A little audio clip on the meaning of surrender… and the strange way it leads to Knowledge beyond itself
Enlightenment from 30,000 feet
Enlightenment is itself a piece within a larger Puzzle
“But after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
Whence all creation had its origin,
he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.”
One lesson on which all schools of spirituality agree is that nothing on Earth is worthwhile for its own sake. All goals, however grand, are limited. They cost pain to get and if gotten are always in danger of being lost. Eventually they are lost, and then more is desired again. This is a hamster wheel and a fool's game. When this is realized, the basis of motivation must change.
Even the “magical" and the “divine” are just words, and can never serve as a true basis for long-term, sustained action in the world. The mind cannot truly conceive the meaning of these words, and so converts them into more limited, dead things.
Curiosity is the key
What, then, is the basis for enlightened action in the world? What is there to act for and why?
No thing can suffice. And enlightenment is, indeed, the recognition of the not-a-thing that is our own self. We are, of course, not even the doer. And yet this question arises...
For there remains -- in the very fullness, in the very completeness of our true Self -- a delicious, delightful, strange and colorful incompleteness.
What is the nature of this incompleteness? Where did it come from and what is its point?
The more we ask such questions, the more we realize the fact of our confusion. That confusion is not weak or harmful. On the contrary. it is the one true, durable motivation. It is the other side of the coin of enlightenment, that which accepts the necessary limitation of life and in fact feeds on it: curiosity.
It's all about The Puzzle
Life is a deep well of mystery and while enlightenment points to our true nature as total peace, it does not resolve this mystery.
We don't know the name or nature of this Mystery. Its name is its heart, its unsolved Question. We simply know that, deep within us, it calls to us.
It is a Puzzle, it is a Wonder, and whatever name we put to it never quite captures it. The name is dead as soon as it is spoken, for the reality changes instantly, constantly. We think it is here, and try to catch it, but it turns out it was over there the whole time. It moves endlessly without seeming to have moved at all. This is the game we are all playing, and when it is recognized as a game, it becomes fun.
Two paths to putting the jigsaw pieces together: wider and deeper
We cannot fully win this game. In fact, what we want is to be puzzled more and more deeply, more and more delightfully. And that requires finding answers which are themselves doorways to more intricate questions. It's like a video game with an infinite number of levels.
There are two ways of playing this game.
One is lateral: it connects various disciplines. Bring the humanities together, the sciences together, the arts together, and then connect all the insights of these different domains with each other. The entire experience of the entire human race must eventually connect and show a bigger piece of the Picture.
The other is vertical. We must each go deeper and deeper into our own specific viewpoint, our own precious and utterly unique individuality. How do we do this? We express what it is like to experience our experiences so accurately and originally that others can feel the way we feel. We at least try. All of us have exclusive access to our own story, to our own memories, and they are a fund of answers -- not just for ourselves, but for everyone. We all have the duty and pleasure of being artists.
Answers are just questions in disguise
The entire task of human knowledge and wisdom and creation is to help us piece together this strange Puzzle, this Thing which we all want to desperately know. What is that Thing? What is its meaning? This is the heart of the heart of what we don't know.
Every revelation leads us to greater clarity and greater mystery. That's the frustrating joy of the chase. There is an infinite unfolding of the unknown into the known, and that into the even more unknown.
It is to speak, and by speaking, to see, more of the infinite facets of the Question that is the real task. We are pushing against the limits...deeper and deeper, subtler and subtler.
The truth is stranger than we can possibly imagine. That strangeness is God; that strangeness is our true Self. We are it and we wish to see it. We are unlimited, and so unlimited that we are capable of limitation. And within the folds of these paradoxes there lies nestled the Question.
Misconceptions about Enlightenment #3 - That it answers all questions
The Problems with The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle is one of the leading people converting the exciting findings of nonduality into boring, syrupy, non-intellectual crap. True, he says many things that are correct and, for some people, no doubt useful. Yes, his overall message is probably fine, like some processed cereal is fine.
But overall, his blandness, his confusion of categories, his poor thinking and lazy analysis of important texts... it's all so boring. Like a copy of a copy of a copy, it is tired, mixed-up, and cliched.
I'm practically put to sleep by The Power of Now, the book that, Oprah-assisted, catapulted him to Deepak-Chopra (I have problems with Deepak, too, which I'll get to another day) levels of stardom.
What are its problems? Many, but I'll limit my findings to a key few.
Four mistakes people make when engaged in self-inquiry
Self-inquiry, the spiritual technique that the Hindu sage Sri Ramana Maharshi recommended, is the royal road to seeing through the illusion of self. I explain it briefly in this video and more extensively in my book. It involves trying to locate where the feeling "I am" is coming from.
It's a very simple exercise, but it is easy to make mistakes. Here are four common pitfalls and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Making it an intellectual exercise
You are experiencing the sense that "I am" (as in "I am reading these words") right now. That sense, that feeling, is what you are trying to examine.
This is not an intellectual exercise. It is not about thinking about what science and philosophy are telling us the "I" is or isn't. It is not about whether "I" have free will, or the kind of "I" that we think of when we say try to think of ourselves as being part of a larger community or society. These are all fine ways of thinking, but they are not the self-inquiry game.
Self-inquiry involves examining our experience, our feeling of the I, and trying to find out just what it is. What exactly is it?
For example, we might find that feel something irritating, and identify it as a) a physical pain because we have something in our shoe, b) an emotion because we are angry at someone, c) a memory of something unpleasant, etc.
In the same way, we ask what is this sense of I? To answer the question, we have to hold that feeling with great concentration. And then as soon as we think we've held it, we then apply a rule: whatever we experience can't be the I, because "I experience it." So what is the I? We keep looking.
Mistake #2: Only doing self-inquiry at set times
Self-inquiry can at first be practiced in a formal way, while sitting for some period of time. But this is just the beginning.
Self-inquiry should eventually be done at all waking moments, while talking, cooking, cleaning, working, and doing any other of life's daily activities.
"But how will I do my work?"
It's a mistake to believe that self-inquiry interferes with work. There is a bit of practice required at the beginning, but basically self-inquiry does not interfere with doing. You are not the true doer, and self-inquiry is helping you see that.
To get to enlightenment, self-inquiry must be engaged in with great intensity at all times.
Mistake #3: Not paying attention to distractions and resistances
When you get distracted or feel like doing something else, your mind and heart are trying to tell you something. These messages are not to be ignored.
If you do, they will keep interfering with your practice, and will stop you from progressing.
Interpret the messages by expressing what they feel like (I call this process "metaphorization") and attempting, through imagination and action, to figure out what they mean.
Mistake #4: Expecting to find the I
First, this process is not going to be instantaneous. It is going to be frustrating. It is going to be confusing. It would be perfectly normal not even to quite understand what you are doing or what you are trying for at times. Keep going.
More importantly, you cannot find the I. That is the point of the exercise. That feeling is the illusion we are trying to see through. As long as the feeling of the I remains, you must pursue it, but the end of that pursuit will be to have it suddenly and strangely disappear! It's what I call the "spacious mind" in my book. Ramana Maharshi calls it the "I-I." You will know it when it happens.
That's the shift we're aiming for. It will disappear -- and then seem to reappear. As many times as it reappears, you must re-examine that feeling. Eventually the disappearance will sink in, and it will become apparent that it had never appeared in the first place. That's the delightful, hilarious contradiction.
Life is a dream made from limitations
Imagine you’d taken a massive dose of LSD — and the experience lasted a lifetime. That’s what life essentially is. Everything we see, hear, taste, touch, smell, imagine, think, and feel — including our very ability to see in an individual perspective... these are all one continuous designed experience. And it is made out of limitation. Limited perspective. Limited capacities. That’s what makes for the spectacular work of art that is our experience of life.
The fundamentals of the spiritual search
The goal of enlightenment: get to the true Self, the source of meaning, freedom, peace, and perfection
The basic point of the spiritual search is extremely simple: it is to get in permanent touch with the true Self. This true Self is not the true Self in the sense of what you really enjoy apart from societal and family pressure, though getting in touch with that true Self is in fact part of the search.
How to Become Enlightened Ultra-Fast
A quick explanation of self-inquiry, itself just a way of seeing through a habitual way of thinking.
The end of means-end thinking?
"What should I do?" This is a question that the mind is confronted with every day, often many times a day. After a long spiritual journey, I am no longer confused about who I truly am. The Self shines clearly, but the mind and the body go on. Action and thinking go on. And so questions of decision-making, too, go on. And it remains a tricky puzzle how to go about it.
From the tiniest decisions to the largest ones, every decision requires numerous sub-decisions. Even something as simple as what restaurant to go to requires making decisions about how much time to spend on the decision, which information to heed (my own past experience, reviews, word of mouth?), and so on.
If you try to think it all out, you get stuck. If that's true of figuring out where to eat out, it is far truer of bigger decisions: choices of how to start a business or career, how to navigate a relationship, how to relate to yourself.
It's true that in real life we simply cut the decision-making process short for lack of time. But in theory we would like to know on what basis we cut it short. How should we think about how we make decisions -- including the decision of when to cut the decision-making process short?
Spiritual realization gives the whole discussion a massive twist.