There is only one step

There is only one step to wake up, to enlightenment, to awakening, to love, and whatever you call it. There is no gradual process, step by step, ladders, path, or destination to arrive at. There is only one single step. Just wake up, and all is finished. Before waking up, all is a dream. Your practices, your progress, your path, these all are just inside dreams. In dreams, we dream of waking up.

But once that realisation dawns upon us, once the first step has been taken, all is finished. Some may take that first step in 1 year, in 10, in a century, or whatever. It is a totally random happening. The realisation is a random happening. We mistakenly take the time interval till that realisation as progress or steps. It is not. The guy sitting on the bench might take his leave after 1 hour, after 2 hours, or just 5 minutes later. It is random. It is not like the guy has been accumulating the energy to stand up by sitting there for 1 hour.

So the spiritual or so-and-so practices you do are nothing but dreams. It leads you nowhere. There is no gradual progress in spirituality. It is just one single step, the realisations. Before that, the practices and meditation or methods and so on are just play inside dreams, nothing but illusory play, the same as other illusions.