Someone wrote the following:

A big part of my question on 'how to?' comes from seeing the confidence that you and other teachers exude in regards to enlightenment. Teachers like you, Adyashanti and especially teachers such as Nisargadatta have such an iron rock solid self-assuredness about the truth - that I don't seem to share. I am in a state of questioning, where you are not, and I want this rock solid assuredness!

However, the scenario i find myself in is similar to a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey. You have what I do not. And i reach for this carrot (enlightenment) and every time I get disappointed and even sometimes chastised, well in front of Nisargadatta i am sure I would be!

The frustration of this is becoming absolutely and intolerably unbearable! Is there something i am not getting? Is there a refuge or not? How come you have rock solid iron assuredness where i do not? Can you offer me anything here? Should i even want enlightenment?

I replied as follows:

Your question is a very good one. And while I cannot speak for the other teachers you mention, I can share my own experience and perspective.

We often search for things like "rock solid assuredness" in the wrong place. We hope to find some kind of solidity and sureness either in the outer world by becoming secure and safe through money and power, or we hope to find it in some final understanding or enlightenment experience that will stick around. And these things never give us that sense of solidity, assuredness or security that we seek because both outer and inner experience is always changing.

The true source of everything that matters including a solid sense of connection to Being is emptiness itself. Emptiness is at the core of everything including our body and our awareness. Yet emptiness does not seem like a very promising place to find anything solid! And it is not that emptiness itself is solid, emptiness has no qualities, that is why we call it emptiness. But while emptiness has no qualities, it does have an infinite capacity to express or create all of the qualities of existence that really matter like love, peace, joy, strength, clarity, compassion and many more. These qualities are real and "solid". They have much more substance when they arise than our thoughts and mental images, and they even have more reality and solidity than physical objects.

The challenge is that you can never know what will arise out of emptiness in any particular moment, or even if anything will arise at all. So one moment there may be a powerful sense of pure existence that is solid and more real than a mountain of stone arising out of the empty source of all experiences. And the next moment there may be more of a sense of spacious light joy that does not feel particularly solid, but is still incredibly real. And the next moment may just be plain empty beyond any concept of emptiness we can imagine.

What you are interpreting as a rock solid assuredness in the teacher may instead be a deep sense of trust that whatever arises next will be fine. I do not ever know what is going to arise in the next moment, but I have developed a visceral sense of trust that it will be fine whatever it is. Trust is subtly different from the rock solid sensation of assuredness you describe that can still come and go. Trust is more like a soft warm golden light that allows an open and totally accepting embrace of uncertainty and surprises. It is more subtle and yet more real than even the experiences of certainty that come and go. It is a more fundamental quality that arises out of the emptiness that everything else also appears in.

The recognition of your capacity for trust is gained from experience. You probably trust physical objects to behave like physical objects because you have so much experience of them. The same thing can happen with more and more experience of your true nature. However, the trust of true nature is necessarily more subtle because true nature is so infinitely varied in its expression. Yet this subtlety means that as this essential  trust deepens, more and more can be included. It  ultimately turns out that everything that has ever happened has actually come from this infinite capacity of your true nature as emptiness to express itself in all of the dimensions of existence.

This is why it is so helpful to deeply explore and sense and understand every experience that arises. They are all showing you something about your true nature. I would suggest that you make friends with your uncertainty and get to know it very well. Uncertainty is the lack of certainty. And the lack of anything is actually just the experience of emptiness. Whenever it seems like something is missing, that means there is an experience of emptiness. It is an endless surprise to find that the source of the thing that is missing is that same feeling of lack or emptiness. Any certainty or insight or understanding that you ever feel comes directly out of the sense of emptiness which your mind can label as a lack of certainty. In fact, it is in the moments when we allow ourselves to not know that insight or knowing is most able to arise.

The trust is in knowing that even when certainty is not here, that the source of certainty is here. And it is also the source of love, joy, curiosity, and everything else that really matters. The important thing is not an ongoing experience of solidity or assuredness or any other quality of Being, but rather a trust that those qualities will arise when truly needed. And since trust is the more important aspect, it turns out that this does not mean that an experience of solidity or assuredness arises whenever we want it to. For the trust to become fully developed requires us to endlessly let go of any agenda for how it should feel or what should arise. That is how you can discover that whatever is here can be trusted completely. The emptiness knows better than you what is needed in this moment.

I hope this is helpful.

Nirmala is a nondual spiritual teacher in the Advaita tradition of nondual self inquiry. He offers satsang or “gatherings for the truth” across the United States and around the world as a celebration of the possibility, in every moment, of recognizing the limitless love that is our true nature. He also offers Nondual Spiritual Mentoring, or spiritual counseling, in one-on-one satsang sessions either in person or over the phone. He is the author of several free spiritual ebooks about nonduality, spirituality, spiritual awakening, including a collection of spiritual poetry entitled Gifts with No Giver. More information about mentoring sessions and free satsang videos are available on his website at http://www.endless-satsang.com.