A significant portion of the earth's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.

The recognition of the false is already the arising of the real.

Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river.

In the unawakened state you don't use thought, but thought uses you. You are, one could almost say, possessed by thought, which is the collective conditioning of the human mind that goes back many thousands of years. You don't see anything as it is, but distorted and reduced by mental labels, concepts, judgments, opinions and reactive patterns.

The most decisive event in your life is when you discover you are not your thoughts or emotions. Instead, you can be present as the awareness behind the thoughts and emotions.

When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realises its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested.

A teacher or teaching is not essential for spiritual awakening, but they save time.