From Seeker to Finder

My dear friend Jeffery Martin has studied people who awaken into the state of oneness. He has evaluated the experience of over 2,000 people who have had enlightenment experiences and identified the most common characteristics of this type of experience. He summarizes these in his book The Finders. The term “Finder” refers to crossing the boundary from being a “Seeker” of truth to being a Finder.

Many of us began our journey as “Seekers” decades ago. We may have been Seekers after meaning in our lives, aspiring to understand the answers to life’s greatest mysteries, to know the nature of the universe, to find God, to identify an authentic spiritual master, to discover the secret of happiness, to unlock our full human potential, to experience elevated spiritual states, or all of the above. 

Imagine if—despite all the turmoil in the world around you—your spiritual intelligence was so strong that you felt a basic sense of “okayness” about yourself and everything else.

For 20 years, Jeffery was obsessed with people who’d come to the end of the quest. They’d made the transition from Seeker to Finder. They’d reached the tipping point. 

After collecting hundreds of interviews with Finders, some of them days in length, he began to notice patterns. While they differed in some important ways, Finders also had distinct commonalities. Among these are: 

• a sense that everything is fundamentally okay 

• a reduction in self-absorbed mind chatter 

• centering in the present moment 

• little interest in the stale old stories told by others and their own minds 

• a shift in negative emotions; while they still arise, they are transient 

• a sense of connection between inner experience and the greater reality 

• reduced attachment to previous goals and outcomes 

Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful way to live your life? Imagine if—despite all the turmoil in the world around you—your spiritual intelligence (or SQ, the ability to understand and act on higher meanings and values) was so strong that you felt a basic sense of “okayness” about yourself and everything else.

Imagine your habits of worry and stress being quieted by this sense of okayness. Jeffery calls it “fundamental well-being.” That’s a sense of well-being that’s fundamental to your view of yourself, of others, of the world, and of the universe. It’s a rock on which you can build positive emotion. 

Characteristic number two is related to fundamental well-being and it’s a quieting of the incessant chatterbox inside our heads. This is the voice that has something to say about everything going on. Another of my friends, Steven Kotler, calls it “your inner Woody Allen.” From the moment we wake up, this voice is commenting, judging, criticizing, evaluating, finding fault, complaining, and looking for the downside. 

Jeffery calls it the “Narrative Self,” which he defines as “the self-referential, story-based form of self that houses the collective past and forms the basis for identity creation and maintenance.” 

In Finders, the Narrative Self quiets down. This gives them a degree of inner peace and relief from the flow of mental chatter and mind wandering that constantly distracts us from the practices that build SQ.

This opens the door to characteristic three, being in the present moment. The Narrative Self is rarely there. It’s always in either past or future—obsessing about the hurts and wounds of the past or catastrophizing about imagined calamities in the future. When this activity dials down, we enter the present moment. That’s the only place we can find love, joy, and peace. 

When we’re in the present, old stories and self-concepts become less sticky and we open to a view of ourselves and others that is fresh, vibrant, and full of potential. We’re less interested in where we’ve been than in where we’re going. Our old stories begin to sound boring.

While Finders still experience negative emotions, they dissipate faster. They also have a sense of connection between what they’re experiencing in their inner lives and a greater reality. That’s the essence of SQ. 

The final characteristic is less attachment to rigid outcomes and fixed goals and a greater sense of dancing with the flow of life in each moment. 

Practicing the Presence

In 1614, Nicholas Herman was born into a peasant family in Lorraine, France. In his early teenage years, he followed the path of many young men seeking to escape hunger and poverty and joined the army. King Louis XIV was on the throne and the Thirty Years War meant soldiers were in high demand. 

But Herman was soon captured by the Germans. He was abused and threatened with hanging, but his faith was so strong that he “viewed death with indifference,” according to his biographer, Father Joseph de Beaufort. After his release, he was injured in a battle with Sweden, leaving him permanently disabled. Beaufort reported that Herman “often relived the perils of military service.” Today that rumination would likely result in a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Herman then took a job as a footman to William de Fuibert, treasurer to the king of France. But his clumsiness soon resulted in his discharge from his new profession. 

On a winter’s day when he was 18 years old, Herman was gazing at the barren stalks of a frozen tree. Suddenly, he saw the tree as it would be in a few weeks, with leaves and flowers erupting in a wild frenzy of exuberant rebirth. 

Beaufort writes, “Considering that within a little time, the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the providence and power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul.” 

In that moment, Herman flipped from being a Seeker to a Finder. He decided to dedicate his life to prayer and devotion. 

Herman joined the Carmelite monastery in Paris in 1642 at the age of 26. As his patron, he chose third-century martyr Saint Lawrence, becoming Brother Lawrence. His subsequent career was neither heroic nor prestigious. He is remembered today not for brilliant theological insights, impassioned preaching, or monumental social contributions, but for his simple spiritual practice. Uninspired by the rigid rules and elaborate devotions of the Carmelites, he focused simply on constant awareness of God’s presence.

Beaufort compiled Lawrence’s letters. In one, Lawrence writes, “I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to God, which I may call an actual presence of God; or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God.” His fellow monks didn’t regard Lawrence as having much in the way of intellect or useful skills. So they stuck him in the place he liked the least, the monastery kitchen. There he spent the next 30 years, cooking and scrubbing the grime off the pots. 

Yet Lawrence decided to embrace his menial work fully. He turned it into an act of devotion, declaring, “Nor is it needful that we should have great things to do … We can do little things for God. I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for the love of Him; and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before Him Who has given me grace to work. Afterward I rise happier than a king.” 

He told a woman who came to visit the monastery, “We do not have to be in church to be with God. We can make of our hearts an oratory where we can withdraw from time to time to converse with him, gently, humbly, and lovingly. Everyone is capable of these familiar conversations with God, some more, some less …” 

Beaufort’s compilation of letters was eventually published as The Practice of the Presence of God. It has sold some 22 million copies, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. Lucid up to the last moments, Brother Lawrence died at the age of 77.

All these centuries later, Lawrence’s humble reminder endures: “Lift up your heart to Him, the least little thought of Him will be acceptable. You need not cry very loud; He is nearer to us than we are aware of.” 

Lawrence’s tipping point occurred when he looked at a tree and saw how it would look in spring. Before that, he’d had spiritual experiences, building up his neurological “muscles” to the point where they could support a breakthrough in consciousness. 

After the tipping point, Lawrence was able to take even adversities like being banished to the monastery kitchen and turn them to his advantage. As he flipped cakes and scrubbed pots, he communed in “secret conversations” with God. This resulted in such bliss that Beaufort and other monks were inspired by Lawrence’s presence. 

Jeffery’s study of thousands of Finders shows that awakening brings with it “[a]n unimaginable level of contentment and well-being (even if you already think of yourself as very happy).” Like Brother Lawrence, once you pass the tipping point, everything is different.  

Excerpted from Spiritual Intelligence: Activating the 4 Circuits of the Awakened Brain, by Dawson Church, Ph.D., with permission of the publisher, Energy Psychology Press. Download the first two chapters free at spiritualintelligencebook.com.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 Spirituality & Health®: A Unity Publication and is a 2025 Folio: Eddie Award winner. Subscribe now.