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The Ultimate Truth: “Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing” by Jed McKenna (Book Summary)

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I thoroughly enjoyed Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing by Jed McKenna (Amazon) and immediately added it to my list of recommended reading.

I think that’s because I read the book at the perfect time in my life. Any earlier and I’m not sure I would have understood it. That’s not to say I fully understand the book after a single reading and simply organizing my notes into this summary. This is definitely one that I’ll need to return to again and again.

đź”’ Companion post for Premium Members: 

How to Find the Truth with “Spiritual Enlightenment” by Jed McKenna (+ Infographic)

Fair Warning: You may not want to read this book summary until you’ve gone fairly far down the spiritual path. I recommend starting with the following:

Quick Housekeeping:

  • All quotes are from the author unless otherwise stated.
  • I’ve organized my favorite quotes into my own themes.
  • I’ve added bold to quotes for emphasis and skimmability.

Book Summary Contents: Click a link to jump to a section below

Sloww Spiritual Enlightenment Jed McKenna

The Ultimate Truth: Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing by Jed McKenna (Book Summary)

About the Book & Jed

The Gist of the Book:

  • “We all get what we need when we need it. If the universe has set you in front of me or put this book into your hands, then in all likelihood you are closer than most to honestly confronting the stark reality of your situation.”
  • “This book isn’t about the evolution of the soul or the relationship between higher and lower self, it’s about abiding non-dual awareness—spiritual enlightenment.“
  • “If I were to reduce this book and my teachings to their essence, I would say it all comes down to nothing more than this: Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. That’s it. Ask yourself what’s true until you know.“
  • “This isn’t my teaching, it’s the only teaching and this is just my way of delivering it. If we were to strip out the excess in this book it would probably be a tenth the size and would just be my way of saying what any enlightened guy would say. It’s not personal. It’s not regional or ethnic. It’s not a Western Christian’s version as opposed to the Inuit Shaman’s version or the Tibetan Buddhist’s version. It’s not on that level. What’s true is true regardless of region, culture, planet, galaxy or dimension. It is what it is and I’m just the guy who happens to be saying it right now. If you put ten books by ten enlightened people together and stripped out the excess, they’d all be the same. That’s how it is at the core. The reason for all the excess is that there’s no saying it directly because there’s no it, so everything has to be communicated indirectly—what it’s not, what it’s like—never what it is.“
  • “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This book is more about getting to that First Step than the rest of the journey. Once you’ve begun there’s no stopping or turning back.“

Jed’s Aha Moment & Journey:

  • “When I look at my own life, my own story, I look for the pattern, the unifying theme, the sum of the parts that explains my existence.”
  • “I really have a thing for epiphanies. They’re my raison d’être, so to speak.”
  • “My thunderbolt epiphany came in my late twenties, around fifty pages into reading my first book of a distinctly spiritual nature. As all good epiphanies should, this one struck my brain like a bullet of light and redefined my entire life in a single instant. The realization was nothing more or less than this: Truth exists.”
  • “I did my time. I spent thousands of hours pouring through every spiritual, New Age, metaphysical and esoteric book you could name, and quite a few books on religion and Western philosophy too, using the knowledge in books to fuel an unquenchable internal blaze.”
  • “I severed all ties—no job, no friends, no family—and had only a few possessions. I did nothing else. I had no other thought. I went for long walks, thinking, pounding away at whatever door I was stuck behind at the moment.”
  • “And then one day after a couple of years of this I was suddenly done. Just like that: Done. Although I didn’t think of it in these terms, I had become enlightened, satoried, awake, truth-realized, a jnani, Buddha, whatever you want to call it. Getting the hang of this new state, however, would take me another decade.“
  • “That’s where I am now. Empty space is my reality. The void. No-self. I abide in non-dual, non-relative awareness. This is the part that can’t be explained. I can’t frame it in words even for myself. No one can say ‘I am enlightened’ because there is no ‘I’ to it. There is no such thing as an enlightened person. The person writing these words, the person that speaks to the students, isn’t the enlightened one. My personality, my ego, what appears to be me, is just an afterimage; a physical apparition based on residual energy patterns. Jed McKenna is like the outfit an invisible man wears so that he can interact with people without freaking them out.”

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment in a Nutshell:

  • “When the subject is enlightenment, you’re pretty much confined to saying what it’s not because there’s no saying what it is.”
  • “I can’t tell you what it is; no one can. It’s not a thing, it’s not a concept, it’s not a place … I use terms like abiding non-dual awareness and no-self and truth-realization not because they capture it, but because they seem the least misleading.”
  • “Suffering just means you’re having a bad dream. Happiness means you’re having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.“
  • “Enlightenment is nothing. Delusion is the greatest wonder.”
  • “The truth is that enlightenment is neither remote nor unattainable. It is closer than your skin and more immediate than your next breath.”
  • “Self-realization isn’t about more, it’s about less. The only construction required for awakening is that which facilitates demolition.”
  • “Enlightenment—truth-realization—is exactly the same for all beings in all times and all places. Any attempt to dress it up or to make it proprietary merely obscures it and makes it less accessible.”
  • “Whereas enlightenment is exactly the same for anyone, anytime, anyplace, the journey to it is as unique and varied as there are people to make it.”
  • “Spiritual enlightenment is the damnedest thing. It is, literally, self-defeating. It is a battle we wage upon ourselves. Truth is a uniquely challenging pursuit because the very thing that wants it is the only thing in the way of it. It’s a battle we will kill to lose and must die to win.”
  • “On the road to enlightenment, there is one magic word. It’s your mantra, your battle cry. The word is further.“

Sloww Jed McKenna Enlightenment Infographic

Enlightenment is not:

  • “a place you visit and then remember wistfully and try to return to”
  • “a visit to the truth”
  • “a fleeting or altered state of consciousness”
  • “a happily-ever-after fairy tale”
  • “a peak experience”
  • “about becoming a better or happier person”
  • “about personal growth or spiritual evolution”

Enlightenment is:

  • “abiding non-dual awareness”
  • “permanent truth-realization”
  • “self-realization”
  • “no-self”
  • “non-duality”
  • “consciousness without statehood”
  • “waking up from a dream”
  • “the awakening of truth within you”
  • “the unprogrammed state” (“awakening is the process of deprogramming”)
  • “absolute” (“it doesn’t come in varieties or degrees”)
  • “that which cannot be simplified further; cannot be further reduced”

What is Non-Dual Awareness?

  • “The term Non-Dual Awareness is an attempt to capture the living reality of otherlessness in words. This term—Non-Dual Awareness—seems like a reasonable portrayal of the state from within the state. The word Abiding distinguishes it from any of the fleeting states commonly mistaken for, or sold as, Spiritual Enlightenment.“
  • “The best term might be Truth-Realization. The term Spiritual Enlightenment perpetuates the mist enshrouded, mountain-top mystique, whereas Truth-Realization sounds natural, reasonable, and within reach. Spiritual Enlightenment is for the ultra-elite, but truth is everyone’s business.”

Spiritual Materialism, Gurus, & Why So Few Are Enlightened

Spiritual Materialism:

  • “In nearly all cases, the enlightenment being bought and sold is not truth-realization at all, but a state of consciousness so crazy-ass wonderful that you’d have to be an idiot not to want it. So insidiously wonderful, in fact, that its radiance has blinded untold millions of seekers to the fact that it doesn’t exist.”
  • “I know that book and magazine publishers aren’t in the business of enlightenment. They’re in the business of selling books and magazines, not truth, and they know that seekers will gladly pay to be reassured that, common sense aside, they can wake up and stay asleep; awakening within the dreamstate being a much more marketable solution than waking up from it. Such is the state of spiritual publishing today, of spirituality today, and ultimately it’s all because ego will do anything to survive.”
  • “The fundamental conflict in the spiritual quest is that ego desires spiritual enlightenment, but ego can never achieve spiritual enlightenment. Self cannot achieve no-self. That’s why anyone who wants to sell enlightenment must first reduce it to more manageable proportions; to something ego can achieve. Enlightenment Lite: Less demanding, feels great. Enlitenment.“
  • “The enlightenment that seems desirable isn’t enlightenment, and that aspect of us which is able to desire enlightenment is unable to achieve it won’t survive its onset. Day destroys night.”
  • “Spiritual enlightenment gets redefined as something attainable by ego, and now the equation works to everyone’s satisfaction. Ego gets to continue the noble quest and a thriving spiritual industry continues to thrive. Of course, no one gets the grail, but if you understand the fundamental conflict, you’ll see that no one really wanted it anyway. The quest for the grail is about the quest, not the grail.“
  • “Real Zen isn’t pretty and you don’t need any books for it. That’s the long and the short of it … I have a real love/ hate relationship with Zen; rather, I love Zen and hate New Zen. Real Zen is about the hot and narrow pursuit of enlightenment; the shortest distance between asleep and awake. No rules, no ceremonies, no teachings, just the muddy, bloody battle of waking up. New Zen—the Zen that drives a publishing and merchandising industry—is all about being asleep and staying asleep.“

Gurus & Spiritual Teachers:

  • “The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world’s recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened. Some are great mystics, some are great scholars, some are both, and most are neither, but very few are awake.”
  • “This core misconception will be a big theme in this book because it’s the primary obstacle in the quest for enlightenment. Nobody’s getting there because nobody knows where there is, and those who are entrusted to point the way are, for a variety of reasons, pointing the wrong way.“
  • “Allegiance to any spiritual teaching or teacher—any outside authority—is the most treacherous beast in the jungle. The first thing we want to do when we begin our journey is find the companionship and validity that comes with an established group, and in so doing we effectively end the journey before it begins.”
  • “In the process of waking yourself up, you quickly realize that there’s no outside authority. You have to verify everything yourself. If you adopt something someone else said, it’s only after you have verified it for yourself.”
  • “The power of our devotion to teachers and teachings is not a reflection of their value, but of ego’s will to survive. It’s ego—the false self—that exalts the guru and declares the teaching sacred, but nothing is exalted or sacred, only true or not true.”
  • “I know that no spiritual teacher leads to enlightenment because there is no leading to enlightenment. There is no teaching of enlightenment. Hence, the inevitable outcome we see all around us; everyone’s grooving on the gurus and everyone’s getting more and more spiritual, but nobody’s waking up.”
  • “The very people and institutions that are supposedly dedicated to waking us up are doing exactly the opposite. They are lulling us into a more comfortable sleep.“
  • “There are times in the process of waking up when those who have traveled the path before you can come to your aid and provide a clue as to your next step. That’s really all that any teacher or teaching can really provide; the occasional signpost.”

The problem with imitation:

  • “The misconception about mimicking enlightenment as a way of becoming enlightened can be seen everywhere.“
  • “It’s the belief that if you want to be Christ-like, then you should act more like Christ; as if the way to become something is by imitating it. If you want to be an enlightened person, the thinking goes, you should act like an enlightened person. Utter nonsense, of course, but widely accepted. Once you’re able to recognize this fallacy, you’ll be amazed by how common it is.“
  • “There’s no point in acting like someone who is already where you want to be, the point is to get there yourself. The way to become a sage isn’t to act like one. Become a sage first and then you pick up all the sagely characteristics free and easy.”
  • “There are many byproducts of enlightenment, but cultivating them, no matter how devoutly, would never actually bring about enlightenment.”
  • “Non-attachment isn’t a key to liberation, it’s a byproduct.”

It’s not even about knowledge:

  • “The point is to wake up, not to earn a Ph.D. in waking up.“
  • “Waking up isn’t a theoretical subject one masters through study and comprehension, it’s a journey one makes; a battle one fights.”
  • “It doesn’t require knowledge to be enlightened any more than it requires knowledge to obey the law of gravity or be bathed in sunlight.”
  • “The simple fact is that while there may be millions of questions, there are probably only a hundred or so answers.”
  • “You could spend a thousand years with your nose in books or at the feet of masters and still be no closer to waking up from delusion then when you began. The fact is that no amount or combination of knowledge can bring about truth-realization.“
  • “All that is about knowing and this is about unknowing. All this so-called knowledge is exactly what stands between the seeker and the sought.“
  • “If you want to become a priest or a lama or a rabbi or a theologian, then there’s a lot to learn; enough to fill a lifetime and more. But if you want to figure out what’s true, then it’s a whole different process and the last thing you need is more knowledge.”
  • “If the intent is in place, everything is in place. If the intent isn’t in place, no amount of intelligence will make any difference.“
  • “One thing I’ve discovered is that the smart way is seldom the best way to do anything. I used to try to be smart and now I don’t and everything works a whole lot better. Stopping being smart was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.”
  • “You’re either awake, or you’re not.“
  • “In other words, go jump off a cliff. Don’t go near the cliff and contemplate jumping off. Don’t read a book about jumping off. Don’t study the art and science of jumping off. Don’t join a support group for jumping off. Don’t write poems about jumping off. Don’t kiss the ass of someone else who jumped off. Just jump.“

Why so few reach enlightenment:

  • “If we wonder why so few seem able to find that which can never be lost, we might recall the child who was looking in the light for a coin he dropped in the dark because ‘the light is better over here’.”
  • “Mankind has spent ages looking in the light for a coin that awaits us not in light and not in dark, but beyond all opposites.”
  • “I keep thinking that spiritual aspirants, East and West, are going to someday awaken at least to the degree of realizing that, by any reasonable standard of success, the pursuit of spiritual awakening has proven to be the most abysmal failure in the history of man.”
  • “I might guess that there are never more than fifty truth-realized beings on earth at any moment, and I might suspect that most of them have the sense to keep their mouths shut about it, but what I know is that none of them became truth-realized except through a slow and agonizing process of self-annihilation.”
  • “How many of them really want what it really is? My opinion is that only a fraction of one percent of seekers of enlightenment are even pointed in the right general direction.”
  • “Maybe the whole reason you’re on this spiritual track in the first place is due to the unchallenged belief that this path leads to rapture. Maybe you don’t really want to go where this really leads. Maybe you’re just in it for the fairy tale. I would guess that that’s true of over ninety-nine percent of Western spiritual seekers.“
  • “At the very heart of this confusion lies the belief that abiding non-dual-awareness—enlightenment—and the non-abiding experience of cosmic consciousness—mystic union—are synonymous when, in fact, they’re completely unrelated. It’s possible to have either without the other, and there are countless millions of cases of mysticism and cosmic consciousness of varying degree for every one case of enlightenment.”
  • “We don’t want truth, we want a particular truth; one that doesn’t threaten ego; one that doesn’t exist. We insist on a truth that makes sense given what we know, not knowing that we know nothing.”
  • “Why doesn’t Buddhism produce Buddhas? The problem arises from the fact that Buddhists, like everyone else, insist on reconciling the irreconcilable. They don’t just want to awaken to the true, they also want to make sense of the untrue. They want to have their cake and eat it too, so they end up with nonsensical theories, divergent schools, sagacious doubletalk, and zero Buddhas.”
  • “Self cannot achieve no-self … The end of the one marks the beginning of the other. No one can have their cake and eat it too, despite what so many egotists and profiteers would have us believe.”

The Human Drama & Ego as Costume

Life as a stage drama with characters:

  • “I have a very distinct impression of life as a stage drama, and I find it endlessly mystifying that anyone truly identifies with their character. I watch my own life with amused detachment. I may be doing this or that—fulfilling my role—but I’m almost always out in the seats somewhere, watching it all, as unprepared for the next thing I do as anyone else. Being a detached observer is my reality and I find it belief-defying that everyone isn’t the same; that they’re up in their characters playing out all this life stuff like it’s for real.”
  • (To be in the world but not of the world): “It means that you’re playing your role on the stage, but you don’t confuse your role with yourself or the stage with reality. It means you know that you’re playing a character in a staged production.”
  • “That essentially defines the quest for enlightenment; the you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth.“
  • “Cosmic Consciousness and Altered States and Universal Mind are the names of rides in this vast and fascinating dualistic amusement park. So are Poverty and Disease and Despair. Enlightenment, though, is not another ride. Enlightenment means leaving the park altogether, but why leave the park? In the park you can be a saint or a yogi or a billionaire or a world leader or a warlord. Be good, be evil. Happiness, misery, bliss, agony, victory, defeat, it’s all here. What’s the big rush? When the time comes to leave the park, you’ll know and you’ll go, but there’s certainly nothing to be gained by it.“

Wearing ego as a costume:

  • “Before enlightenment I believed my ego was me, then enlightenment comes along and no more ego, only the underlying reality. Now it’s after enlightenment and this ego might be slightly uncomfortable or ill-fitting at times, but it’s all I’ve got. The idea that your ego is destroyed in the process of becoming enlightened is roughly correct, but it’s not complete. Before enlightenment, you’re a human being in the world, just like everyone you see. During enlightenment you realize the human being you thought you were is just a character in a play, and that the world you thought you were in is just a stage, so you go through a process of radical deconstruction of your character to see what’s left when it’s gone. The result isn’t enlightened-self or true-self, it’s no-self. When it’s all over it’s time to be a human being in the world again, and that means slipping back into costume and getting back on stage.“
  • “Yes, I have an ego and it looks similar to the one I dropped to, as you say, achieve nirvana. But then I came back all enlightened and everything, and I needed something to wear. I look around and there’s my discarded ego lying in a pile on the floor so I slip into it and here I am. This is something a lot of students and seekers get hung up on and there’s really no satisfactory answer except to say ‘Come see for yourself.’“
  • “The costume represents the fictional self; ego. We erect ego to compensate for the lack of direct self-knowledge. Lack of perception of true-self is translated by the individual as non-existence of true-self. In other words, because true-self is unseen, it’s assumed not to exist.”
  • “Even now it takes a conscious effort to maintain my false self, my dream character; to animate it, to keep it running. And this trajectory I’m on will take me as close to non-existence as anyone can get and still have a body. In other words, I will continue to channel progressively less and less energy into my dreamstate being, my teaching will reduce down to its most refined and least tolerant form, my interest will withdraw from the world, and I will become as minimal as a person can be.”

Fear & Belief

Fear:

  • “Where, then, does wrongness reside outside of our physical organism? And the obvious answer is; nowhere. But if this whole existence thing is to have any dramatic element to keep it interesting, it needs conflict, and so an artificial wrongness must be inserted into the mix: Fear.”
  • “Fear, regardless of what face it wears, is the engine that drives humans as individuals and humanity as a species. Simply put, humans are fear-based creatures. It may be tempting to say that we are equal parts rational and emotional, balanced between left and right brain, but it’s not true. We are primarily emotional and our ruling emotion is fear.”
  • “It’s not fear of death that drives humans, it’s fear of non-being. Oblivion.”
  • “The fear of no-self is the mother of all fears, the one upon which all others are based. No fear is so small or petty that the fear of no-self isn’t at its heart. All fear is ultimately fear of no-self.”
  • “All fear is ultimately fear of this inner black hole, and nothing on this side of that hole is true. The process of achieving enlightenment is about breaking through the blockage and stepping through the hole, and anything that’s not about getting to and through the hole is just more rubbish and debris.”
  • “We’re all afloat in a boundless sea, and the way we cope is by massing together in groups and pretending in unison that the situation is other than it is. We reinforce the illusion for each other. That’s what a society really is, a little band of humanity huddled together against the specter of a pitch black sea. Everyone is treading water to keep their heads above the surface even though they have no reason to believe that the life they’re preserving is better than the alternative they’re avoiding. It’s just that one is known and one is not. Fear of the unknown is what keeps everyone busily treading water. All fear is fear of the unknown.”

Belief:

  • “The belief that something is wrong is the fire under the ass of humanity.“
  • “As history shows, the fastest way to reduce otherwise decent people to a state of savagery is by tampering with their belief system.”
  • “The truth is that nothing is really wrong. Nothing is ever wrong and nothing can be wrong. It’s not even wrong to believe that something is wrong. Wrong is simply not possible … Wrongness is in the eye of the beholder and nowhere else.“
  • “The perception of wrongness, however, is absolutely critical to the perpetuation of the human drama, right up there with the illusion of separateness and the certainty of free will. Drama requires conflict; no conflict, no drama. If something isn’t wrong, then nothing needs to be made right, which would mean that nothing needs to be done.”
  • “There’s no particular likelihood whatsoever that your perception of reality has any basis in reality.”
  • “All belief systems are just the stories we create in order to deal with the void. Ego abhors a vacuum, so everybody’s scrambling to create the illusion of something where there’s nothing. Belief systems are simply the devices we use to explain away the unthinkable horror of no-self.”
  • “There is no such thing as an atheist. If anything, we’re all agnostics and the only distinction between any two is one of degree. Everybody believes something, but only as much as they have to; enough to function.”
  • “No belief is true. No. Belief. Is. True.”
  • “All beliefs. All concepts. All thoughts. Yes, they’re all false; all bullshit. Of course they are. Not just religions and spiritual teachings, but all philosophies, all ideas, all opinions. If you’re going for the truth, you’re not taking any of them with you.”
  • “Saying that no belief is true is simply the inversion of this crisp, perfect statement; life has no meaning. Our existence is utterly, perfectly, gloriously meaningless.”
  • “If your beliefs aren’t your own, whose are they? Who are you? You must re-examine all of your assumptions, and only a small fraction of them are readily visible. Unchallenged beliefs can define you and determine the course of your life.”
  • “The forest of delusion is treed with concepts, and ultimately, all concepts mean the same thing; you’re still in the forest.”

Duality & Non-Duality

Duality:

  • “People who talk about an enlightened humanity are talking about a world where the lamb lies down with the lion and everyone is happy and healthy and whole. In short, a world without conflict, without drama. But that would be very silly since the whole point of duality is division. The whole point of opposites is opposition. This is a drama, not a still-life, and no awakened being would ever suggest that everything wasn’t just perfect the way it is.”
  • “Everything in duality is false; false as in not true, not true as in bullshit. There are no exceptions. Black and white, no shades of gray.”
  • “Duality is always finite. Duality is always contained, always within a finite sphere outside of which it cannot exist. It’s the sphere that defines the context within which opposites exist.”
  • “That’s what all this spirituality stuff is about; what’s ultimately true? Once you’ve arrived at the conclusion that reality as we think of it isn’t reality at all, then the question becomes, what is? What’s beyond the dualistic illusion? What’s beyond context?“

Non-Duality:

  • “Truth is one, is non-dual, is infinite, is one-without-other. Truth is dissolution, no-self, unity. There’s nothing to say about it, nothing to feel about it, nothing to know about it. You are true or you’re a lie, as in ego-bound, as in dual, as in asleep.”
  • “Anyone can verify for themselves the truth of non-duality; the fact that all is one. Any reasonably able-minded person can put it together on their own. From there, it’s a short step to no-self. Once you have established in your own mind the truth of nonduality, then countless fictions, like the idea of a separate self, shall not long endure.”
  • “Where nondual enthusiasts go astray is in trying to erect a philosophical structure atop this simple truth. Truth is always simple and never provides the basis for any philosophy.”
  • “You can’t build a philosophy of This on a foundation of Not-This.”

False Self & No Self

False Self = Ego (Dreamstate):

  • (On exploring the inner self / journey of self-discovery) “They’re just exploring the ego—making a study of the false self—which is a lifequest as valid as any other. But you don’t wake up by perfecting your dream character, you wake up by breaking free of it. There’s no truth to the ego, so no degree of mastery over it results in anything true. Putting attention on the ego merely reinforces it.”
  • “Self is ego and ego resides exclusively in the dreamstate. If you want to break free of the dreamstate, you must break free of self.”
  • “There’s really only one real cult—the Cult of False Self—and everyone is a fanatically devoted member.”
  • “That’s how you spend your energy; your lifeforce. It all goes into projecting the illusion of you. You’re constantly projecting an external representation of yourself that is always a work in progress, always shifting and evolving.”
  • “We spend our lives and our life-force cultivating and grooming our appearance in the eyes of others. That’s how we know that we exist. That’s how we know who we are. That’s where we find reassurance that we are real and not just hollow dream characters. That’s how the illusion of selfhood is constantly maintained.“
  • “The false self cannot be perceived directly, but only by the reflection it casts in the eyes of others.”

True Self = No Self (Awake):

  • “Ego—self—only layers. Remove all the layers and no-self is left.”
  • “Ego-death as a means to no-self—abiding non-dual awareness—is what this journey is all about.”
  • “The deepest truth of any person is no-person. One may insist otherwise with every thought and feeling, but that doesn’t change the truth.”
  • “There is no true self. Truth and self are mutually exclusive.”
  • “True self is no-self and there’s just no way to make it sound reasonable.”
  • “There is no true self to perceive; there’s only false self and no-self. One looks for true self and finds nothing, as if one’s true self was no truth at all.”
  • “I would describe the awakened state by saying that because I have no sense of self, I have no sense of possession or right or entitlement. I don’t take anything for granted. Nothing is mine; it’s all on loan and it must all go back. My body is not my body, my life is not my life. I want nothing and I want for nothing. I am free.“

Truth & Surrender

Truth:

  • “What do we know for sure? That’s the real question … It’s all about figuring out exactly what we know for certain as opposed to everything else.”
  • “Here’s all you need to know to become enlightened: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know. That’s it. That’s the whole deal; a complete teaching of enlightenment, a complete practice. If you ever have any questions or problems—no matter what the question or problem is—the answer is always exactly the same: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know.“
  • “Breaking free of delusion takes everything you have. The price of truth is everything. Everything. That’s the rule and it’s inviolable.”
  • “Not only is truth simple, it’s that which cannot be simpler; cannot be further reduced.”
  • “Truth doesn’t need to be sought because it isn’t lost. It’s not at the end of some path waiting to be discovered. It’s not the result of practice or growth or learning. Truth is everywhere at all times; never absent, never distant.“
  • “Spiritual awakening is about discovering what’s true. Anything that’s not about getting to the truth must be discarded. Truth isn’t about knowing things; you already know too much. It’s about unknowing. It’s not about becoming true, it’s about unbecoming false so that all that’s left is truth.”
  • “The way I point, has nothing in its favor except that its true and its truth can be known directly, which cannot be said about anything else.”
  • “Truth is infinitely simple, delusion is infinitely complex. There’s no overestimating our ability to avoid making eye contact with the obvious.”
  • “The pursuit of truth is in itself a lifestyle choice, and one that can be fulfilling in many ways aside from the actual achievement of the ultimate goal.”
  • “This is the dream. The question is, who is doing the dreaming and how do we wake up? How do we get real? That’s what all this enlightenment stuff boils down to. It’s about waking up and seeing what’s really true, and to do that we have to become progressively less asleep. We have to fight and scratch and claw our way to wakefulness. In the same sense, if you want to be more true, then the way to do that is by becoming less false, less full of shit. If you want to be less full of shit, then the way to do it is to go inside yourself with the spotlight of discrimination, find the shit, and illuminate it. Illumination destroys it.“
  • “Any time we see more of what is true and less of what is false, we are making actual progress.“
  • “Time and space come and go but what’s true is true and all the rest is but a dream.”

Surrender

  • “The universe is funny about how it puts us exactly where we need to be to pick up the next piece of the puzzle.”
  • “The universe will give you whatever you want … That’s how it works, even if you don’t know it. It can’t be otherwise. You don’t have to be worthy, but you do have to know what it is that you want.”
  • “Everything’s exactly as it should be and cannot, in fact, be otherwise.”
  • “Relax into the moment and let the universe do the driving. If there was a secret to happiness in life, I’d say that was it.”
  • “The act of faith in something other than self allows you to release the tiller; to surrender. Whatever the reason for doing it, whatever name you give to the new steering agent or agency, it’s going to be a very positive change because it’s going to be the infinite and unerring intelligence of the universe that takes over.”
  • “Simply put, I don’t think. I don’t make choices or decisions. I don’t weigh possibilities and select one over others. Instead, I observe patterns and move with them. I have a refined sense of rightness and not-rightness that guides me in all things. No decision in my life is made through ratiocination. I wait for unfolding. I sense currents and I flow with them.”
  • “Heightened abilities might be a good way to put it—that most of you haven’t gotten around to developing or recognizing in yourselves yet. These abilities are not really related to enlightenment directly, though; at least, they don’t hinge on it, nor it on they. I’m talking about the ability to manifest desires, for one; to shape your personal reality. Another might be the ability to view life not in detail, but in broad patterns, as if from a greater altitude, and to flow through it from that more elevated perspective.”

Spiritual Autolysis Technique

  • “Autolysis means self-digestion, and spiritual means … that level of self which encompasses the mental, physical and emotional aspects; your royal I-ness.”
  • “Put the two words together and you have a process through which you feed yourself, one piece at a time, into the purifying digestive fires.”
  • “The process of Spiritual Autolysis is basically like a Zen koan on steroids. All you really have to do is write the truth.”
  • “That’s all there is to it. Just write down what you know is true, or what you think is true, and keep writing until you’ve come up with something that is true.“
  • “The reason for writing it down on paper or on a computer where you can see it is because the brain, unlikely as it may sound, is no place for serious thinking. Any time you have serious thinking to do, the first step is to get the whole shootin’ match out of your head and set it up someplace where you can walk around it and see it from all sides. Attack, switch sides and counter-attack. You can’t do that while it’s still in your head. Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic, your own opponent. By externalizing your thoughts, you can become your own guru; judging yourself, giving feedback, providing a more objective and elevated perspective.“
  • “It doesn’t matter where you start, just grab a thread and start pulling. You could start by using Ramana Maharshi’s query, ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What is me?’, and then just work at it.”
  • “This isn’t about personal awareness or self-exploration. It’s not about feelings or insights. It’s not about personal or spiritual evolution. This is about what you know for sure, about what you are sure you know is true, about what you are that is true. With this process you tear away layer after layer of untruth masquerading as truth.“
  • “It’s actually a painful and vicious process, somewhat akin to self-mutilation. It creates wounds that will never heal and burns bridges that can never be rebuilt and the only real reason to do it is because you can no longer stand not to.”
  • “Thought, whether in the brain or out, is a creative tool, and Spiritual Autolysis is a creative process, just like any other.”
  • “Spiritual Autolysis is an intellectual endeavor, but I balk at calling it a path of intellect. It’s a process of discrimination, of unknowing what is untrue, of progressively stripping away the false and leaving only what is true. Discrimination is used in a machete-like manner for hacking one’s way through the dense underbrush of delusion, or, if you prefer, in a swordlike manner for hacking off one’s own delusion-riddled head. Intellect is used as the sword with which ego commits a slow and agonizing suicide; the death of a thousand cuts.“
  • “Spiritual Autolysis invariably leads to infinity.“
  • “Infinity holds infinite infinities.“
  • “I never thought of waking up as a spiritual pursuit, I just wanted to get to the truth. Looking back, I can see where I might have used the word infinity in a koan-like manner; kind of a Western version of mu. Infinity is beautiful; it destroys everything it touches. It annihilates all concepts, all beliefs, all sense of self. No teacher, teaching, book or practice could ever be as effective as simply allowing the thought of infinity to slowly devour you.“

Purity of Intent, The First Step, & Caterpillar to Butterfly

Purity of Intent & The Golden Rule:

  • “I’m defining spiritual enlightenment as truth-realization and that doesn’t require anything but purity of intent.”
  • “This stuff isn’t about brains and balls, it’s about desire and flow and purity of intent. And surrender.”
  • “The goal of the genuine seeker is always to take the next step, to open the next door. Waking up is not a scholastic pursuit or a conceptual challenge. The ability to open the next door is the only thing that matters, and the key can come in any package; a book, a stubbed toe, an advertising jingle, a leaf of grass. If your intent is in place, then the universe will act as your librarian and you’ll always have you what you need when you need it.“
  • “Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. You figure out what’s true through a process of elimination, by figuring out what’s not true. That’s the master key; follow the truth. Ultimately, that’s my only advice. The clock is ticking and you’re completely on your own. Forget concepts, forget philosophy, forget spirituality, forget what anyone else says, don’t try to dictate terms. Just think for yourself and figure out what’s true.”
  • “The first rule in this business is that you are on your own. Ego clings to a teacher like a drowning man clings to a log.”
  • “Think for yourself. That’s the golden rule. Think for yourself. Make it your mantra. Tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids.”
  • “If Prince Siddhartha made it on his own, you can too, right? The Buddha was just some guy who got serious and figured it out for himself, so maybe that’s his real teaching; that you can figure it out for yourself. Maybe the point isn’t that he was some sort of deity or superman, but that he wasn’t.”
  • “It’s your show. It’s your universe. There’s no one else here, just you, and nothing is being withheld from you. You are completely on your own. Everything is available for direct knowing. No one else has anything you need. No one else can lead you, pull you, push you or carry you. No one else is necessary to your success. It cannot be simpler; you are asleep and you can wake up. If you understand that, you’ll understand that it’s the best news you could possibly receive.”
  • “That’s the fundamental difference between an enlightened person and an unenlightened one; having or not having direct knowledge of self. The latter being the breeding ground of ego.”
  • “The thinking is simple: Wake up first. Wake up, and then you can double back and perhaps be of some use to others if you still have the urge. Wake up first, with pure and unapologetic selfishness, or you’re just another shipwreck victim floundering in the ocean and all the compassion in the world is of absolutely no use to the other victims floundering around you. Resolve your own situation first, and then maybe your compassion will translate into something of value to others.”

The First Step:

  • “My own awakening ran its course in less than two years … And that’s without any living teacher to help me. I’ve never heard of the process taking longer than that. I really don’t see how the process could take much longer than that.“
  • “When I say this, I don’t mean that it only takes two years from the first spark of spiritual longing. I mean two years after the point when the process of awakening actually begins; the primary epiphany, the first step. Let’s capitalize that: The First Step.“
  • “The process of awakening might be viewed as the transition between these two poles; the journey from fear and wrong-making to gratitude and open-eyed acceptance.”
  • “I know that many people spend many years in meditation and spiritual practice without achieving full awakening, and I know that they think it’s because they haven’t crossed the finish line yet, but it’s actually because they haven’t crossed the starting line yet: The First Step.”
  • “The First Step. It’s not the realization of what is, but of what’s not. It’s the grand disillusionment. Enlightenment is still a ways off, but the process is now beginning; has now begun.”
  • “The First Step is the main thing. That’s what everything I teach is really about. Take the First Step and the rest will most assuredly follow. You can traipse about the stage playing a spiritual role and you can meditate and renounce and be selfless and earn merit and burn karma year after year, lifetime after lifetime, and still not take that First Step. That really sums up the state of awakening in the West where spirituality is a recent cultural transplant with many intoxicating blossoms but no established root system.“

Transforming from Caterpillar to Butterfly:

  • “The way out is through, and there can be no rebirth without first a death.“
  • “Enlightenment is comprehensive. It’s an entirely different paradigm. My reality is not your reality. All the rules are different. It’s like I speak a different language altogether, and the reason we can communicate at all is because I used to speak your language and I remember a little of it. The caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly, it enters a death process that becomes the birth process of the butterfly. The appearance of transformation is an illusion. One thing doesn’t become another thing. One thing ends and another begins.“
  • “At the end of the day you’re either a caterpillar or a butterfly, and the only way anyone will ever have even the slightest sense of what it means to be a butterfly is to become one. There are no butterfly experts among the caterpillars, despite innumerable claims to the contrary, and I encourage my students to at least consider the possibility that the world is up to its poles in caterpillars who quite successfully convince themselves and others that they are actually butterflies.”
  • “There’s no such thing as instant enlightenment any more than there’s such a thing as an instant baby. Storks don’t really deliver babies and there’s no Enlightenment Fairy hovering over Zen monasteries or anywhere else. It’s easy to see how the idea would catch on, but there’s only one way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. No depth of insight into what it’s like to be a vampire can ever make you a vampire.”
  • “That’s very much what the enlightenment thing is like. Instead of vampires and butterflies, just imagine being the only adult in a world of children. Really. Imagine how you’d develop over the years. Imagine how your feelings about children might change. Imagine the person you’d become.“
  • “The enlightened have awakened from the dream and no longer mistake it for reality. Naturally, they are no longer able to attach importance to anything … The enlightened cannot conceive of anything as being wrong, so they don’t struggle to make things right. Nothing is better or worse, so why try to adjust things?”
  • “An easy way to distinguish between caterpillars and butterflies is to remember that the enlightened don’t attach importance to anything, and that enlightenment doesn’t require knowledge. It’s not about love or compassion or consciousness. It’s about truth.“

You May Also Enjoy:

  • Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse | Summary
  • A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle | Summary 1, 2, 3 
  • Who Am I? by Sri Ramana Maharshi | Summary 

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