s built on disappointment. Built on not-okayness.
So when I say “it’s already here,” what I’m pointing to is already here, but the phrase gets filtered through that apparatus—like a catcher’s mitt that catches every pitch and turns it into seeking.
It turns everything into: it’s gotta be later.
I’m not okay. Something has to happen later to make me okay.
Three Common Reactions to “It’s Already Here”
When I say “it’s already here,” a few things happen.
One: it doesn’t register. It doesn’t make sense. It sounds like I’m talking about freedom or peace or feeling okay, but you don’t feel okay, so it can’t already be here.
Another: you think I’m full of it, making it up.
Another: “Oh, it’s just here. I can’t wait until I get to the place where I realize it’s just here.”
Any of those reactions are filtered through the same apparatus.
And what I’m actually saying is: you have to question the first assumption you don’t even think to question—something’s not okay in the first place.
That can be frustrating, because you can say, “Well, it sure feels like something’s not okay.”
I understand that.
I can challenge it directly: does it feel like something’s not okay? Is a sensation not okay or okay? Is an emotion okay or not okay, or is that interpretation?
Of course it’s interpretation, but that doesn’t get to the root early on. It can help in shadow work.
For first awakening, you have to challenge the deep belief that it’s not okay.
But here’s the key: it’s not the not-okayness you have to look at.
It’s the you.
Don’t Argue With “Not Okay”—Find the “You”
This is the whole message when it comes to awakening.
Not that there is a you there that has a problem that needs fixing, and not that there’s a you you need to discover.
You need to address the sense that there is a you defined by not being okay.
A you defined by seeking.
A you defined by its own suffering.
This is what you take yourself to be.
So when I say things are fundamentally okay, or what you’re looking for is already here, one reason is to discourage seeking.
Because if you’re looking for it later, you’re going to be disappointed.
And it may be frustrating to hear that, but it’s true: you’re not going to find it later.
You can’t.
Because later is based on another lie.
If you don’t address the misperception, you’ll chase later forever, or look for a message that sounds better—“No, I really will find it later.”
But the truth is you won’t.
There is no awakening in the future.
[Possible clarification needed: this means awakening is not a future attainment for a seeking-self; the shift is the collapse of the sufferer/seeker identity now, even though clarification can continue to mature.]
When awakening happens, you realize what I’m saying: the sense of not-okayness was only a thought.
The not-okayness seemed to backward-extrapolate a me that isn’t okay—a me that seeks, that tries to get the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, solving its problem of itself.
That is the fundamental illusion.
And in my experience, there’s no other way for the first shift to happen than to directly disrupt that I that is suffering, the I that doesn’t feel okay.
If you don’t topple that, there’s no awakening.
Using Frustration as Fuel
I’m being direct because I feel people’s frustration.
But I can also see how they turn my message into what it’s not: “Later you’ll find out it’s already here.”
That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying: look directly, look closely, look precisely.
Use frustration. Use stubbornness.
I sure did.
I had stubbornness and frustration and rebellion, and I used all of that to rebel against my own thoughts—the way thought was structuring reality—to get underneath and topple that sense of identity.
That worked for me.
I think it works for everybody, though there are different ways to get there. That’s why I have a playlist on awakening approaches.
Three Ways In: One-Pointed, Surrender, Self-Inquiry
He names a few approaches.
One is one-pointed: narrow the mind down to one point until the sense of I gets toppled. That works for some people.
Another is surrender: surrender into that which came before the I. Surrender to what is before the I that you feel like you are because you suffer, because you seek.
Another is self-inquiry: if you think you’re the one here having this experience, seeking something in time, find it.
Look for it. Look closely. Keep looking until it topples.
There’s no other way to wake up.
No Promises: The Seeker Doesn’t Want to Find
He gets even more direct: you’re not going to feel better in the future while staying the same way you are.
If you stay with the same false identity, that false identity is never going to find a place where it feels better.
It’s going to keep seeking. That’s what it does.
So you have to get under it.
You have to topple the backward-extrapolated one that is suffering because it doesn’t have what it needs to feel better—because it fundamentally doesn’t feel okay.
Even when awakening happens “by grace”—randomly—it’s still the same thing: what you take yourself to be is seen to be not what you are.
The seeking one is seen to be an illusion.
The suffering one is seen to be an illusion.
The one that thinks it needs to find XYZ is seen to be an illusion.
And XYZ can be anything.
Often it’s spiritual awakening, enlightenment, kensho—but what you’re really looking for is what you think it will give you: validation, love, finally getting what you think you need.
“Finally going to get… finally going to get… finally going to get.”
That’s why he says: look at your surrogates. Look at what you’re actually trying to get.
It’s important because otherwise there’s a competing agenda.
And he ends with a blunt honesty: you can’t know what you’re going to get from this.
You have to be willing to go into the unknown.
That’s what it means: no promises.
If you insist on promises, you reinforce the seeker.
Because the seeker doesn’t really want to find. It wants to seek.
It believes seeking will get it something, but it won’t.
Hopefully that’s not too blunt, but it’s honest.