Why Awakening Seems Difficult

If our true nature is always present and we’re already that which we seek, why does awakening or recognition seem so difficult to achieve? Rupert says: ‘The difficulty isn’t in becoming what we essentially are – that’s impossible since we already are it. The difficulty lies in the mind’s habits of attention. For most of our lives, attention has been exclusively focused on the content of experience, losing itself in thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions. As a result, being seems to recede into the background. The so-called difficulty is simply the effort required to disentangle attention from its habitual absorption in content and allow it to rest in being. It’s not that being is difficult to find; it’s that we’re looking in the wrong direction. Once we understand where to look – or rather, that we need simply to be – the recognition is immediate and effortless.’

From event 21 - 28 November, 2025 Seven-Day Retreat at The Vedanta, 21–28 November 2025

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