For years most on the spiritual path have patiently practiced according to their tradition. Practice automatically implies at least some level of effort. Effort is always directed at an object, towards something desired — peacefulness, happiness, oneness, experiences of shimmering light and love. Fascinating when you grasp that the intention of practice is to bring us into union with the subject not the object. Practices will always fail in that endeavor, are fated to fail. Perhaps the failure is the practice — to fail absolutely, to fail so completely that a stopping occurs, a dying into natural effortlessness.

At some point letting go occurs — 20, 30, 40 years into practice –stopping takes place, the current of I that practices drops into the Ocean, seeing that everything — the currents, ripples, waves and tsunamis of life were always nothing but the Ocean.
No one is ever enlightened. No one. Awakening doesn’t happen to a person. Anyone who claims to be enlightened is mistaken, has yet to stop. Many today do. They are not, for awakening is the realization of what is actually Here, what is actually Now and it isn’t personhood although the appearance of form is included in the Whole Holy Actuality, celebrated even, loved more deeply, more sweetly, than former ideas of a self — for it is the dance, the precious movement, the expression of the Ocean that Is.

Is practice necessary? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Does it take reaching absolute futility? I don’t know. If you can stop, stop. If you can’t rather than pumping up the one who can’t, inquire into the one aware of the inability to stop. All practices are designed to stop the mind. See what is aware of the mind’s shenanigans. Had I been given these instructions years ago, well who knows? It was quite the ride so perhaps nothing would have changed. Honestly, I doubt I would have listened. It’s seems too simple, too obvious to be Truth … but is isn’t!