Practice fully realized is mature enough to accept the ordinary simplicity of whatever is happening as what realization is at the moment. But it takes a great deal of work to develop that kind of maturity. We have to fully exhaust all other possibilities for that simplicity to manifest. We have to experience and understand and embody all kinds of spiritual dimensions and all kinds of enlightenment in order to be free and to accept our everyday ordinariness without it having to be anything else. We cannot one day decide to be simple and ordinary. We need only to live each moment as it is, to live each moment fully and authentically without rejection or acceptance, without commentary or second guessing. With such total practice, we begin to live the mystery of the paradox of practice and grace.

And practice is not limited to formal practices—meditating or inquiry, praying or concentration—but includes all that we do. Practice, which is how Total Being expresses itself, includes our daily actions, communications, and interactions. It even includes our thoughts and feelings and attitudes. We are at the same time true nature expressing itself as the totality and as the individual through which the totality is expressing itself. At some point, it might be possible for us to recognize that the individual and the totality of all that is are exactly one and the same. But even though they are one and the same, they are also distinctly two. When we gather and practice in groups, our work gains power and intensity because it is the same true nature practicing, one true nature expressed through the collected total practice of all its organs as the totality of the field. Practice becomes total, becomes the practice that is realization, when we have the attitude of devotion and reverence, when we are committed, when we are expressions expressing the commitment. When we are not expressing the commitment, when we are not expressing the reverence and love, when we are not expressing the intelligence and clarity, we are not practicing in a total way. Our practice is not as thoroughgoing as it could be.

When we recognize this fluidity of view, this radical openness of the view of totality, our practice becomes liberated from various delusions of self-centeredness, and our attitude and orientation align with an expanded view of reality. We can see that, in some sense, the self-expression of true nature as total practice is the philosophers’ stone expressing its illuminating power of red sulfur. The dynamic self-expression of true nature sparks the individual consciousness to constantly realize further ways of expressing true nature, which is true nature realizing more of its possibilities through the faculty of individual consciousness.  

In the fourth turning, we recognize the unique role of the individual as an organ of realization. True nature cannot dispose of the individual. It needs you as an individual in order to reveal itself, to illuminate itself, and to awaken to what it is; and it does this by expressing itself. The way true nature expresses itself is through practice. And as practice becomes total practice, then practice is realization and its expression is awakening. Total practice is the self-expression of true nature explicitly recognizing itself as it expresses itself. True nature is not only the nature of everything but also expresses itself as everything. It is inherently self-expressive. And true nature expresses itself in many different ways, which we know when we experience true nature as a specific particular—as love or clarity or strength or joy or stillness or awareness or emptiness. As our practice becomes total practice, we can see that it is already the expression of realization because the capacities we are using are the capacities of realization. All that we experience—the qualities and capacities, the attitude and orientation, the awakening and insight—are expressions of true nature.

When we consider everything that is happening in the world, we see that Total Being can express itself in all kinds of ways. But practice is when true nature is expressing its purity, and it becomes total practice when it marshals everything we’ve got—our devotion, our understanding, and our action. Total practice means that the totality of who and what we are is practicing. There are many degrees of recognizing what this totality is. It can be the totality of our present experience, the totality of the individual, the totality of being, the totality of all and everything in all times and all space. This is, in some sense, the secret of practice, and we need to learn this in practice. We need to learn it not only conceptually, but experientially as well. We need to see that when we are practicing, we are acknowledging true nature and expressing our devotion to and reverence for true nature, and we are putting into action our commitment to serve true nature—all of which is at the same time true nature expressing itself as that. This is one truth looked at from two sides: the side of the individual and the side of Total Being. And this is different from the oneness of classical nondual experience, which is a unity that subsumes difference in sameness, subsumes the individual in transcendent reality.

Spiritual practice frequently transcends time and space as we begin to realize the timeless and spaceless character of our true nature. However, as we abide in these conditions and continue inquiring as an expression of continual practice, time and space themselves can open in mysterious ways. Instead of simply transcending time and space, such total practice, such movement of realization, can manifest unexpected ways of knowing reality and its true nature. This can reveal the open-ended character of realization and reality, which helps us understand a more total view of reality—what I’ve been referring to as the view of totality. Opening time and space makes possible the understanding of the view of totality.  

When we recognize that we are Total Being, what we usually sense is freedom. We are free because we don’t have to be anything. We can be anything, but we don’t have to be anything. Since we can be anything without having to be anything in particular, there is no limitation and no judgment and no comparison. And we also don’t need to hold on to anything as the source of freedom. We all want to be free and want to experience that freedom in many ways. Freedom is subtle and elusive, even more elusive than happiness, which is itself quite rare. So we practice because we value the freedom that is possible in total practice.