Why 20 Years of Spiritual Practice Hasn't Set You Free

You've been on the path for a long time. You meditate daily, or close to it. You've read Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Eckhart Tolle, Rupert Spira. You've sat with teachers. You've had glimpses — moments where something opened and everything was briefly, unmistakably clear.

And yet here you are.

There's still anxiety. Still reactivity. Still the sense that something is slightly off, that freedom is present in meditation and then gone again by the time you've made breakfast. Still the feeling that everyone else at the retreat seemed to get something you didn't.

You're not alone in this. In fact, this is one of the most common experiences I encounter in people who come to work with me. Long-time seekers. Sincere, dedicated, intelligent people who have genuinely committed to awakening — and who wonder, quietly, if they're doing something wrong.

Practice Isn't Broken — But It Has a Built-In Limitation

Here's something I want to say clearly: nothing has gone wrong. Your practice hasn't failed you. Decades of sincere practice have done something real in you. The nervous system is more regulated. The mind is quieter. You're more aware than you would have been without any of it.

But spiritual practice has a structural limitation that rarely gets named honestly.

Practice is something the self does. Awakening is the recognition that there was never a separate self doing anything.

This creates a paradox. The meditator sits down to find the end of the meditator. The seeker seeks the end of seeking. Every effort made by the self in the direction of awakening reinforces the very assumption awakening dissolves — that there is a separate someone who needs to get somewhere.

Practice points. It clears the ground. It's genuinely useful. But it cannot cross the threshold it's pointing toward, because the one doing the practice can't take that step. The step is more like a falling.

What Practice Often Misses

Most spiritual practice — even very sophisticated practice — operates on a fundamental assumption: that the ordinary, present-moment experience you're having right now is not it, and that through sufficient effort or purification, you will eventually arrive at something else.

This assumption is the problem.

Awareness — the simple, open, already-present knowing in which all experience arises — is not something you attain. It's what you are, right now, as you read these words. The sense of being present. The knowing that thoughts are appearing. The space in which all of this happens.

That has never been missing. It has never left. What has happened — what always happens — is that attention has been captured by content, by the stream of thoughts and feelings and sensations, and has overlooked the knowing in which all of that content appears.

Practice trains attention. But what's needed is a recognition — a simple seeing — of what attention has been overlooking this whole time.

Why Glimpses Come and Go

Most long-time seekers have had glimpses of what I'm pointing to. A moment in meditation where the meditator disappeared and there was just open awareness. A moment in nature where the sense of separation dissolved. A moment of profound clarity, sometimes accompanied by what people describe as deep peace or love.

And then it passed.

Or so it seemed.

Here's what actually happened in those moments: the ordinary sense of being a separate self, a subject looking at objects, briefly fell away. What remained was awareness — aware of itself, without any separation between the knower and the known.

What then appeared to "pass" was not the awareness — awareness is always present. What passed was the break in the usual pattern of self-referential thinking. The mind reasserted itself, thoughts resumed, and with them came the familiar sense of being a separate person who had just had a nice experience that was now over.

The glimpse didn't end. The identification with thought resumed.

This is important because it means nothing was lost. The awareness in which the glimpse happened is the same awareness reading these words right now. It has been here, without interruption, throughout your entire life.

What's Actually Needed

What most long-time seekers need is not more practice. It's a direct introduction to what's already the case — combined with the willingness to stop looking past the present moment for something better.

This is subtler than it sounds. The mind that has been seeking for twenty years has become very sophisticated at deferring recognition. It can take any genuine pointing and turn it into a new object to seek. It can hear "you are already awareness" and immediately think "yes, but I don't feel that way consistently."

The consistent feeling is not the point. Awareness isn't a feeling. It's the knowing in which feelings appear.

This is why direct transmission — genuine contact with a teacher who is living from recognition — can do something in a single conversation that years of solo practice cannot. Not because the teacher does something magical, but because the resonance of genuine recognition can catalyse seeing in another in a way that words and concepts alone rarely manage.

"The door you've been knocking on from the outside has always been open. You've been standing in the room this whole time."

If you've been practicing sincerely for years and something still feels missing, I'd invite you to consider this: the missing piece may not require more practice. It may require a different kind of looking — one that notices what's already here rather than reaching for what isn't.

That's what I work with in my teaching. Not adding more — but pointing directly to what's been present all along.