Great Confidence
2025, August, Issue 164
When suddenly
Timeless Luminosity
appears, manifesting
beyond concept,
beyond belief,
beyond any restrictions
of Mind,
Great Confidence
is attained, manifests
as liberation is at hand!
Throughout this long difficult Path,
from when we first taste
Enlightenment Mind,
when a small seed of confidence
glimmers, has
ignited
an essence of a feeling,
just a taste,
just a ripple,
just a splash of light,
difficult to maintain,
difficult to cultivate,
difficult to increase,
as the obstacles themselves
begin to cast doubt,
suggesting uncertainty;
As this shakes us,
it is time we listened,
so that we can fully
reject their folly,
reject this nonsense,
reject every aspect,
examining the root cause
of those demons,
those figments of Mind,
those who prevent us
from
Awakening.
A poem by Robert Aho © 2025
It is not so unusual for those who seek to discover reality at last to suddenly feel a sense of doubt or a lack of confidence. I have witnessed this countless times. Unfortunately, as a teacher, it’s been many lifetimes since I have experienced this, and this makes it difficult for me to relate. I’m someone who trusts my intuition. I take leaps without knowing where I will land. I also return to my foundation as needed, admit if I don’t know something and am not afraid to appear foolish. Fear is not something that can really hold me. I’ve always had no fear in this lifetime. This is due to multi-lifetime Spiritual Practice. I know there’s never anything to fear. If there’s nothing to fear, then uncertainty and doubt have no place to reside.
So, when I returned from death, I had attained what Garab Dorje refers to as great confidence, that is my knowledge of our real nature was confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt. I cannot make the claim that I returned as a fully enlightened being, only that I had tasted our real condition for an eternity. Self had disappeared completely, and this essence that was transmigrating remained fully aware, completely open and unattached, beyond any constraints or limitations in what we might refer to as Ultimate Reality or Timeless Luminosity. That is where we find great confidence on our spiritual journey. It is never found in belief or concept of any kind. It is beyond beyond.
Now, that said, we should understand a little bit about confidence in general. When we enter the Spiritual Path, we do so with the aspiration to awaken, we engage with enlightenment mind itself. This can seem a little daunting at first, even though it is just a taste. In order to step onto the Path, we must exhaust all avenues that might seem to offer liberation of some kind, then focus with great compassion on our own awakening. This is our foundation. We must resolve quite definitively that awakening is the only thing that can possibly remove us from this condition of eternal suffering, which is also referred to as cyclic existence. We need confidence; and, at some point, eventually, we must discover great confidence. This is completely attainable, and well worth the effort. I can attest to this.
A Spiritual Practitioner is bound with determination to this notion of awakening. It is the first samaya or sacred promise we make when we step onto the Path. So, it stands to reason that we must maintain our confidence, or we will never awaken. If we understand that we must maintain our confidence, then we must never be afraid to return to the basics, building our foundation again as many times as it takes. We must look at our aspiration to awaken, look at the commitment to the Path as being most important, look at those things that obstruct our vision. The first few steps on the Path are all about cultivating virtue, peace and insight into the state of our own mind. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself a very advanced practitioner or not, when we lose confidence, we must rebuild our foundation, revisiting the aspiration to awaken.
The Spiritual Path is like this. With each obstacle that is annihilated, we find that our causes and conditions change, which means we must now adapt to the energetic environment our life now generates. We need to fine tune our Spiritual Practice. What worked one day might not work the next. Our resolve to awaken needs to be efficiently revisited, rather than adding unnecessary intellectual exercises. We don’t need more transmissions and empowerments, we need to practice our meditation in a way that cuts through the nonsense, helping us, rather than creating unneeded complexity and a sort of materialistic approach to our endeavor to awaken.
It is very tempting to approach this notion of awakening as if you have enrolled in a school program and now expect to proceed through the different levels until you finally have your PhD. This is not how it works. We are annihilating obstacles until none remain, until our heart and mind open fully to what is, as it is.
If we wish to awaken, then we do what we need to do, without regard for structured education or contrived meditative practices. Awakening is not an intellectual exercise. It is about discovering Ultimate Reality, discovering that open awareness, breaking down barriers to real knowledge.
Blessings in Light,
Robert Aho