Skills

I’ve written a few posts now which touch on the theme of how an awakened person goes about teaching others how to awaken. Over all, if you’re not enlightened, it’s a good idea to hang around enlightened people. Because many of us are able to know the minds of others, we’re able to use language in a way that can point your mind in a direction that will be helpful for your progress. For the unawakened, this is an invaluable service.

However, there is one particular disadvantage that may arise when the student is way less skilled and developed than their teacher. This is because true mastery of any skill usually requires that the master no longer thinks about the mechanics of the skill. For example, when first learning how to play guitar it makes sense to pay close attention to where one places the pads of their fingers, and just how much pressure is applied to the string, etc. But once this is learned, it’s better for the guitarist to keep their attention on others things, so as to play in a responsive way. It’s difficult to be responsive to one’s band mates when attention is applied only to the mechanics of pushing a finger to a string.

Because of this, the person who develops mastery tends to ignore the basic skills once they are developed. They simply “play.” And this means that not every master is a good teacher of basic skills. For, to teach basic skills well requires paying attention to them. And paying attention to the basics after already moving on to more interesting skills is not very interesting.

The awakened master is not always a good teacher of basic practice skills. In all honesty, the best teachers of basic skills are those who have only recently mastered them to some degree. Stream-enterers make great vipassana coaches, for example, because they just go the hang of the skills required to develop along the path. But after many years of vipassana practice, the yogi doesn’t even think about it. They just do it. They sit down, direct their attention, and the process just does what it does. It’s just like what happens when a skilled pianist sits down and just starts playing. Or, just like they way you get into your car, turn it on, and just start driving. Rather than focusing on the gas pedal, you’re probably watching the road in order to be responsive to the environment.

The point here is to choose your instructors carefully. Don’t discount the new stream-enterer as less capable of helping you if you have yet to progress to their level. They might be the best resource for developing specific skills. But also do your best to find a teacher or mentor who is developed well beyond your level, so you can keep the greater goal in focus. Having access to a genuinely awakened person will help to keep you from falling off track, as they tend to be good at keeping you moving in the right direction.

Awakened Quotations – Ken Wilber on “snapping out of it.”

“Enlightenment is . . . to snap out of the movie of life. To wake up, to shake it off. You are, and always have been, at the movies, as the Witness. But when you take life seriously—when you think the movie is real—you forget you are the pure and free Witness and you identify with a little self—the ego—as if you were part of the movie you are actually watching. You identify with somebody on screen. And therefore you get frightened, and therefore you cry, and therefore you suffer altogether.

“With meditation, you begin to relax in your seat and just watch the movie of life, without judging it, avoiding it, grasping it, pushing it, or pulling it. You merely Witness it: you employ the mirror-mind, you rest in simple, clear, spontaneous, effortless, ever-present consciousness.” [Italics his.]

-Ken Wilber, One Taste

You can’t figure it out

How does an awakened person describe the indescribable?

Easy. They don’t.

Nothing an awakened person says should be taken as truth, at least not in any absolute sort of way.

When I talk about the source, I do so as a pointer. Do I really mean that the source is itself the uncaused-cause, like some kind of singularity from which objects spew forth and return?… maybe. (Wouldn’t you love to know.)

… but even if I was, that’s not the point (or should I say, not the pointer). When I, like any other awakened person out there, provides you with an analogy for awakening, beware of any comfortable feeling that comes along with the thought, “Oh, I get it!” Awakening is not like solving a mathematical equation. It’s not a piece of knowledge you can carry around in your head, and reveal any time someone asks you about it.

The teachings of the awakened are used to influence the student’s state of mind. It’s much more like helping someone tune an instrument than helping them dig a whole or climb over a fence. What we say comes at others at a certain frequency or pitch, which results in either consonance or dissonance in the minds of those who listen. Both are used to guide you in a particular direction – one that will lead you closer to the state of mind that is ripe for awakening. When the fruit is truly ripe, it drops from the branch. That’s what it’s like to awaken.

You can’t figure it you. You never will. But you can listen, and you can practice.

But, for god’s sake, don’t spend time getting good at describing something you don’t yet understand. You might be able to fool yourself and some others who are not awake, but you’ll never fool the awakened. Not a chance.

Language is Magick

We humans are a bunch of chatter boxes. We love to talk and write; to share ideas and opinions. Sometimes it’s for the sake of feeling, as when we attempt to say or write, or hear or read, something beautiful. Other times it’s a way of convincing one’s self they are right about something, whereas others are clearly wrong. Of course, there are other reasons for expressing thoughts.

The thing that most people overlook, though, is this:

Language is magick*.

(And yes, this does relate to awakening.)

I’ll show you a very clear example of why language is essentially a form of magick. Let’s say we’re having a conversation over lunch and you tell me, “You know, my mother is just so wonderful. She’s always been there for me. Even last week she gave me some money to fix my car, without my even having to ask. What a saint, she is!”

What if, in response, I was to look you dead in the eye and say, “Your mother is a filthy whore who deserves to rot in hell!”

Most people, upon hearing these words, will have an immediate felt emotional and physical response. It could be anger or rage. It could be sadness, or surprise, or confusion. Each has its matching physical experience. And it’s this experiential result that gives language its magical power.

In short, what you say and what you hear (what you write and what you read) can influence your experience. And magick is about having an experience. Or, more specifically, as Alan Chapman puts it, magick is about experiencing truth.

Actually, let’s take an excerpt from Alan’s free ebook Three Steps to Heaven: How to practice magick:

Magick is the art of experiencing truth. In other words, you can choose any experience (say, dancing around in your underpants), and decide what that experience will mean (‘It will rain’), undergo the experience (perform the dance), thus rendering the given meaning true (It will rain, because you’ve experienced the fact ‘it will rain’. Experience is the truth). [...] What can be experienced by magick is limited only by your imagination (the subjective), but how that experience manifests is limited by the available means of manifestation (the objective). [Italics his.]

Going back to the example of my cruel words about your mother during lunch, we can see that magick was indeed at work. There was no need to decide beforehand what hearing my words would mean to you. You had already made up your mind about the words “filthy whore” and “burn in hell” long before our conversation. So, the experience the hearing those words, while having already determined what those words mean and how such words would make you feel, resulted in an experience of whatever physical, emotional, and cognitive events that followed. My saying, “Your mother is a filthy whore who deserves to rot in hell!” was, basically, a spell. And it’s hard to find a situation where such a spell doesn’t produce the intended result.

We are using this kind of word-magick on ourselves and others constantly. Whether we are saying words to others, or speaking privately to ourselves in our minds, what we say or think, as well as the meanings we’ve given to each experience of hearing them, will result in some kind of experiential result. In this way, words really matter.

Until they don’t anymore…

That’s the funny thing about magick. The best way to learn how to break a spell is to also know how to cast one. It’s much easier to take something apart if you know how to put it together.

My previous post was all about learning to deceive yourself for the sake of awakening. In said post, I wrote, “When you bring this unconscious process out into the open air of conscious awareness, you can then learn to use it to your advantage. But maybe I’ll save the details for another post…” Well, now I’ve given some of those details.

The same way that the only way to really know how to break a spell is to know how to cast one, the only way to truly stop deceiving yourself is to learning how to deceive yourself – and quite convincingly! Learn to manipulate your own feelings by using different words to describe events. Learn to make yourself feel depressed by conjuring up mental images that make you sad or lonely. Then, picture a smiling loved one and see how it lifts your mood. Say to yourself, “You deserve to be happy and awake!” and smile. Then, say to yourself, “You will never awaken. There is no such thing. Life is completely meaningless,” and then hang your head and frown. Really buy into it, but pay attention at the same time. Watch as the magick of words and images takes you on a ride.

You may think the next step in this process is to simply learn which things make you feel happy and just make an effort to keep those things in mind, while pushing everything else out. You would be wrong.

The reason for this is because the result of any single act of magick is limited. It comes, and then it goes, like everything else of this world, or of any world.

The point, then, is not to use magick to feel happy. The point is to use magick against itself, to turn the tables. For, magick is what keeps us locked into our deluded egoic state. But it’s not the fault of magick, but rather, our own lack of cunning awareness. You can’t blame the thorns for keeping you bound if you’re the one who wandered into them with your eyes closed.

Instead, we can use a thorn to remove a thorn, and then discard them both.

*DISCLAIMER: I admit, I am no expert in the science and praxis of magick. The only area in which I claim any mastery is in the path of awakening, which I understand to be an inherently magical process. It is the one application where my experience carries any weight.

Learn to deceive yourself

The source – the knowing nature – is not a self. It is not a self because for it to be a self it would have to be able to possess something, anything, as “mine.” There can be no “me” without “mine.”

Talking about the knowing nature as though it is pure or impure is beside the point. The source is not unlike an innocent bystander which is co-opted through a great confusion that leads to the generation of suffering. Suffering is not uncaused. It is not intrinsic to reality.

Thoughts are powerfully deceptive. They form images which are known via the source, and which confuse themselves as the source. The thoughts think they are the ones who know. And from here it all goes downhill. Confusing that which knows and lasts with that which is incapable of knowing in and of itself, which is also that which is in constant change – birth, aging, illness, and death – they delude themselves into thinking there is a continuity of self from moment to moment of conditioned arising. All this is possible because of the knowing nature and its neutral, unbiased position.

It is the mind’s ability to fabricate that is both its damnation and salvation. When it remains ignorant of its own power, life is hell. When its wakes up to its own power, it can be turned against itself. It can realize all of the pain and suffering it causes itself; how futile the self-preservation-mode really is.

And as the mind becomes less infatuated with itself, it comes to see that the knowing nature need not be subject to this madness. It has been used for suffering when it has the potential to be the home of radical freedom. It is both the means and the end of awakening.

If you want to know a way to figure this out quickly, learn to deceive yourself intentionally! Imagine something you want, and notice how your mind and body respond. Picture something terrible, something you would never want to see happen, and observe what happens to the quality of experience. Then notice how no matter how long you try to sustain either scenario, each will die.

No state lasts forever. It takes too much energy. The mind gets bored and moves on to something else. When it does, pay attention to the way it happens! I thought arises, and the mind delights in the thought, and a new self is born. For example, when meditation becomes difficult, you may think, “Why am I meditating when it’s so painful. This meditation stuff doesn’t even work. I’m going to be happy just being myself and doing the things I like.” This thought let you off the hook. The burden of meditation relieved, you sigh with relief and go about your life, utterly deceived once again… That is, until life is seen for the mess of suffering it can be. Then you will think, “I’m going to meditate and get rid of this suffering!” Then the meditator is reborn, and the enthusiasm and delight return. How tricky, this mind!

When you bring this unconscious process out into the open air of conscious awareness, you can then learn to use it to your advantage. But maybe I’ll save the details for another post…

The first step on this path of practice, which is simply a path to here, is recognizing the difference between the knowing nature and that which is known. This distinction won’t always matter. It’s not some absolute truth to cling to. It’s just a step in the right direction. It sucks the power out of illusion by turning it back on itself. This cannot, should not, be under-emphasized. I hope this point is quite clear. If you haven’t made this first step, you’re still stuck in the thorn bushes.

Take the first step.

Knowing the minds of others

One of the unique abilities of an awakened individual such as myself is the ability to know the minds of others. I don’t mean that all awakened people can read your thoughts (though, I don’t doubt that some can). What I mean is that I can have a conversation with someone – hell, I can even just overhear a conversation between others – and know after a short time just where they’re as far as proximity to awakening is concerned. Actually, it’s more like knowing just where they’re stuck.

Hearing someone speak is not different from hearing them think. Thinking, after all, is internal speaking. I’m told you can actually see the transition from when a child is somewhat unable to keep their thoughts to themselves, to being able to keep quiet – all while being able to see that their wheels are still turning. Most people don’t share all of the content of their internal speaking, mostly for social reasons (“If I could be arrested for my thoughts, they’d lock me up!”). But their style of speech is the same on the inside as it is on the outside, and the content doesn’t vary that much.

In that regard, I’m not receiving any information that you can’t receive as well. You can hear the same stuff I hear. But, you see, I’ve already unraveled the speech knot. I know, in an excruciatingly intimate way, just how certain kinds of thinking represent certain ways of being “stuck.” I learned to undo them for myself, so I know what someone needs to hear in order to remove the blockage… that is, if they accept the challenge to challenge their sticky thoughts.

The thoughts that keep us tangled in the dream world are basically what we might refer to as common sense. Common sense is particularly nefarious because it gallivants around completely unchallenged for the most part. And the most diabolical form of common sense thinking comes to us as assertions of “I,” of “me,” and of “mine.” In each case, there is an assumption of lack. If “I am” is assumed, then there must be something “I” can keep and hold as “mine.” But nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing at all is belongs to a “me.” But our assumption leads to a tremendous about of unnecessary suffering the expenditure of copious amounts of vital energy. We’re tired, we’re scared, we’re pissed off – all because we think we can actually “have” something.

Do you know what the most common thing people tend to think that they have? It’s insanely tautological; a heap of recursive nonsense. It is this: “I” think “I” have a unique personality. But this personality is who “I” am, from this point of view. “I have an ‘I’, OK! And I need you to respect and appreciate my ‘I’, or I’ll hate you!” Of course, this comes out, in common speech, as, “You need accept, appreciate, and respect ‘me’!”

I’m not advocating disrespect and rejection. If you think so, you’re missing the point. The point is that the assumption that one’s personality is somehow who they are, and that it needs to be defended, and that they can be damaged when someone says something bad about it, or doesn’t go along with its desires… that’s spiritual pathology. And this is what I hear all the time, day to day, in any social encounter I find myself in. It comes out in external speech.

There’s not need to try and throw a big bucket of freezing cold truth in the face of someone who holds some nutty common sense personality-view. That kind of act is very oppositional, and I question the motives of anyone who think it’s their job to cut down someone’s ego. The desire to cut anything down is itself an act of ego. It’s better to believe you have a self and be kind than to delude yourself into some kind of no-self-view (which is really a self-view in disguise), and then go around trying to castrate the selves of those around you. Again, not the point.

I find it much more practical to meet someone where they are at. Instead of throwing a whole new system of concepts their way, I like to keep things closer to home. For example, I was introduced to a friend of a friend last weekend. In getting to know him, I found out that he studied political science in college. The topic of political affiliation came up, and he said to me, “You know, it’s best not to associate with any ’ism’ or party or anything like that.” This statement is reasonable enough. A lot of people get stuck in their “isms,” (e.g. Marxism, Libertarianism, Progressivism, Conservatism, etc.) and are therefore too tightly affiliated with a particular group or teaching. But I knew from the way he said it that, although he had detached from needing to have a label- an “ism,” – he was stuck in the land of no-label, to the point of being turned-off or repulsed by the very idea of having an “ism” of his own. And yet, holding tightly to his position of no-position is precisely what isolates him, what keeps him separate and partial and divided. So, I said to him, “Yeah. So, do you think there’s an ‘ism’ that could be applied to those of us who hate ‘isms’?” At that moment I could see his wheels turning, just like the above description of the child. He said, “Uh, I don’t know. I guess there could be!” We had a good laugh about it, and then our conversation moved on to other things. You may not be able to recognize the significance of this, or maybe you can. But, by participating in this seemingly insignificant exchange of ideas, this guy got one step closer to the waking up.

And at the risk of sounding like a cheesy infomercial, SO CAN YOU! Most people are not awake, because most people do not practice. Those who practice well, and practice all the way to the end, wake up. You can consider the “knowing the minds of others” ability a nice perk after a job well done.

Have you gone far enough?

If you think the source is simply the way your mind feels when you’re relaxed, you haven’t gone far enough.

If you think you’re enlightened because you’ve looked for your sense of self and found that there wasn’t one, you haven’t gone far enough.

If you think awakening is recognizing that thoughts are objects of consciousness just like sense media, you haven’t gone far enough.

If you think you’re awake because you had a dream-like vision that revealed some paradoxical mystery of the universe, you haven’t gone far enough.

If you’ve experienced a shift in consciousness due to pondering over some non-rational koan-like riddle, don’t stop. You probably haven’t gone far enough.

If you’ve learned to quiet your mind to the point where there are seldom any thoughts for hours or even days, keep going. You haven’t gone far enough.

If you’ve reached a state in your meditation where you seem utterly absent, and yet the world continues to manifest… sorry. You haven’t gone far enough.

If it feels as though your consciousness has exploded into shimmery Oneness with all of the cosmos, you probably haven’t gone far enough.

If you’ve reached a state where there are no objects of consciousness at all, so that all experience is simply a gossamer void – not far enough.

How will you know when you’ve gone far enough?

Believe me: you’ll know!

But, if you need more than that, I’ll say this…

So long as the source is confused with objects, duality remains. When the source is fully distinguish from objects, even the most subtle projections of the most subtle mind, only then is the non-duality of the source and objects truly and directly known. Every experience described above is likely to be a case of confusing the source with some object or another. Though, the varieties of which delusion may appear are legion.

You have to take it all the way. You’ve only gone far enough when you can’t go any further. You will quite literally fall off the edge of duality if you just keep going. Jed McKenna’s one-word instruction here is quite appropriate: Further. The path is not endless. Further gets you there.

Awakened Quotations: Jed McKenna on “Ego”

“The process of awakening looks like it’s about destroying ego, but that’s not really accurate. You never completely rid yourself of ego—the false self—as long as you’re alive, and it’s not important that you do. What matters is the emotional tethers that anchor us to the dreamstate; that hold us in place and make us feel that we’re a part of something real. We send out energetic tendrils from the nexus of ego like roots to attach ourselves to the dreamstate, and to detach from it we must sever them. The energy of an emotion is our lifeforce, and the amount of lifeforce determines the power of the emotion. Withdraw energy from an emotion and what’s left? A sterile thought. A husk. In this sense, freeing ourselves from attachment is indeed the process of awakening, but such attachments aren’t what we have, they’re what we are.”

-Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment

Get in there!

Happy new year, readers. What better way to kick off 2011 than to commit yourself, once again, to waking up.

The path of awakening is about clearing up delusions. By first investigating into who you are not, you wake up to a greater sense of who you are. But even this “who you are” is to be investigated. For, once we have a sense that we are this “I am”, we need to move beyond this until the “I” is gone and only “Am” remains.

After every opening there is a tendency to solidify the new point of view into a new home for ego. You can tell when this happens by the fact that your practice focuses less on engaging with experience and more with reflecting about this nature of reality you’ve uncovered. The key to keeping things moving is to continually re-engage with experience as directly as possible. Get in there! The source is not fixed, so neither should your position/perspective be fixed. To settle into a perspective is to tighten one’s chains. In each moment, engage and let go.

Awakening is possible. Don’t you forget it.

Everyone’s waking up… or are they?

There are a lot more people claiming to be awakened then there used to be. Taken at face value, this is a good thing. People are practicing techniques that others have found particularly effective, and they are experiencing results of one kind or another. They are even really good at explaining what they’ve experienced using the key words and phrases that other enlightened people use (e.g. nondual, egolessness, oneness, etc.).

What interests me is what these people later report as they continue to practice. More often than not, someone who has already claimed to be fully awakened will experience something novel to them and say, “Wow, here’s this new thing I discovered. It must be available only to awakened people!” The descriptions of these new states or experiences usually sound an awful lot like the descriptions of kensho, or an initial glimpse of one’s true nature (the source). I hate to break it to these folks, but if you’re just now experiencing kensho for the first time, you’re not fully awakened. Far from it, actually.

This is why claiming awakening is tricky business. Most people get it wrong. Most people think they are awake because something that used to bother them doesn’t bother them anymore. They had questions, and the questions were answered in an experimental way, and now they think they’re Buddhas. Again, this just isn’t true.

There’s a reason why many Zen masters who, when a student first discloses their awakening, will suggest that they go live in the mountains for 10 years. It takes a great deal of time for the initial pinprick to completely deflate the balloon. Merely pricking the balloon may ensure your future enlightenment, but being inflated is not being awake.