The Difference Between Information and Transformation

Knowing the Path Is Not the Same as Walking It

We live in a very interesting time because never before have we had so much spiritual information available to us so easily. We can listen to great teachers while driving to work, watch a Satsang while lying in bed, read ancient teachings on our phones and learn about meditation, Vedanta, consciousness, enlightenment, energy, chakras and non-duality without ever leaving our homes. We can collect books, attend retreats, complete courses and become very good at speaking the language of spirituality, yet there is a question I think we don’t ask ourselves often enough: Has everything I know actually changed the way I live?

There is a great difference between information and transformation, although from the outside they can sometimes look very similar. Information gives us understanding and helps us explain something, while transformation begins to change the person who is doing the explaining. I can understand everything about compassion and still be impatient with the person in front of me; I can speak beautifully about unconditional love while placing conditions on everyone around me, and I can understand that all is one while still treating another person’s life as though it matters less than mine.

This is where the spiritual journey becomes very honest, because knowing about awakening is not the same as being awake.

Knowing the Recipe Is Not Eating the Meal

Imagine someone who has spent years reading cookbooks. They know every ingredient, understand every cooking technique, and can explain exactly how a beautiful meal should be prepared, but when you sit down at their table, there is nothing to eat because they have never actually cooked.

We would immediately see the problem, yet spiritually we can do something very similar.

We learn the words. We know what the ego is. We understand attachment. We speak about being present and letting go. We can explain that we are not the mind and perhaps even quote great teachers who tell us that we are pure awareness, but then someone says something we don’t like and within seconds all our beautiful philosophy disappears.

This does not mean that the information was useless. The recipe is important because it can show us how to prepare the meal, but eventually we have to enter the kitchen.

In the same way, spiritual teachings are pointers. They can show us a direction, challenge the way we see ourselves and open a door that perhaps we didn’t even know was there, but eventually the teaching has to move from something we understand into something we live.

The Ego Can Become Very Spiritual

There is another interesting trap on the spiritual journey, and I think we have to be willing to laugh at ourselves when we see it.

Before spirituality, the ego may say, “I have more money than you, I am more successful than you, I have a better car or a bigger house.” Then we discover spirituality, and suddenly those things don’t seem so important anymore, but the ego is very clever, and it simply finds something new to identify with.

Now it says, “I am more conscious than you.”

“I meditate more.”

“I’ve had deeper experiences.”

“I understand things other people don’t understand.”

“I don’t need teachers anymore.”

“I don’t need community.”

“I have moved beyond all of that.”

The clothes have changed, but the one wearing them may still be the same.

This is why spiritual knowledge can sometimes become another hiding place for the ego. The more information we collect, the easier it can become to believe that because we understand something intellectually, we have already embodied it.

Perhaps one of the healthiest things we can bring to the spiritual journey is the humility to say, “I understand this, but I am still learning how to live it.”

There is something beautiful about that honesty because the moment we think we have arrived, we often stop looking.

A Powerful Experience Is Not Always Transformation

We can make the same mistake with spiritual experiences.

Someone may have an extraordinary meditation, a powerful retreat, a Kundalini experience, a moment of complete silence, a sense of oneness, or another profound experience in which their normal sense of self disappears for a while. These moments can be deeply meaningful, and sometimes they completely change the direction of a person’s life, but an experience, however powerful, is still not automatically transformation.

Every experience comes and goes.

The deeper question is what remains after it has gone.

Perhaps instead of asking someone, “What did you experience?” we should sometimes ask, “What did the experience change?”

Did it make you kinder?

Did it make you more patient?

Are you more available to life?

Do you listen differently?

Do you forgive more easily?

Are you less interested in always being right?

Do you notice the suffering of another person more quickly?

Has your relationship with life changed?

These questions may not sound as exciting as talking about mystical experiences, but perhaps they tell us much more about transformation.

An experience can change our state for an hour, a day or even a week, while transformation begins changing the way we meet ordinary life.

The Real Test May Be Tuesday Morning

I sometimes think we look for evidence of awakening in the wrong places. We look for it in meditation halls, retreats, spiritual experiences and moments of deep silence, but perhaps the real test of our practice happens somewhere much less glamorous.

Tuesday morning.

You didn’t sleep well. Someone is rude to you. Traffic is terrible. Your plans suddenly change. Someone criticises you, your partner is irritated, your children aren’t listening, something breaks, and nobody seems to appreciate everything you are doing.

Who are you then?

That ordinary moment may reveal more about our transformation than the most beautiful meditation we had over the weekend.

This doesn’t mean an awakened person never becomes angry, frustrated, or hurt. Transformation does not turn us into emotionless people. The difference may be that we begin to see what is happening inside ourselves before it completely takes us over. Perhaps anger still comes, but we don’t have to become the anger. Hurt comes, but we don’t immediately turn it into revenge. Fear appears, but we begin to recognize that fear is moving through us rather than allowing it to make every decision.

Slowly, a little space appears between what happens and how we respond.

That space is not information.

That space is the beginning of transformation.

Transformation Often Looks Very Ordinary

One of the reasons we may miss transformation is because real transformation often doesn’t look very spiritual.

Sometimes transformation is simply listening when normally you would interrupt.

It is saying, “I was wrong,” without adding a long explanation about why you were actually still partly right.

It is noticing the person who normally remains invisible to you.

It is being able to celebrate another person’s success without feeling that their success has taken something away from you.

It is becoming gentler with the people who live with you.

It is serving when nobody will know you did it.

It is becoming less interested in appearing spiritual and more interested in living consciously.

Nobody may applaud these things, and there may be no extraordinary spiritual experience attached to them, but perhaps this is exactly what awakening looks like when it leaves the meditation cushion and enters everyday life.

Why We Need Other People

This is also why I believe community can be such an important part of our spiritual journey, because when I am alone it is very easy for me to believe almost anything about myself.

I can believe I am incredibly patient until another person tests my patience. I can believe I have transcended the need for approval until someone doesn’t approve of me. I can believe I have moved beyond ego until somebody challenges my opinion, and I can believe that I am unconditional love until another person fails to meet my conditions.

Other people become mirrors.

This doesn’t mean we need to agree with everyone or tolerate unhealthy behaviour. It simply means that relationships give us an opportunity to see ourselves in ways that solitude sometimes cannot.

This is one of the beautiful purposes of Sangha and conscious community. We are not gathering because we are weak or because someone else has the truth that we don’t have. We gather because we are walking together, and sometimes another person reveals the exact place where my spiritual information has not yet become transformation.

Perhaps walking each other home is not always comforting one another. Sometimes it is simply being present enough that we begin to see ourselves more clearly.

From Knowing to Living

So perhaps we need to change the questions we ask about our spiritual lives.

Instead of asking, “How much do I know?” we could ask, “What has what I know made of me?”

Has meditation made me more present in my relationships, or have I become good at sitting quietly?

Has understanding non-duality changed the way I treat another living being?

Has learning about compassion made me more compassionate when compassion is inconvenient?

Has learning about forgiveness helped me release the people I still punish inside my mind?

Has understanding that everything changes taught me how to let go when something I love changes, actually?

Has knowing that I am not my thoughts given me even a little more freedom when difficult thoughts appear?

These are very different questions because they move spirituality out of the head and back into life.

The Teaching Must Eventually Disappear Into You

There is a beautiful stage in learning where we need teachings, books, teachers, and practices because they help us see something we have not yet seen, but perhaps the purpose of every true teaching is eventually to disappear into the way we live.

You don’t need to tell everyone that you understand compassion when they can feel compassion in the way you treat them.

You don’t need to explain presence when people feel that you are actually there when they speak to you.

You don’t need to convince anyone that you understand love when your life has become loving.

You don’t need to announce that you are awake.

Perhaps awakening is something others experience through the quality of your presence long before you ever give it a name.

This is where information has completed its work.

It has become transformation.

The Question I Want to Leave With You

So the next time you read a spiritual book, listen to a teaching, come to Satsang or have a powerful meditation, don’t only ask yourself, “What did I learn?”

Ask something deeper.

“What will be different because I learned it?”

Maybe tomorrow there will be one conversation where you listen instead of defending yourself. Perhaps there will be one person you normally judge whom you suddenly see differently, one moment where you recognize your reaction before acting on it, or one opportunity to serve where previously you would have walked past.

It does not have to be dramatic.

Transformation rarely announces itself.

It quietly begins appearing in the way we live.

And perhaps this is one of the simplest ways to understand the difference between information and transformation: information allows me to speak beautifully about the path, while transformation begins to change the footsteps I leave behind as I walk it.

Yogi Gerhard