Revised editorial: The bedazzlement of awakening after many years of seeking, by Gary Nixon, PhD. 

I thought rather than writing in an academic way, I would share something of my own path, to illustrate the paradoxical path of awakening which points to the name of this journal Paradoxica. Awakening for this body-mind  was about joining a completely different and unique realm of existence.... an experience  that was very very extraordinary...and intoxicatingly relaxing and ordinary. Leading up to that day, all my years of efforts and seeking for this lifetime, and proceeding ones as well, were bottoming out, as if I was coming to the end of the line. A total out of control exhaustion swept over me and a very hopeless feeling of not being able to do one more thing anymore overtook me. It had all started in the early 80's  with feverishly high hopes as Osho discourses, then called Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh talks,  had interrupted me in the middle of law school in my early 20’s. But, after many years of intense seeking, dozens of meditation and self-inquiry techniquess, hundreds of books, Osho, Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta, Papaji, Trungpa and Western people like Adi Da, Wilber, Grof, and Almaas. and furthering my path by adding on a Masters and Doctorate in transpersonal psychology, and becming a transpersonal psychologist and professor, the way always pointed back to my first teacher, Osho. He left us with many profound series of discourses and books, especially on Zen and the Buddha with books and discourses on The Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, Take it Easy, The Grass Grows By Itself, Zen: The Path of Paradox, The Sun Rises in the Evening, and a very beautiful book pivotal to me This Body The Very Buddha.

It was the last book This Body The Very Buddha that summed up my seeker’s predicament, even mine after a couple of decasdes. As Osho asks in the first chapter, maybe your whole strategy has been wrong right from the beginning for this lifetime and many lifetimes. You have been striving for enlightenment and happiness, and always instead got misery and unhappiness. Seeing this, maybe you just need to give it all up and stop and simply enjoy unhappiness. Maybe it is striving that is the problem, and as I read this over this seemed to sum up my entire predicament. I needed to give up.

It seemed like I was in this totally hopeless place because literally there was nothing left for the self to do, not another technique to do or book to read so I just accepted this invitation, and gave up, and relaxedly dropped into utter effortless. It seemed like floating like a log down a river. No effort, no pain. So, I watched myself go down quietly, without splashing around and just be drowned totally into existence.  I had been haunted by exhausted efforts of during this life, but now things seemed over for me, and I sat calmly in this place of no effort. I relished in the painless joy of no effort. In the moment, very strangely I saw a big black Titanic ship of effort falling into the horizon of the ocean, and slipping into the ocean forever, gone. As Karl Renz would say, "little Gary" was executed. And what was left was just this vast translucent stillness. And as I looked around it was like I had been introduced into another realm of existence, or the suchness of existence completely....total eternal intense interconnect light, “Clear, brilliant, stillness” it had been called. Now I could see why the Buddha had laughed when he became enlightened because he realized the whole of existence is enlightened, and the funny thing as well it had been enlightened all of the time. It was only my effort and seeking that had gotten in the way. It was so simple, “this is it.” It was so beautiful, and so ordinary.

The paradox of awakening is that it is always availaible all the way along, "this is it" but sometimes we need an experience, a moment in time, that pushes us into the timeless eternrty where seeing and understanding happen beyond cognition. It is truly acausal, no formula or method can be followed to predict when one day existence shows up in the life of a seeker. It seems though perhaps there are processes that can help ripen the process. For example, a seeker coming to the end of seeking and becoming totally exhausted with "doing" seems to be important as well as working through unfinished business or trauma stuck points. For futher discussions on these and other topics, please review our assortment of peer reviewed articles for issue 2, all in some way dealing with the tranformation and awakening process.  (Comments on this editorial can be sent to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).