Written on February 2, 2010 by Tom Stine
Head over to TalkingPurpose.com and watch the video interview I recently did with Michelle Vandepas. I’ve done a few other interviews with Michelle, and they are fun for me and hopefully interesting for you. We discussed awakening and enlightenment and a host of other topics. Watch and enjoy! Namaste.
Written on January 13, 2010 by Tom Stine
Previously I’ve written about the lack of real control that we have in our lives (see No Control, No Control, No Control and Who Is in Control? and many others). To properly discuss control, however, requires a bit more to be said on the subject than I’ve said in the past. In this article I’m going to attempt to provide some clarity on a somewhat confusing topic.
I think control is confusing and also quite problematic for most people because of the essential issue confronting everyone (and by everyone I mean everyone, not just spiritual seekers). That essential issue is the answer to the question, “What are you?” That’s the key to the whole control question. If you are convinced that you are the little human body with a little human brain, then I think I can safely say that you have virtually no control over your life.
I say virtually no control because there is no doubt that the human mind has some sort of influence on how the body functions and moves through life, so there is a semblance of control. But even then, this influence is nothing more than that: influence. But control? Forget about it! The amount of control that the human mind has over the events, actions, decisions and details of a human life is laughable at best.
I know that many of you have watched The Secret. For that matter, you’ve grown up in a either a western or a westernized culture with it’s emphasis on self-determination, hard work, and “going for broke.” You’ve been taught over and over again that if you simple dig in and try harder, exercise your will, your inner strength, etc., you can make anything happen. But I’m sorry to tell you that every bit of that is a farce, a deception, a belief system that has no resemblance to actual experience.
First of all, you have no control over your thoughts. You can’t decide what you are going to think. If you will sit for even a moment and watch, your thoughts simply arise and then fade of their own accord. They are based upon your experience, your conditioning, the sum total of your life. Even better, notice how irrelevant they are 99% of the time to what you are experiencing right now.
At this moment, you are reading this article on control. If you pause, close your eyes, and watch your thoughts for a few minutes, notice what will come: the guy you met last weekend at a party, the bill that is due next week, the dog you saw running on the beach, the fact that it is 0 degrees outside (although it is toasty warm inside). But none of that is what is happening right here and right now. Thoughts arise, thoughts fade, and there really is no controlling what you are going to be thinking from moment to moment.
Secondly, let’s get real for a moment: even if you could control your thoughts, do you honestly think that your mind can manipulate external reality and cause new cars, new houses, new jobs and new women (and/or men) to enter your life? Just because you “held a thought” in your awareness for a few minutes each day? Now don’t misunderstand, I’m talking about “your mind”, that little hunk of energy that contains the thoughts specific to the body called Tom or Bob or Sue or Helen, the thoughts that are tied to the brain and nervous system of that body. Does that have control over new houses, new cars, etc.? Influence, sure, but control? Control? Real honest to God control? Okay, didn’t think so.
As an aside: I know that I’m not going to make a lot of spiritual and new-age people happy with the above. Oh, well. Someday I’ll write more about the effect of mind on experience. There certainly is some sort of process going on, something that sort of looks like the mind giving rise to our experience, something that seems like a “Law of Attraction” or something similar. But the key point above is this: that little bit of energy you call “my mind” isn’t the force driving your life and experience. My advice: give up trying to manipulate Life and to attract goodies into your experience. It isn’t going to work the way the Secret folks would have you believe.
Okay, so at the level of the seeming separate human being, governed by his thoughts and residing in a body with a brain and nervous system, there is no control over life. It is a fantasy at best. But, thank God for you and me, that little human body and brain has nothing to do with what you really are. What you are is none of that. The human body and brain are contained within what you are. That human body and brain are simply part of your experience in the manifest world.
So, what are you? You are Life itself. We use many fancy words in spirituality to attempt to describe what you are, words like Consciousness, Life, God, Awareness, Awakeness, The Now, Presence, Brahman, you name it. All just words attempting to get a grip on what it is that you are. But they point to something far larger, far more immense, and most assuredly more powerful than the mere human being you have come to think you are.
Let me bring back a diagram I used in a previous post:
What’s looking out of your eyes, what you really, truly are is the Void at the top of the diagram. You are the very source of awareness and consciousness, and as these you experience a Universe or maybe even many universes. All that you see, all that you hear, all that you taste and touch and smell, all this arises out of what you truly are. Everything in the manifest world, everything around you, is you!
So, from the only level that really matters, the level of Consciousness, of Life, it is quite pointless to discuss control. In a certain sense, you could say that you have complete and total control over everything. But that isn’t really the right way to phrase it, because that implies that there even is such a thing as control. Control is just an idea, a concept, that minds create. But in the reality of what you are, there is nothing to control.
Look at the dictionary definition of the word control:
Control: to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command.
The very word control implies manipulation, an attempt to change things so that they will be “better” in some sense. But look at the reality of life: everything, everything, everything is Life, is coming out of the unmanifest, the state of pure potential, spirit. It is all arising not by accident, not by some grand cosmic mistake. It is arising from the very substance of what life is. How can there be a mistake anywhere? How can there be a single, solitary thing that Life wants to change right now within its creation? Or to ask it another way, what would God want to change in His creation at this particular moment?
All is as it is. Right now. Perfect. Whole. Complete. Part of awakening is the recognition of this unalterable fact. The very idea of awakening would indicate that this recognition is so. You are awakening to what you are. You are coming into a full, complete understanding of what you are and everything else is. You see everyone and everything as this whole, full and complete.
And finally, I think that many people get the notion that somehow there will be some sort of perfected, absolute, ultimate blissful state at the end of the spiritual path, a state where nothing changes. Well, it may or may not end up being blissful, but it will certainly not be unchanging. While everything may be perfect right now, that doesn’t mean it won’t change into yet another form of perfection. Change is what makes us believe there is time, for change is always occurring. Always change.
There is a much better way to live life. I will write more about this topic later, but suffice it to say it involves that interesting word flow. Spiritual people are always paying lip service to the notion of “going with the flow,” but wanting to control is the exact opposite. There is a movement to life, a flow, and if you relax into it, cooperate with it, this flow can flower and blossom in your experience. It’s called miraculous for a very good reason!
So drop trying to control what you never could and never will control. You’ll be infinitely happier for doing so.
Written on January 6, 2010 by Tom Stine
I have a good friend who often debates with me the seemingly separate experiences of “emptiness” and “everything” that arise as a part of awakening. I often take the emptiness side of the debate, as the awakening I experienced was very much one of emptiness as all sense of what I am, a “me,” a self, an “I” as an individual completely vanished. I spent a delightful 24 hours with not one shred of identity. “I” was as empty as can be.
My friend, on the other hand, got the “everything” part first. You see, awakening seems to have two aspects to it, if we can call them that, an emptiness aspect and an everything aspect. Someone who has fully realized the truth of their being knows themselves to be absolutely empty, nothing, no self, no “I” anywhere and, at the same time, everything in existence. That’s the full realization.
Recently, my friend sent me an email in which he said:
“I had my first direct experience of emptiness yesterday during an hour long
meditation. It was a shock. Still processing it.”
The discussion that follows is based on my reply to him with some additional thoughts:
Be careful with emptiness! I say that half-jokingly, but the old Zen guys used to warn about “getting drunk on emptiness.” I know exactly what they mean. I can “dive” into the emptiness at times and appear to be completely free of everything. It can be a bit intoxicating and also quite liberating. And when I come out of the emptiness? Ah, now that’s what’s curious! I’m not quite as free somehow and often seem to get a touch lost back in the mind. However, every time I spend a little bit of time in emptiness, the “problems” I have get lighter and lighter and the freedom deeper and deeper. Someday all that is going to cease.
One of the first real tastes I had of everything occurred when I was sitting one day and really looked at some things around me and recognized that the emptiness was in everything I was looking at. Then it hit me: everything I see IS emptiness. And then I got a taste of everything. A week later, I did a little more of that, and then I knew that I was the tree I was looking at, and I could literally feel the tree. “We” were nothing and everything at the same time.
That said, something I heard Adyashanti say once, and Nisargadatta used to talk about often, may be the resolution to our debate about emptiness and everything. Nisargadatta would talk about being “beyond” both emptiness and everything. Beyond all hint of manifestation. Beyond all opposites. While he would EXPERIENCE everything and nothing, he knew that what he was, in fact, was beyond even that. He would say that what he was contained everything and nothing.
Adyashanti calls this The Void. He says there’s absolutely nothing he can really say about it except maybe to say that everything, including emptiness, arises out of the Void. If you can say anything about it, it would be that The Void is pure potential. And even that isn’t it. It isn’t a state, it isn’t anything. Yet, it is what we all are and everything is.
I’ve been intrigued lately by a retired physicist, Amit Goswami, who wrote one of the most popular textbooks on quantum mechanics (for physicists, that is, so he is the real deal when it comes to science). He was in “What the Bleep.” I’ve tried reading one of his books, but he isn’t the best writer. He’s too scattered, and he really doesn’t get the extent to which the idea of “consciousness” goes. But, that said, he’s still worth reading, and he helped me construct a model of how the manifest arises. It goes something like this:
Before I go further, please note: the above diagram is a MODEL of how the apparent world might work, not Reality. It is something to play with, something for the mind to have fun with as it tries to make sense of what it will never make sense of. If it helps, great. But never, ever take things like the above as the Truth. They aren’t. That said….
The cool thing Goswami did for me was help me see where consciousness fit into the picture of how the physical world works. The key is that awareness or consciousness doesn’t arise out of the physical world, but is the generator of the physical world. I knew that from my spiritual experiences, but I was having some cognitive dissonance from all the science and psychology I had learned in the past. Now I get it. One small belief change and it all seems to work.
What’s really amazing is how the manifest world, beginning with the notion of Everything and through quantum particles, atoms and the visible world arises and subsides quite spontaneously and frequently in and out of consciousness and the Zero Point Field. Real, observable quantum particles arise and collapse back into this ground state. All of our seeming physical universe is a continuous play in and out of consciousness. Needless to say, I will have a lot more to say about these ideas in the future.
The Zero Point Field is a very interesting concept. I had heard of it, but I thought that some New Agey people had taken an idea in physics and distorted it and came up with a goofy explanation of all the woo-woo stuff out there. However, if you read the actual physics, the Zero Point Field is a very solid concept in the world of quantum physics. It is a massive, infinite background “field” of “energy” (neither term really means anything, but that’s a different story) out of which literally every aspect of physics arises. It is so fundamental that every physics equation written ignores it because they can’t do anything with it. From what I can tell from the physics, and interfacing it with the spiritual, the Zero Point Field is the first manifestation of Consciousness. Or, who knows, maybe they are co-equal. Hard to say. But fun to play with. Nonetheless, there really is an interface between the spiritual and the manifest world, and it is right there at the boundary of consciousness and this field of energy. How cool is that?
Namaste.
Written on January 2, 2010 by Tom Stine
There is a wonderful video about the life and teaching of Nisargadatta Maharaj entitled “Awaken to the Eternal.” You can buy it on DVD, but it is a bit pricey. However, someone has posted it on YouTube. The video is very watchable and quite amazing. Watch it. Enjoy it. Learn from one of the greatest teachers ever.
The first of six parts is below. You can head over to YouTube for the remaining 5 videos. Enjoy!
Written on December 28, 2009 by Tom Stine
A while ago, a reader sent me the following question: “Do you have any thoughts on discipline and freedom?” After exchanging a few emails to clarify more specifically what he was asking, he sent me the following:
I’m on a spiritual path and I pick up stuff from all sorts of places like the Sedona Method, I’m checking out A Course in Miracles and the Work of Byron Katie and non violent communication, and other sources, and sometimes with all the techniques and stuff my mind can get really jumbled and I wouldn’t know which to use or when, and it gets to be this mess in my mind, where all messes are made—haha. I think a reason I cling to the forms and techniques is I would achieve pieces of peace and my mind would identify “Sedona Method” with peace and that would get me in trouble. Anyways, my question with discipline and freedom is I don’t know what to do! Should I keep with just one or how should I make sense of this? Should I stick with one discipline and go all the way with it or let freedom guide?
These are excellent questions. This dilemma he is facing is a very common one amongst spiritual seekers. There is a vast array of spiritual ideas, techniques and practices, and even worse pseudo-spiritual ideas, techniques and practices. In case you’ve been sleeping, try googling words like “manifesting” or “The Secret” or “abundance” and just look at the ads in the margin. Yikes! You could go nuts just trying to come to grips with all this… um… well… “stuff” for lack of a more polite term.
But, as is said, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and even in pseudo-spiritual teachings that pander to the basest human instincts, you can find some true gold. But how does one navigate through the trash and hopefully find the treasure?
Well, you don’t, to be honest. You will never find your way through this endless sea. However, that which you are, the Infinite, will lead you and show you the way. It always has been leading you, and it will continue to do so.
So, my suggestion to my reader is to do the following: sit down with any single one of the techniques and practices and work with it until you feel done with it. Just give it a whole hearted effort and see what happens. A bit of earnestness, as Nisargadatta called it, works wonders. We could also call this willingness to let all be undone and transformed
In my own experience, when I was going through a phase like this one, I found that if I would really dive into something, really give it my all, within a very short period of time, it would fade away. And then on to the next, and the same thing would occur. That little bit of intense effort would be all that was needed.
Eventually, all the techniques, all the practices, gave way to the only real practice there is: stillness. When the Infinite begins to awaken through you, it increasingly wants nothing to do with techniques or practices. It has one seeming agenda: to shine it’s light on everything in your mental-emotional system, to open every dark corner and shine a light into it. And what you discover is that it is operating on its agenda and its program, not yours. As a matter of fact, yours never mattered in the slightest. It has always been the Infinite doing its thing.
As a matter of fact, the first realization of truth that was experienced came in the midst of a rather odd “choice” of practice for me at the time. Something in me simply wanted to sit quietly and do nothing, no practices, no techniques, nothing. Just sit and be still. And within minutes, well, there was nothing but Stillness.
I find these days that all I can really do most of the time is sit, allow whatever is arising to arise, and simply watch it merge back into its Source, the Infinite. Ultimately, that is the only real practice. The only “discipline” required is to do one thing, one simple obvious thing, and do nothing else. How interesting!
Namaste.
Written on December 24, 2009 by Tom Stine
Twenty-one years ago, I was feeling a bit sick much of the time, and so I decided to find a doctor who was interested in a more alternative approach to health, as I had just gotten interested in a more healthy lifestyle. Fortunately for me, C. Norman Shealy, founder of the American Holistic Medical Association, had his offices nearby, so I scheduled an appointment with him.
After a thorough examination that lasted over an hour, Norm and I sat down to chat. As we neared the end of our time together, he looked at me and said, “What do you believe in?” I had to ask him to repeat the question because, well, no doctor had ever asked me such a thing. I said, “Well, you’re born, you live, you die. Nothing before or after. No soul, no God, nothing. I guess you could say I’m an atheist.”
Norm looked at me with a kindly smile, and said, “About 5% of the population believes as you do. And that’s okay. But statistically, people who believe in something beyond themselves tend to be healthier and happier. The research is pretty clear on that score.”
Then, he absolutely floored me with what he said next: “I’ve examined you thoroughly, and as far as I can tell, there isn’t anything physically wrong with you. You are quite healthy. Yet, you feel lousy. If I were you, I’d get a spiritual life.”
I’ll never forget the next words out of my mouth: “How the hell do I do get a spiritual life?!”
Norm smiled at me, patiently explained that he didn’t mean go to church or anything like that, and suggested a few books that I should read. He seemed to know, somehow, that once he pointed me in the right direction, I’d be okay. And he was right. After reading his few book suggestions, I discovered the local new age bookstore, Renaissance Books, and went crazy, reading everything under the sun.
After reading dozens of books in the space of nine months, a set of 3 blue books kept catching my eye. I would pick-up one, read it a bit in the store, and then put it away, somewhat disgusted, because the books had all this Christian sounding lingo in them. After doing this little drill 4 or 5 times, I finally broke down and bought them. Within a week, I was hooked. A Course in Miracles became my spiritual path for 12 years as a result.
Strange how these things get started.
I’d love to hear your story of how you got started on the spiritual journey. I’ve turned the comments on for you to share.
Happy Holidays. Namaste.
Written on December 22, 2009 by Tom Stine
This article is one of five articles on forgiveness posted today by several different writers. At the end of this article is a list of links to the others. Forgiveness is an excellent topic for the holidays as, to me, Jesus exemplifies forgiveness more than any other spiritual teacher. And while we have no idea when he was actually born, thanks to history, we celebrate his birth in three more days.
I have a somewhat radical perspective with regard to forgiveness. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I can forgive, but I’ll never forget.” Well, I’m sorry, but that isn’t even within a hundred miles of forgiveness. As long as there is any perception of wrong doing, any perception of injury, any perception of being hurt by another, then you have not only not forgiven, but you, yourself, are trapped by your own inability or unwillingness to forgive. Even worse, the only person who is suffering from your unforgiveness is you!
Why is this so? Why would my unforgiveness be a cause of my suffering? The cause of my suffering is what the other person did to me! That certainly sounds reasonable. After all, one would argue, if the other person hadn’t hit me, yelled at me, abused me, raped me, left me, abandoned me (and on and on), then I would not be suffering. I think it would be hard to find 5 people that would disagree with that position. It is simply how the vast majority of the world thinks.
But let’s look at this situation for a moment. At the moment the incident took place, you were experiencing pain. I grant you that. There is no question that in the moment, really, honest pain, anguish and hurt occurred. I do not mean to imply that this is not the case. Pain is a hard thing to endure, and it is often difficult to get through. But as soon as the incident is over, what is happening now? Well, something different. Something without the pain. As always is the case, life moves on to something new.
So, where is the painful incident now? In memory. It is now a thought. It is also a feeling attached to the thought. More than likely these thoughts and feelings will form beliefs, such as “I must be a terrible person for such a thing to have happened to me.” And as these thoughts are repeated, as the feelings are regenerated, as the experience gets ground into the psychological-mental-emotional system, a whole complex of suffering gets built around the memories of the experience. But please notice, because this part is very important, all of it is now 100% in your mind. The incident may have occurred in the seemingly real world, but now that it is over, it is gone and exists only in the mind.
This state of affairs is both a curse and a blessing. It is a curse because an event that happened once in the past is now replaying in your awareness over and over and over again. It is traumatic in every sense of the word. But it is a blessing because you can now let it all go since it exists only in the mind. It won’t be easy, and recovery from memories that are traumatic are some of the toughest to let go of, but you can let it go. And letting it go, completely letting it go, is forgiveness. True forgiveness. The kind of forgiveness that matters.
Believe it or not, you can let go of a traumatic memory and all the emotion and beliefs attached to it to such a amazing extent that you will have a hard time even remembering that the event took place. It will feel as if it was a movie that you watched once upon a time and are now recalling. There will be nothing really left of it. It won’t be repressed, supressed, denied, or any of a dozen other psychological methods to try to get it out of your mind. As a matter of fact, almost surely you will have to re-experience a major portion of the traumatic event, even to the point of feeling all your anger, shame, guilt, fear, horror, etc., again. It can be brutal and rough. But on the other side is a freedom like nothing you’ve ever seen or felt. Believe me, I know from my own experience.
And that is why I can make the bold claim that I did in the title of this argument: “There is nothing to forgive.” EVER!! When you truly forgive, when you finally let go of something to the extent I’m describing, you will see in no uncertain terms that there is nothing to forgive, and, more shockingly, there never was!! You are healed in a way that is absolutely miraculous. The past is past, gone, never to return. It was only in your mind and now is gone! You are truly free.
Can there be any doubt that those strange words of Jesus, while hanging on the cross, came from a man who knew, really and truly knew, that there is nothing to forgive?
Forgive them for they know not what they do.
How true! How perfect! Jesus could look at his tormenters and have nothing in his heart but true forgiveness, a forgiveness that sees nothing to forgive, ever. To have that utter openness of heart is the greatest blessing by far.
If you want to read more about this somewhat radical view of forgiveness, I would suggest A Course in Miracles. The main theme of The Course is not miracles, as the title would suggest, but forgiveness. The Course says that true forgiveness as I’ve defined it above is the key to freedom, awakening and, ultimately, miracles.
And last but not least, my good friend Takuin has produced an amazing e-book, “Beyond the Known.” It is a delightful, easy to read and stunningly beautiful book. And it has a great price: free. Please head over to takuin.com to download a copy.
Written on December 17, 2009 by Tom Stine
A sure sign that you are a member of The Half Awake (Half Asleep) Club is the almost inevitable pair of questions that the mind loves to ask:
What do I do with this… this… awakening thing that has happened to me?
and
What do I do now (in general)?
Ah, the poor mind. Even when it gets it, it still doesn’t get it. I’m going to call these questions the Half-Awake Dilemma.
There is nothing wrong with these questions, by the way. As long as one has any identification whatsoever with the world, the body, the ego, the persona, anything in the manifest world of form, the questions will arise. And given that so many of us are still somewhat (or greatly) asleep, the mind will ask these questions, and, like night follows day, we will at times believe these questions are important and must be answered.
I’ve found myself trying to answer these questions any number of times. One or both will arise, I get a little hooked into it, and then I’m pondering, writing, researching, even surfing the Internet looking for answers. And each time one of these questions arises, each time I sit with one of them, I always come inevitably to the same realization:
What do I do now?
NOTHING!
Nothing?
NADA!
ZILCH!
ZIP!
ZERO!
Now, please, don’t misunderstand me. I haven’t fallen into the quite common non-dualist trap of looking at everything in the world and in a droning voice uttering, “there’s nothing to do, no one to do it, nowhere to go, and no one to go there.” Not at all. While these statements may ultimately be true, they are more often than not a convenient excuse for sitting on your butt and doing nothing all day. Not my point at all.
Implicit in many questions like “What do I do?” is one of the following two words: should or need. “What do I do?” is almost always the question “What should I do?”. The should is the key. If you will sit with the question, really look deeply into this word should, you will discover that should is a false dilemma, a lie that hooks you into an entire world of problems that need to be solved.
For instance, let’s look at a pretty ordinary example to see what I mean. Let’s take the statement, “I should exercise more.” A pretty common sentiment that many, many people share, and one that almost any doctor or health expert would endorse. But let’s turn it around and ask, “Should I exercise more?”
Here’s how to explore the question: well, if I don’t exercise, what will happen? Hmm… according to the health experts, I will have lots of horrible diseases, be depressed, and look terrible if I don’t exercise a lot, which I don’t do. But is that true? Will I suffer horrible diseases? Well, there have been marathon runners who have dropped over dead in their 30’s and 40’s, and sedentary slobs who have lived into their 90’s. So, that isn’t necessarily true. And be depressed? I’m not depressed now. Look horrible? I don’t think I look horrible as it is (you may disagree if you feel inclined!).
So, are any of these statements true? Can I know that I should exercise more? No, I can’t know. There are arguments for exercise, but there is no seeming necessity. Much different from “there is a bus about to hit me in 5 seconds. I might want to move out of the way unless I want to die.” Nothing as obvious as that.
I know this example is quite mundane, but it points out how quickly a bit of inquiry into the notion of should will quickly break down the very nature of it. Suddenly you are left with questions that have no real answer. Ultimately, after you’ve done some inquiry like this one with many other “shoulds,” you arrive at the only possible destination: you have no idea ever if there is anything you should do. It would seem, in fact, that there is no such thing as “should do” in all of existence!
You see, now that you’ve joined The Half-Awake Club, you are going to start moving through life in an entirely different way. There are no more shoulds, no more should nots, no more rules by which you must play. No, there is something new, something more interesting, and ultimately, something more vital.
Your doing will be increasingly determined by what I like to refer to as “those insistent nudges that keep repeating over and over again until you pay attention.” There is a nice word for this: intuition. Most of us, if we are honest, have had experiences that go something like this:
You feel an intuition to do X. But you don’t want to, or are afraid, or hesitant, or invent one of a thousand excuses. So you do Y. And Y doesn’t turn out the way you expected. Then you get this quiet insistence, this intuition, to do X one more time. But again, you are afraid, resistant, hesitant, or come up with 30 more excuses. And you do Z. Then A, then B, and unfortunately for you, B hurts. A lot. And so you pick yourself up, shake off the pain, and in the end, you say to one of your friends, “You know, I knew all along that Y, Z, A and B weren’t the right things to do. I’ve known all along that X is the better direction for me to go.” And you end up doing X.
Sound familiar? Yes, it does. And that is how you are going to live from now on.
One nice thing about these little insistent urgings, these intuitions, that help you see them clearly is that they never argue with you. They never offer reasons, they never debate, they never tell you bad things will happen if you don’t do what they suggest. They are quiet, subtle, and while insistent, are often gentle. But they never let up. They are persistent and insistent.
So, if you ask me, “What do I do with this awakening thing that has happened?” my response is: what do you notice arising in you? What do you feel at a subtle level to do? You will probably say, “I’m not sure.” To which I will say, good, fine, go sit on it some more. Don’t do anything. Come back in a few months and see what has arisen. Don’t worry. Life will show you.
Increasingly, I’ve noticed that doing nothing can be employed almost as a strategy, and it often works quite well. I get something that feels like an intuition, but I’m not sure. So I do something I never would have done 10 years ago: I wait patiently. And then lo and behold, things start to move in interesting ways. And before I know it, I’m doing the very thing I had the insistent urge to do, mercifully without all the painful false starts in the middle.
This process is exactly what has lead me to spiritual teaching, writing and working with people. You see, in some ways, I haven’t really wanted to. But there has been this urging for a long, long time. I’ve resisted, I’ve blown it off, I’ve held back. I’ve thought of dozens of excuses. For instance, I’ve told myself it is arrogant to do something like this teaching and writing thing. But in the end, the urging is still there. I’ve done Y, Z, A, C, G, H, L, and even R, but in the end, only X will do. Teaching keeps showing up whether I like it or not. And, fortunately, more often than not I like it. There is something deeply satisfying for me about teaching and working with seeming others.
Conversely, at times I’ve actually tried to dive into the teaching or working with people, thinking that since there was this nagging insistence then I should start teaching. Ah, there is that nasty should word again. I would end up feeling pressured, forced by the should, and then I would resist and fight back. Invariably, the timing was never right every time I jumped in because I should do it. Things never quite reached fruition. As the should fell away, more and more things opened-up for me, both inside and outside, and thus I find myself sitting here today writing to you.
I suspect that most people that experience awakening then experience this odd state of affairs. Interestingly, as I’ve discovered over the past few years, the majority of people who experience awakening never do any spiritual teaching. They live quiet lives of service doing many, many other things. Many don’t even do anything that looks like service. But nonetheless, their very presence is abundantly of service to mankind.
Perversely, many of these people will struggle with an egoic insistence that they teach while at the same time feeling that subtle urging not to teach but to do something else. And they must then go through the process of letting go of the ego’s insistence that they teach, just the opposite of what I’ve gone through. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it?
And thus is the Half-Awake Dilemma. If you are experiencing it, enjoy it as best you can. It gets easier and easier the more you open to the Awakeness that you are. Namaste.
Written on December 12, 2009 by Tom Stine
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Written on December 9, 2009 by Tom Stine
By using the term “Half-Awake” I’ve probably given a somewhat false impression to many people. Saying half-awake almost implies that there are 3 states that a person can exist in:
Asleep
Half-Awake (or Half-Asleep)
Awake
However, as a few of you can attest, a schema such as this one would be grossly over-simplified and possibly inaccurate. Let me try to clarify a bit what I mean by half-awake and how it fits into what is experienced along the spiritual journey:
The vast majority of humanity is sound asleep. When I say the vast majority, I mean to say 99.99% (and I may have left out a few 9’s). I don’t think I need speak too much about this part, because, well, everyone reading this article knows exactly what asleep is like. *grin* I also recognize that more than a few spiritual people will take offense at me characterizing the vast majority as asleep. I never said there was anything wrong with being asleep, because there isn’t. It’s just a phase consciousness appears to pass through. In fact, there really is no such thing as asleep, it is merely the appearance of asleep. More on that another day. However, asleep is what many, many people experience.
For no apparent reason (really, that’s how it works out), a moment of “Ah-ha!” happens, a realization, a seeing through the veil of illusion, a moment of pure knowingness. “Ah, so THIS is what I am!” The delusion of separate identity is uncovered to be a lie. An awakening is like no other spiritual experience. It is not an experience, in fact. It is beyond all experiences.
In this moment of utter clarity, one knows beyond question that the “me” that defined them, the psychological sense of self, is empty, void, nothing. Instead, what you are is everything. And beyond.
Very often, an awakening is accompanied by the expression, “Well, I’ll be damned!”
That said, for the most part, an awakening is not permanent. It does not last. Some teachers like to use the expression “non-abiding” to describe this experience. The old psychological sense of self resurrects itself, and once again you find yourself being trapped by the very thoughts and beliefs that you had seen through. You know it isn’t what you are, and yet, there it is.
The experience I’m calling half-awake can take many forms, varieties and “percentages” of awakeness (although measuring one’s awake percentage would be silly and quite futile to say the least). But this half-awake state is what follows from above. A real, genuine awakening occurs, and yet the psychological self is still operating. You are able at times (quite often, in fact) to get lost again in the seemingly important thoughts and beliefs of the mind. You seem to be a someone who has many somethings “he” needs to do.
What I’ve noticed in my own experience, however, is that this experience of being half-awake has changed over time. I would speculate that what I’m calling half-awake is quite evolutionary, fluctuates and is not a single, unvarying state. It changes as one dives deeper and deeper into the mental structure and uncovers more and more of the belief system that held the asleep condition in place. It also changes because there is a natural movement inward toward greater and greater clarity.
After the first awakening, it seemed that I fell back asleep. I couldn’t forget what I realized, and yet, I felt somewhat lost again. And yet, much of my life was different. I couldn’t stay asleep for long without the memory of that awakened state touching awareness. It really was more a contrast between the awake state and my new half-awakeness. But after a month or two, it became apparent that “half-awake” was very different from asleep. There was a sense, however, of going “in and out” of awakeness, but never that full experience of awakening that I had.
In the past 6 months, something new has become apparent, something different from what I had been experiencing. Now, I can’t really say that I’m ever really asleep. There is no more sense of “in and out.” Presence, consciousness, whatever word you care to use for the reality of what we are, is always “just inside my perception,” if that makes sense to you. It is like I can see it just out of the corner of my eye. Not really, but that’s the sense of it. “It” is here, now, present, and doesn’t leave, even in the midst of being occupied by a thought, belief or problem. I’m never asleep, even though I’m not fully awake.
It feels as if I’m moving along a continuum, a line of increasing awakeness. On the far left of the line was asleep. Then came “awakening” followed by what I’m now calling half-awake, but in reality is still a continuum of awakeness. Maybe a diagram will help make this explanation a touch clearer:
Ah, here is the Holy Grail of the spiritual journey. I know there is inevitable disagreement about the meaning of every term in spirituality, but abiding awakening is what is most often meant by the “E” word, Enlightenment.
At some point along the way, no one can say when, no one ever knows when or how, something within simply ceases. The psychological sense of self, the “ego” as it is often called, simply goes from the foreground of awareness to the background. It becomes irrelevant. It ceases to be of importance. The Buddha knew what he was talking about when he spoke of Nirvana, for that word simply means “cessation.”
What you are no longer is caught in the mind. It knows itself to be what it truly is. There is no “you” anymore in any real sense. There is just experience. What you are simply is.
I’ll be honest: I can sense this cessation. It is present in my very awareness, a sense that something will drop away, something will completely give way.
In the past 6 months I’ve had further glimpses of this shift. I guess we could say they’ve been “little awakenings,” although I have no idea what that really means. They’ve simply been deeper experiences of truth, further realizations of the Oneness of all things, the emptiness of what I used to see as myself. As so many before me have explained, there is emptiness and Oneness, simultaneously existing, no contradiction.
In the end, that’s all there is: deeper seeing. Even once you have ceased, once there is the experience of abiding awakening, this is still not the end. The spiritual seeking and spiritual journey may have ended, but there is further clear seeing to occur. Consciousness, if it has a purpose, wants to continually see things more clearly.
That’s why in the little diagram above, I put an arrow on the right end of the line. There is simply a continual movement of seeing all things more and more deeply, clearly, fully. Consciousness growing more conscious of Itself through the body called Tom or David or Sarah or Ellen. If enlightenment is anything, this further clear seeing is what it is.
And as long as there is a body that you, Consciousness (for that is what you truly are), seem to inhabit, there will never really be an end to looking and seeing. As my friend Davidya pointed-out in an email to me, there is quite likely always some arising of the psychological self, even in one who is what we might call enlightened. But it becomes a non-issue, arising and in the same instant falling away. Nisargadatta and Adyashanti both spoke of this occurrence, too.
I hope the above clarifies a bit more this experience I am calling half-awake. I’m sure there is still more to be said, and I’ll be happy to share it with you. Thanks for reading. Namaste.
Written on December 2, 2009 by Tom Stine
I strongly urge all of you to read Who Hears This Sound? Adyashanti On Waking Up From The Dream Of “Me” published a few years ago in The Sun magazine. Someone sent me a link to the article, and I found it to be one of the best and clearest presentations of Adyashanti’s teachings I’ve ever read. It is often hard to find succinct versions of a teacher’s ideas and thoughts, but the interviewer did a nice job of bringing greater clarity to an already fairly clear teaching. That’s one of the reasons I like Adya so much: he is extraordinarily clear for an awake guy.
Here are a few excerpts to read now to whet your appetite for the rather long and extensive interview:
Awakening is when you realize that what you thought you were was nothing more than a dream, and you perceive the reality outside the dream, what’s dreaming the dream of you. It’s not just a mystical experience. It is actually realizing the underlying unity of all things.
Simply because you’ve had an awakening, however, does not mean you stay awake. Enlightenment, in simple terms, is when you stay awake. If the awakening is abiding, that’s enlightenment. And most awakenings are not abiding — at least, not initially.
Enlightenment has nothing to do with the head or the heart. Certainly, the head and the heart tend to open up, but that’s a byproduct. Enlightenment is actually waking up from the head and from the heart. It’s waking up from the dream of “me” and seeing the oneness of all things. That’s what I mean by “reality”: that oneness. The truth is that you are that unity. You are not simply a particular person in a particular body with a particular personality; you are that one reality, which manifests itself as all these seemingly separate things.
Spiritual awakening doesn’t happen because you master some spiritual technique. There are lots of skillful meditators who are not awake. Awakening happens when you stop bullshitting yourself into continual nonawakening. It’s very easy to use disciplines to avoid reality rather than to encounter it. A true spirituality will have you continually facing your illusions and all the ways you avoid reality. Spiritual practice may be an important means of confronting yourself, or it may be a means of avoiding yourself; it all depends on your attitude and intention.
So life became my practice, and mistakes became my teacher. And once again I experienced failure after failure. It was humbling, even humiliating. I put myself in situations where my self-image would get crushed. Looking back I could easily say, “Boy, I made a lot of dumb mistakes.” But I needed to do it that way. I wasn’t going to let go of those identities on the meditation cushion. It would have been nice if it could have been contained in this safe environment — bowing and meditating and meeting with the teacher — but it often doesn’t work that way. Spirituality is much more of a bloody mess than we like to admit.
Excellent interview. It is Adyashanti at his best. Again, the link is:
Who Hears This Sound? Adyashanti On Waking Up From The Dream Of “Me”
Enjoy. Namaste.
Written on November 28, 2009 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me the following:
The moment one has to get involved with another person for any reason (or for that matter getting involved with any functional activity for which the mind needs to get involved), the mind moves away to fully involve in the next expected activity with that other person or activity. All that calmness and peace of stillness is suddenly pushed to the background. One can’t avoid interacting with people or doing some activity as they are mostly unavoidable to a large extent. Not to react with the person would mean ignoring and activating a pain body. Even giving attention to humans or a functional activity is taking away the stillness (and the awareness?) that was there when we did only the observation.
How do I manage both the events (being aware and interacting) without compromising the stillness/awareness and the mundane activity?
This question is a good one. And even better, the answer is not obvious at all to the mind:
There is no stillness that gets pushed aside when you interact with someone. Stillness always is present right here and right now, no matter what the body or mind is doing. You are resting in stillness, surrounded by stillness, always and forever in the midst of stillness. Even the interacting, the “someone else”, the doing, the talking, your very nature, everything, everything, everything, IS the stillness. This stillness goes nowhere, does nothing. It IS.
You don’t and cannot manage the events in your life. It isn’t a question of being aware, of actively keeping your mind on “something” that we call awareness. You are awareness. Your mind and thoughts and beliefs all exist within this awareness that you are.
Awareness is something you can know readily. Right now, you are reading these words. We say you are aware of the words. Before you think about them, before anything happens with the words, you are simply aware that they exist. As you think about them, now you are aware of the thinking about them. Without awareness, there is nothing.
So, dive into the awareness. Many words can be used as synonyms for awareness: presence, stillness, God, spirit, Brahman, “the kingdom of God” and on and on. But they all point at this “something” that is prior to everything, the very fundamental ground of all of existence. And YOU ARE THAT ground of existence.
You can never compromise the stillness, never compromise the awareness. You need give no thought to maintaining awareness, holding awareness, being aware, etc. Think about it: right now, can you stop being aware? If you aren’t aware, you are have no notion of existing or not. Without awareness, you don’t exist.
The simplest thing to do is, at times when it occurs to you, put your attention on your awareness. Simply notice it. Focus on it, get curious about it, even ask questions about it. Does awareness have a name? Does it have a color? Does it do anything? Where does it go when you aren’t paying attention to it? Focusing on awareness and asking questions about it a few times during your day is one of the best things you can do.
Namaste.
Written on November 23, 2009 by Tom Stine
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Written on November 21, 2009 by Tom Stine
The secret to happiness:
Make peace with your mind.
Make peace with the person you think you are.
Make peace with the world.
Make peace with life.
Make peace with everything.
Everything.
You, consciousness, make peace.
The mind can’t make peace with itself.
Make peace with all that you are.
The only cause of suffering is your argument with what is.
credit:
joxur223
Written on November 19, 2009 by Tom Stine
One of my long time readers sent me some questions about my article To Be Half-Awake (and Half-Asleep). Here are his questions and my answers:
1. You wrote: “It is almost the same experience as awakening from a dream at night. Almost.”
What are the differences you observe?
Good question. Well, the big difference is that when you awaken from a dream at night, the dream world disappears and is replaced by the seemingly real world. As you awaken from the dream state as it is called, as you spiritually awaken, you find that you are still in the dream! But what a dream it is! It is still populated by the same people, the same things going on, but for some reason, it all seems good, even when it isn’t. Very unlike a nighttime dream.
2. Your wrote: “…no tendency to re-enter the dream state of separateness.”
How and why did this One consciousness enter into the dream state in the first place?
For at least 5000 years (our entire written history), mankind has been intrigued by this question. Many have tried to answer it. Gurus for centuries have given answers. And they all contradict each other in some form or fashion. They contradict each other for one simple reason: there is no answer to this question.
Let me be 100% clear: there is no answer to this question. Every answer given, no matter how high and angelic the giver of the answer has been, is in the realm of fantasy. And the reason is simple: the question, being asked from within the world of form, is being asked about something outside the world of form. You can’t know with the mind that which is beyond the mind.
Okay, that said, here’s a couple of things to consider: First, did this One consciousness even enter into the dream state? If the dream state is unreal, and the One is real, then how could something unreal even be created? Good question, huh? No answer to that one, either.
Second, my personal favorite description of the why question is that it is a game. Consciousness having fun. Of course, this description is not the truth, but it is a fun idea. I have a half-written article on the subject that I’ll finish and post some day.
3. I remember Jed McKenna says something like this in his books: I and Universe are the One… I don’t know what will happen in the next moment…
Since he = the One, why doesn’t he know what will happen in the next moment?
Because it’s a fun game to play! The One created a Universe governed by probabilities, ie, quantum mechanics and all that fun stuff. Everything in the Universe has a probability associated with it, every path, every seeming choice, everything. There is even a probability that my body will wink out of existence and appear in China. It’s all probability. So, there is no way to know what will happen next.
Again, none of the above paragraph is the “true” answer, because there is no “true” answer. However, it is what we observe about the world of form.
That said, there is also no need to know. If fear and death are eliminated from one’s psyche, then one doesn’t have a care in the world for the future. The next moment is the next moment. As a matter of fact, there is no next moment, just this moment experiencing change. Since Jed is experiencing this change with no investment in how it all turns out, why care? Why bother to know even if he could? He absolutely doesn’t care at all.
I have to tell you, it is very, very nice when concern for the future starts to drop away. Even though I can still get hooked into future thinking at times, quite often I’m just here, right now, and experiencing no thought for what comes next, no care or concern. And surprisingly, what comes next seems to be pretty nice most of the time.
I hope the above helps. Namaste.
Written on November 14, 2009 by Tom Stine
“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” — Groucho Marx
As I mentioned in a previous post, To Be Half-Awake (and Half-Asleep), my experience of spiritual awakening has been to be in a state that I am referring to as Half-Awake. Moreover, as I discussed, there are others who are experiencing this strange state, including some of you reading these articles (and I heard from quite a few of you after the last one). It is a far more common state than we might imagine, while at the same time, not the experience of the majority of humanity.
Moreover, it has been my experience that the majority of spiritual teachers and even “enlightened gurus” are fellow members of the Half-Awake Club. Unfortunately, many of these gurus and teachers have either flat out told their followers that they are fully awake, enlightened, or have simply left a profound state of ambiguity around the matter such that their followers have made bold claims as to the “enlightenment” of their guru.
Lest you get the wrong idea, there is nothing wrong with being a member of the Half-Awake Club. For the majority who awaken, being half-awake is just part of the process. It is simply part of the path. No big deal, no shame, no problem. Condemning people for being half-awake would be like condemning teenagers for being “half-adults.” Ridiculous to say the least.
The very nature of awakening is such that no one can be blamed or criticized for where they are on the journey. As a matter of fact, you have no control over awakening, over going back asleep, over fully awakening, etc. It is a gift, the supreme act of grace from the divine. I am very clear that I did nothing to experience an awakening (or any subsequent awakenings). They just happened. Really, I kid you not. I’ll address this point more in future writings. But as Ken Wilbur likes to say: awakening is an accident; all we can do is make ourselves more accident prone.
On the one-hand, I have to say that I don’t really care what other teachers are up to. It’s their karma, not mine. But on the whole, the mass of spiritual seekers have acquired some wrong-headed ideas about enlightenment and awakening, and I think we need look no further than the field of half-awake spiritual teachers for a lot of misinformation. Their own self-deception has led to some crazy ideas about reality and awakening to it.
To be honest, we have to admit it is a sad state of affairs out there in the spiritual world. There are websites like Sarlo’s Guru Ratings where you can read reviews of your favorite guru. There are other sites like Jody’s Guruphiliac whose mission is to reveal the “self-aggrandizement and superstition in self-realization.” Would we need or even have these sites if the spiritual world had its act together? I think not. (Warning: if you follow these links, prepare to read some harsh critiques of some of the best known gurus and spiritual teachers in the world. These sites are not for the faint of heart. Your favorite guru may get slammed.)
A little dose of self-honesty would go a long way in the spiritual world. And believe me, the gurus discussed on both these sites aren’t just obvious frauds and hucksters. There are some truly spiritual dudes out there who simply are unwilling to look in the mirror, be honest with themselves and with their followers.
There is even an interesting book, Halfway Up the Mountain, that seeks to address this very issue of Half-Awake spiritual teachers. The irony of the book is two-fold:
1. Most of the experts interviewed are in the Half-Awake Club.
2. They more or less condemn the state of being half-awake.
Again, to repeat in clear terms: there is nothing wrong with being half-awake. One can be a very effective teacher, helper, counselor, etc, from this state. A Course in Miracles makes this point quite well:
Do not despair, then, because of limitations. It is your function to escape from them, but not to be without them. If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their language. If you would be a savior, you must understand what needs to be escaped.
There really is too much to say about this subject for one article. I will get into this topic much more deeply in later articles as it gets to the very heart of spiritual awakening, what it is, how it flows, how it manifests in one’s life, how one’s life can change or not as a result of awakening, etc. And I’m also certain there will be the inevitable question: how do I know who is fully awake and who is not? I’ll just leave you in suspense on that one, with just this one comment: I don’t know for certain, but there are often telltale signs that one can look for, and even better, sense. A true light shines clearly for all to see.
Look for more in the coming weeks and months. Namaste.
Written on November 10, 2009 by Tom Stine
I am half-awake. Or half-asleep. Or even better, I am awake and asleep at the same time. It is a strange place to be, and I’m sure there are others who know what I mean. And I’m also sure there are spiritual teachers and writers who would say that such a state does not exist. But still, it is my experience.
What does it mean to be half-awake? The best way to explain it would be first to start with what being awake means. Being spiritually awake means the same thing as enlightened. I prefer the phrase “spiritual awakening” over enlightenment simply because it has less baggage associated with it. There is too much talk in the spiritual world about “enlightenment” and “enlightened gurus” for my tastes. And, as a bonus, awake is a nice description of what it feels like to awaken(although, to be fair, enlightenment really is quite accurate, too). It is almost the same experience as awakening from a dream at night. Almost.
Spiritual awakening, in its fullest sense, is the complete removal of delusion from consciousness. The Truth of your being, your reality as absolute consciousness, as the One consciousness that exists everywhere and is everything, is your natural state. For some inexplicable reason, the majority of humanity finds itself in what we could call a dream state, a state of consciousness characterized by a pervasive sense of individuality, a sense of “me” as a separate self, not connected to others, existing apart and alone from all other living beings and non-living things. Spiritual awakening is the reversal of this dream of separateness, a full, complete total reversal. Once one is truly awake, or as Jed McKenna would call “done,” there is no longer any doubt as to what you are and no tendency to re-enter the dream state of separateness. Even more, there is no “one” who is even awake, for the sense of individuality is gone. Consciousness has returned to a clarity, a clearness that is no longer deluded or confused.
Many people, although not that many when compared against the backdrop of 6.5 billion human beings, have experienced something rather profound, a spiritual awakening. They have experienced a realization of the truth of their being. They find themselves, for a moment, a minute, an hour, day, week or even year, as no longer this supposed separate self. They know at the depth of their core, all the way to the bottom, that the “me” they thought they were was merely a phantom, a psychological sense of self, no more real than any other thought, a figment of their imagination. And for that moment or hour or day, they are awake, utterly awake, as if they were never asleep in the dream state of delusion.
For most that have this experience, however, it doesn’t last. While much of the old psychological self, which many refer to as the ego, may have been blown out of the system by the experience of awakening, much may still remain. This psychological sense of self, the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc, that give it a sense of reality, has a certain weightiness, a certain momentum or inertia, that will continue to function after the experience has passed. And it may take many years for the inertia of this false self to wind down and eventually cease, like a pendulum that, once swinging, will swing and swing and swing until it finally comes to rest in perfect stillness. Cessation (the actual meaning of the term “nirvana”) is the eventual fate of the egoic self, but it almost always takes many years for that fate to come into full bloom.
This is the state I find myself in. Something happened to me that can only be described as miraculous, a gift from the divine. At some point, I will have to share that experience with you, because I think it might prove helpful to others. But as happens to the vast majority of people who experience a true spiritual awakening, the egoic self resurrected itself and came back in. I, too, experienced a pretty incredible “blowing out” of a lot of psychological baggage, but the material that was left came back with a vengeance! For over a year and a half, while there have been many amazing changes in my experience, there have been some old, buried items that have been raging in me at times, things I thought were over and done with 10 or 20 years ago.
There have been swings from fear to courage, from bliss to suffering. The dominant psychological pattern for most of my life, anxiety, has ebbed and flowed. While I became permanently free of panic attacks prior to this awakening, other forms of anxiety still plague me, and at the oddest times and places. All in all, I have to say it is simultaneously amazing and bizarre.
One of the hallmarks of the awakening process is the increasing inability to deny anything. You simply become incapable of hiding from any psychological issues that you repressed, denied or buried deep in your subconscious. You can no longer lie to yourself, and when you try, well, have you ever thrown a boomerang? The few times I’ve thrown one I’ve always ended up jumping out of the way of a rapidly spinning piece of wood itching to whack me upside the head. A whack upside the head is exactly what happens every time I attempt to lie to myself these days. What worked wonders 5 years ago is pointless, futile and outright foolish these days.
So, while I know the truth of what I am, while I can feel it, experience it, often see it in others, know it beyond question, I still am not fully aware of it yet. The description of enlightenment as “abiding non-dual awakening” is not my experience. Some days it is as if my awareness is on a roller coaster, going up then down, over then under and around. Moments of utter clarity then moments of delusion. And as I have come to realize, it is a perfect way to be, just as perfect as any other way of existence, lacking nothing. Like I said, it is strange.
Maybe a few of you are members of what I’m going to call the “Half-Awake (Half-Asleep) Club.” Most probably are not, and that is okay. It is a club that some of you will join soon, some will join at some point in this lifetime, and all of you are destined to join during some non-existent future life. Even a few of you may have “graduated” beyond the club. I’ll write more about the other members of this club in a few days, as there are quite a few of us. A sneak preview: most of the “enlightened gurus” and “spiritual teachers” floating around the world are fellow members. There is much to discuss about the strange existence I’m calling Half-Awake, and I’ll be saying more about it. Until then, I would suggest you read (or re-read) the article on Adyashanti’s View of Awakening…. Namaste.
Written on October 25, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on October 20, 2009 by Tom Stine
Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?
A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.
Written on October 14, 2009 by Tom Stine
So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Inner and outer, however, are so intertwined that it is almost impossible to speak of one without referring to the other.
Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence. Your outer purpose can change over time. It varies greatly from person to person. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling your outer purpose. It is the basis for true success. Without that alignment, you can still achieve certain things through effort, struggle, determination, and sheer hard work or cunning. But there is no joy in such endeavor, and it invariably ends in some form of suffering.
Written on October 11, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on September 27, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on September 16, 2009 by Tom Stine
When I have time, I love to respond to my reader’s questions. I want to share a few recent emails I’ve exchanged with someone:
Hello Tom,
Can I ask you a question? In your recent posting of your tweets, you said:
No matter what I write down, it isn’t true. No matter what I think, it isn’t true.
Adya also said the same thing in his book. This sentence basically contradicts itself. But I think maybe you are saying it is not “completely” true. Or you have a better elaboration?
Yes, the sentence does contradict itself. Unfortunately, I’m in the same boat as Adya or any other spiritual teacher, it’s just that I’m way too honest about this stuff (and so is Adya). EVERYTHING that is said with words is inherently untrue. It is a derived thing. The most obvious example, one that Adya uses a lot, is this: if you are thirsty, which do you want to drink? Real water, H20, or the word “water”? The word water refers to the real stuff. So, the word water is not real, it has no substance. It always refers to something else.
In this awakening business, you are always endeavoring to get to the truth of what you are. What we have all done for most of our lives is believe that the THOUGHTS we have about ourselves are what we are. And that is not true. We endeavor to always get to the heart of what we are looking at, the “truth” of it.
So, the word “I” is not what I am. Even if I observe this body and the sensations I “feel” from it, I can go further and see that this is not me. What am I? Ah, that cannot be answered in words. It can only be known.
The best that any spiritual teacher can do is use words to point you in the direction of truth. Period. We are using falsehoods, or derived things, thoughts and words, to point at truth. Or, as Ramana used to say, we have fallen into a thorn bush and are now covered in thorns. We then take one of the thorns and use it to pick out all the other thorns. Then we throw the last thorn away! His particular thorn is what he called “the I thought.” Discover that the “I” thought is not you was Ramana’s entire teaching.
I hope the above helps! Namaste…. Tom
Your explanation is very helpful! But I still have some questions, so please bear with me. Basically nothing is describable by words. Words are just labels. Water can not be adequately described by words. For those who never know water, reading the wiki page about its attributes doesn’t help any. If there is a cup of water in front of me and I say “this is water” to those who know what real water is and agree to use the word “water” as its label, then the statement “This is water” must be a true statement. If this is correct, then what you said about thoughts and words is not completely correct. Spiritual teachers run into the same dilemma when trying to use words describe ultimate reality to people who don’t have direct experience. Oneness, Emptiness, Everythingness and etc after all only add more confusion and make them go nowhere. So I think what you said only can be confined to when talking about ultimate reality.
I want to focus on two things you said. First:
If there is a cup of water in front of me and I say ‘this is water’ to those who know what real water is and agree to use the word ‘water’ as its label, then the statement ‘This is water’ must be a true statement.
What I would say is that “this is water” is as close to truth as a STATEMENT can get. The key is that statements are never correct. They are always an approximation to truth. Always. They are still never the truth. When you point at the water and say “this is water” it is still THE WATER ITSELF that has the truth in it. Not the words. Make sense?
Because, as you pointed out, we AGREE to use the word WATER as a LABEL for the stuff in the cup. Notice the chain of events: we create a word, water, and agree to use it to describe something.
Why so picky about this? Because human beings walk around believing that the words they hear in their head are real things. And worst of all, they believe that the word “I” means something real, meaningful, important. They think they ARE the word “I” and the thousands upon thousands of associations they have attached to that word: I am a man, I am good, I am miserable, I am happy, I am a great lover, I have an ugly body, etc. I, I, I.
And what is the truth? There is no I. Period. You are not a word, a thought, a belief, an idea. You aren’t anything. Hence, we say, you are nothingness. There is no “I” no matter how many words you attach to it.
FYI, Eckhart Tolle does a pretty nice job of dissecting “I” in A New Earth. He calls it ego, but same thing.
The second thing you mentioned that I want to focus upon:
Spiritual teachers run into the same dilemma when trying to use words to describe ultimate reality to people who don’t have direct experience. Oneness, Emptiness, Everythingness and etc after all only add more confusion and make them go nowhere. So I think what you said only can be confined to when talking about ultimate reality.
Ah, but here’s the bigger problem: even the water you see in the cup isn’t water in the cup. It is, to use your words, Ultimate Reality. Right there in the cup. So is the cup. Water is not only a label for the real thing, water, the actual physical water, H2O, can be seen as a “label” for what it really is….. NOTHINGNESS appearing as form.
It’s a bitch describing this stuff, but there you go. You do the best you can, and that’s what you get.
Let’s keep it simple: stick with something like paying attention to awareness. Just pay attention to it. Focus on it. Look at it. Ponder it. Inquire about it. If you go to Adyashanti’s website, he’s done a lot of satsangs in the past year where he discusses this a bunch. Get a few of them and listen. If I remember correctly, there was one entitled “Rest as Awareness” that was quite good.
Nisargadatta sat for 3 years with “the feeling of being” and simply sat and looked at it every which way until he was done. Whatever arose, he would look at it and inquire about it and see how it fit into the “feeling of being” and keep going and going. Honestly, it’s a process of exhaustion more than anything. That’s why the Buddha called it Nirvana. The word simply means cessation. You simply exhaust the tendency to go unconscious by sitting with what arises. It really is that simply. Hard to do, I admit, but really is that simply.
I hope all the above helps. Namaste.
Written on September 13, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on August 30, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on August 30, 2009 by Tom Stine
Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
Written on August 16, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on August 8, 2009 by Tom Stine
The disappearance of this fundamental question [How do I know the state of an enlightened one?], on discovering that it had no answer, was a physiological phenomenon, a sudden ‘explosion’ inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body. And with that ‘explosion’, the illusion that there is continuity of thought, that there is a center, an ‘I’ linking up the thoughts, was not there anymore.
Written on August 2, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on July 30, 2009 by Tom Stine
Let’s try something a bit different. I recently read a few things by U. G. Krishnamurti, one of the most intriguing “enlightened” people of the past century. U. G. had a lot to say about a lot of things, but one thing that caught my attention was this:
Sex is only for reproduction, but you have turned that into a pleasure movement. What else is sex for than reproduction?
It is interesting to me the incredibly varied viewpoints on sex that one runs across in spiritual literature. Interestingly, in the original dictation for A Course in Miracles, the author had a very similar comment, namely that sex was intended only for reproduction. It would seem that abstinence is a quite common viewpoint. But then again, we have the Kama Sutra, Tantra, and some pretty wild Taoist practices that would make a pornographer blush!
From a purely human perspective, we can’t seem to get enough of sex, can we? Spend 30 minutes reading a supposedly news oriented website, or 10 minutes watching TV, or 5 minutes at any movie rated PG or above, and you will be left with no doubt whatsoever that sex is a major preoccupation of humanity.
But how does it connect to spirituality? Does it connect? Are there any conclusions to be made, any definitive answers? Or, in the end, is it just more mental noise clogging one’s psyche? Is the true answer to all questions on sex something like this: enjoy it when you are doing it, and enjoy the rest of life when you aren’t.
I’m turning on the comments for this article so we can have a nice discussion. I suspect that sex and spirituality might stir up some fun comments. Enjoy! Namaste.
Note: I think it goes without saying that all inappropriate comments will be immediately deleted.
Written on July 19, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on July 11, 2009 by Tom Stine
My good friend Takuin Minamoto has asked a question over at Takuin.com that I felt deserved an answer. First, let me re-print Takuin’s question, and below I will give the answer I left in his comments. I encourage you to read the other fabulous comments at his site. I think he has started a theme that I will be coming back to increasingly over the next few weeks. First, Takuin’s question:
This is a question for fellow writers of spiritual matters, but anyone is free to comment below.I have noticed a trend – and it is nothing earth shattering – in this world of spiritual teaching:
A man or woman may come to a realization, perhaps only a realization on a superficial level, or perhaps something deeper, then they begin to ‘teach’ it. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with this. But it makes me wonder if enlightenment, the way that term is used by the masses, is nothing more than conformity to one’s ideals of enlightenment.
I am not against anything they are doing, and I cannot sit here and say I ‘know them’ in any intimate way. But is this all we have to look forward to? We go to listen to someone speak on a podium, we may have or may not have a realization, then we go and speak on a podium.
My big question is, In what way is this helpful to humanity?
Don’t take it as, “I am expecting there to be something or nothing there,” because that is not it. I really want to know.
How do you see this?
My responses in no particular order:
1. In response to your main question: “In what way is this helpful to humanity?” I think I’ll start with the most obvious response: I don’t know. None of us do. Part of the beauty of this Life we are is that so much is a mystery. As long as we are open to what is coming through us, and we are even remotely honest with ourselves about where we are, then Life will just have its way, and then we get to watch it unfold.
2. Another immediate response I get to your question is: “Who cares?” I mean that literally and in its more “advaita” sense. Why does the question even arise for you? Do our actions need to benefit humanity? I don’t really know if they do. Although, I have to add, that the more we “open” to Life, the more our actions DO seem to benefit humanity, or at least they tend to move in that direction. But that is an observation, not a statement of necessity. We don’t NEED to benefit humanity. But it sure seems that we do.
3. I suspect that as many have remarked, most people do not enter the role of teacher as they awaken to the truth. That is my experience at least. There may be an inclination to share, but not to truly teach as a “profession.” Look at the people Adyashanti has asked to teach. Most of them only do it part time. They have other functions in life, like therapists and, as in the case of my friend Larry Melton, scientists. Funky, huh?
4. I have to say that way too many people go into the spiritual teaching gig than seems warranted. That’s at least is how it SEEMS. Maybe it is just the right number. Actually, I guess that is true… the number is just right else…. there would be fewer. That said, some of these teachers are such ego maniacs as to not even be funny. What a delicious contradiction, eh? A teacher of “enlightenment” who is so obviously stuck in the muck of his own ego! Life is TOO FUNNY!!!!! Maybe that’s the point, to make us laugh uproariously? Or to cry profusely?
5. As has been observed by others, some of us just can’t help but teach. My experience mirrors theirs: I can’t avoid teaching. It just happens. People are always asking me questions as if I KNOW something they don’t. Maybe I do. Doubt it. But nonetheless, I answer, and they go away satisfied. LOL See, life is funny. But yes, some of us were just born this way, like a genetic condition. Or more likely childhood conditioning. So we just do what we are meant to do, and we do our utmost to clean out our own crapola so that we are hopefully as clear an instrument as possible. But teach we must.
6. Interesting to me that you would ask this question now, as I’ve felt very much led in recent months to “get busy” as it were and move forward in a big way with the whole spiritual teaching gig. So, I guess the question just became more “personal” in a sense: In what way will Tom Stine be helpful to humanity? No idea how to answer that one. I guess I’ll find out!
7. It has become clearer to me that quite likely the most practical thing a person can do is pursue enlightenment. It sure seems to be of great benefit to an individual human organism to have some level of realization occur. While that is not always the case, it seems to beat the hell out of every other “self-improvement” process out there. I know, “self” improvement is the last thing that one can say about awakening, but there you go: the apparent individual often as not has a corresponding improvement in “his” life as he realizes more and more that there is no self. LOL My God, Life has one hell of a sense of humor, huh? But I’ll stick by my basic assertion: the pursuit of enlightenment is the most practical thing you can do. (Contradictions in that assertion conceded.)
8. As someone wiser than me once observed: there is a teacher for everyone at every stage of the journey. Even the most seemingly screwed-up individual can serve as a great teacher for someone. I’m reminded of someone that I met at a Sedona Method retreat who, when I met him, seemed like a “train wreck” of a person. After seeing this person at a few retreats, I remarked upon him to one of my friends. My friend’s response: “you think he is a train wreck now, you should have seen him a few years ago!” Whoa. But lo and behold, as I let go of my judgments about this person, and got to know him a bit, I discovered that he was a very successful coach who helps a lot of people, all the while still having the outer appearance of “train wreck.” His clients love him and swear by him. Who’d a thunk it? So… while I can’t say with certainty, it appears that humanity benefits from even the worst of the lot in the teaching/coaching/self-help movement. I’m gonna get myself in trouble with this next comment, but did you ever notice what a great impact Osho had on people? Drug addiction and Rolls Royces not withstanding.
9. My last point: I am very clear that there is no answer to the question “What’s the point of all this?” Nor do I see any purpose when I look for one to anything that goes on, including all this spiritual teaching stuff. And yet, there is an appearance of a purpose, and that appearance, in my eyes, seems to be: to see more clearly. If there is any benefit, then, to humanity, it is the gradual opening of its collective and individual eyes. That would be the appearance of a purpose for all this teaching that goes on. People become clearer and clearer on what is real, what is true.
Written on July 5, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on June 25, 2009 by Tom Stine
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
We don’t appreciate magic enough. The universe is a magical place to say the least. I love this suggestion of Clarke’s, though. Will technology ever become “sufficiently advanced” to replace magic? I doubt it. And no, by magic I do not Harry Potter or something more like the arcane or Wicca. I’m referring to the magic that seems to happen as we awaken more and more to the Truth. Maybe miracle would be a better word. But I like the word magic.
Written on June 21, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on June 20, 2009 by Tom Stine
The further along I go with this awakening that has happened and continues to unfold, the more it becomes apparent that the real key to waking up is wanting to wake up. I know it is a radical idea, but it just so happens to be the truth of the matter. Technique is almost always given top billing in the world of spirituality, but the “how” will always come whenever you are truly willing. But willingness, that’s the crux of the issue.
You may already think you are willing. That’s why you meditate, read books by the spiritual giants, read this blog, talk to your friends about spirituality and awakening and enlightenment, go to retreats, all that good stuff. You have a very convincing case to prove how willing you are. But the truth is, if your willingness were electricity, you wouldn’t have enough to power a night light. A firefly could outshine you. Sorry, but it is true.
Look inside for a moment. Feel into this subject of willingness. Can you feel the resistance? Can you feel how much “you” don’t want to really wake up? Something inside of you knows this awakening thing is going to be different, really, really different, and it is frightened about that. Something inside wants to feel better about life, but it doesn’t really want what awakening entails.
Why not? Because the “something” resisting all of this, the “something” that is not willing to awaken, is the very thing from which one awakens! The resistance you are feeling, the UN-willingness, is simple the energy of thought, the “mind” as it were, resisting what is its eventual undoing. Well, maybe undoing is too harsh. Let’s just say that the mind gets to go from being the dominant player in your awareness to being second fiddle.
So there is a massive resistance to awakening. The natural question to ask at this point is “what do I do about it?” Ah, good question. But the question itself is just more resistance. Notice that the question is about doing and about “I”. The “I” is the very thing doing the resisting! The doing is how it resists.
Going beyond this resistance, becoming more willing, is the simplest of things: let it happen. What you are wants this awakening to happen. It is what is waking-up to itself. It IS awake, and is looking for this awakeness to transform everything. So, simply pause and let it happen. It will anyway.
As far as “you” are concerned, I think cooperation would almost be a better focus for the mind. Cooperate. Don’t fight what is happening. Give in. Allow. I think you’ll find this mindset to be a better one. It is far more in alignment with what is really happening anyway. Remember that whole “not in control” issue I’ve discussed many times? You aren’t in control, so why not just let that realization sink a little deeper. Cooperate with the inevitable, and you will find your willingness going up, up, up.
Be well. Namaste.
Written on June 7, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on May 24, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on May 11, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on May 4, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on April 27, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on April 21, 2009 by Tom Stine
Okay, in truth, Tom is not in Missouri right now, but it just didn’t have that lovely allusion to one of my favorite movies, the Wizard of Oz. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I was growing up, one of the television networks (hey, we only had 3) would show the Wizard of Oz once each year, always on a Sunday night. Man, I was GLUED to that TV for the whole thing. I love it, I was mesmerized by it. I mean, how on earth did they get the world to go from black and white to color and then back again? Too wild.
Okay, the Wizard of Oz has nothing to do with the purpose of this post, but so what? Does anything have ANYTHING to do with anything else? Or, put another way, everything has everything to do with everything! Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out later.
So, I’m wrapping up a month in Paris, France, this week. I arrived on March 28, and I leave on Saturday. I fly home from Amsterdam, so this weekend I get to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the Dutch. But for the past almost four weeks, Paris has been my home.
I LOVE PARIS. I really, really do. Someday, I’m not sure when or how, I will live here part of the year. You see, it’s the language that really gets me. I absolutely love the French language. I can’t get tired of hearing it spoken. I speak it a bit myself, not that well, but I spent the last 3 weeks going to a language school each morning trying to improve my French.
I shared with my newsletter readers that, according to two psychics, I was one of Napoleon’s generals in a past life, so maybe that explains my love of French. Who knows? But here I am.
An obvious question that I’m sure I’ll be asked is, “What did you learn while in Paris?” So, let me provide a few completely spontaneous observations:
*Travel can be very, very good for bringing up any issues you have been trying to ignore or were not aware of. Paris has been excellent in that regard. So, get on a plane and put yourself in a more stressful environment and see what happens. I live in the country of Missouri, so life in Paris is definitely bringing up some good stuff. Who knew it was there?
*Parisians are obsessed with shoes. If any of you reading this blog live in Paris, you will know immediately what I mean. It is the most incredible thing to see sitting at a café. 2 million people live within the walls of Paris, and there are 1.5 million different pairs of shoes. The rest are Converse hightops.
*You can eat raw hamburger and not die. Now, maybe you can’t in the USA, I get that. But here, even cooked hamburger is mostly raw. As is steak, duck and eggs. You know, I think I actually prefer meat that way. Even though this is my 6th trip to Paris, I still have to adjust to the food. It is amazingly good. I think you can probably live on bread, eggs, salade, raw meat, coffee and wine.
*Walking is good for the spirit and body. I feel better in a pedestrian culture. In the USA, we walk only to get in and out of our cars. You can go an entire day, traveling 50 miles around town, and walk maybe 100 yards. In Paris, 3-5 km is not a big deal. Now, given that you get to walk 3-5 km per day, why in God’s name do Les Parisiens where incredibly uncomfortable shoes? Only me and German and Austrian tourists are wearing hiking shoes (American tourists where New Balance running shoes and flip flops).
*The best ice cream in the world is on Ile Saint-Louis in Paris. Berthillon.
*People are the same wherever you go. I know that, but it is really fun to see it right in front of your eyes. The young French women doing their thing. Different language, same flirtatious behavior. Old couples walking arm in arm. Men doing their macho act to impress women. Rude and not so rude waiters. Friendly store owners. People rushing to get from point A to point B. Life is life. Every where you go.
*And all the while, no matter where or when or under what circumstances, Life is still calling to you. You can hear it in the sound of scooter racing down the street, a child laughing, the clink of two wine glasses. Always calling you. One Life. One.
Be well. Time to hit a café. Namaste.
Written on April 20, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on April 13, 2009 by Tom Stine
Written on April 5, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on March 29, 2009 by Tom Stine
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Written on March 18, 2009 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me an email letting me know that a statement of mine in my last post I Want to Be Like Jed sounded like I was claiming that I’m enlightened. The line in question was a bit misleading, so I’ve changed it. However, the line in question did cause me to think of something that I want to share with all of you before heading to bed.
So, how would you know if “I” am enlightened? How would you know if anyone is enlightened? What’s great about these questions is that (1) they are questions that most spiritual people ask about various teachers and gurus and (2) they are so misguided as to be a bit comical.
First of all, you have absolutely no way of knowing if someone is enlightened or not. Period. No way. Zero. Zip. Nada. How can I be so utterly certain? Because you can’t know anything about another. All you can do is have an experience of them. You may have an experience of where their consciousness is at (ego or One, let’s say). You may see their behaviors. But to know if they are awake? Nope. I feel I have a pretty strong sense of where someone’s consciousness is at, where their “focus” is. But I could be seriously wrong. And beyond that? No clue. And moreover, I don’t really care.
Secondly, questions like this inevitably come back to some pretty fundamental things about enlightenment. For instance, who is it that is enlightened? Is Tom Stine ever going to be enlightened? No, he isn’t. Tom Stine is just a body and mind playing around in the dream state. But is Tom that which will ever awaken to the truth? No.
Then what does awaken? That which is already awake. Oh, isn’t this stuff just crazy to actually see in print? That’s why you gotta take all spiritual literature with a grain of salt. None of it is true. At best, it is an attempt at expressing some form of truth to encourage the reader to find out for himself or herself what all the fuss is about. Never take any of it as a statement of the truth. Find out for yourself what is true!
I think it was Yogananda who said, “Anyone who claims to be enlightened isn’t.” I don’t think he got it quite right. Better to say, “Anyone who believes he is enlightened isn’t!” For enlightenment is beyond any belief as it is beyond the mind.
Just some late night thoughts for you. Namaste.
Written on March 18, 2009 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me the following email:
I was interested to see you recommend McKenna’s books. His description of enlightenment strikes me as a empty, boring state, in sharp contrast to most people’s ideas. Is his “enlightenment” something you find attractive and seek?Assuming the books are factual, I have to wonder if he got stuck in a dead end on his spiritual path. If enlightenment means pitying, rather than loving, everyone else, and spending days playing video games to stave off the boredom, count me out.
As you can tell by my somewhat tongue in cheek title, I have to answer my reader’s question “yes.” I do find Jed’s enlightenment attractive. And the primary reason is quite simple: I desire the truth. If what Jed describes is the truth, the Truth with a capital T, then I want it. I want nothing but the truth. As Morpheus tells Neo: “I offer only the truth, nothing more.” Even if the truth is I wake-up from my nice comfy world and discover I must live on a hover craft while psychopathic machines hunt me down, then, well, so be it.
I know, it sounds a bit nuts to say something like that, but you see, this whole enlightenment thing IS nuts. I strongly suggest that you let go of any notion of pursuing enlightenment unless you simply have no choice. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if I weren’t simply compelled to do it. For most people, some nice, simple garden variety awakenings are more than sufficient. I guess I should explain that some more, but I will save that for later.
My reader also made an excellent point in his email: most people’s ideas about enlightenment are in sharp contrast to what Jed McKenna has to say. But I’ll be honest: my ideas about enlightenment are now, and have been for quite some time, in sharp contrast to most people’s. Enlightenment has nothing to do with bliss and joy and eternal happiness. Most people think that nirvana is some blissed-out state like an infinite orgasm. Nirvana is simply the word the Buddha used to describe the cessation of the separate self (nirvana means cessation, by the way). Enlightenment isn’t eternal bliss: it is freedom. Freedom from the idea you are a someone, a self, a separate entity. The ultimate freedom is to realize you are nothing.
All I’ve found with Jed is an echo of my own periods of realization. I’ve also discovered a thing or two that has radically changed my approach to life here on planet Earth. More on that one at a later date. (I know, I’m always promising more later. But I deliver, don’t I?)
So, in sum, I still strongly recommend you read Jed. He will go a long way toward demystifying enlightenment for you and helping you to see what the spiritual “journey” is really about. The best book of the three is the third one, Spiritual Warfare, but the other two are pretty essential to understanding all that Jed has to say.
Written on March 4, 2009 by Tom Stine
I’ve received a few emails lately about my recommendation of Jed McKenna’s books, both in praise and a few negative ones. I responded to one friend’s email, and in the process, realized I wrote a blog post! I had wanted to do so anyway, so here is somewhat edited version of the email I sent my friend.
First: I have a sneaking suspicion that Jed McKenna is none other than Adyashanti writing under a pseudonym. I could be wrong. But I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of Adya’s talks, and I have a strange ability to remember the most trivial things. And so when Jed McKenna uses an example that is almost identical to one I’ve heard Adya use, and one that seems quite original at that, I get curious. After 15 times of this happening, I get suspicious. Honestly, it makes me laugh.t
Second: Jed’s books serve a very important purpose. They are descriptive of what may in fact be one facet of the awakening process. Basically, our attachment to ego has got to go. No getting around it. We think we ARE the ego, and we just have to drop that. That’s why Adya talks of “getting out the swords and hacking and slashing.” You gotta LOOK AT YOUR BELIEFS and see that they are all untrue. Every single one of them is untrue. You have to look at enough of them until the house of cards collapses. Again, that’s why Adya also says, “Awakening can be a bloody mess.”
Jed highlights that part. No, he hammers it home. 99 times out of 100, people don’t just see a glimmer of the Truth and wake up like Ramana or Ekchart Tolle. When they do, they have to sit on a park bench for 2 years or in a cave for 10. When the ego is just blown out like that, the mind/body often goes into major shutdown. For the rest of us, the 99, we have to sit down and look deeply at ourselves, being willing to look at every nook and cranny of our psyche. We have to do something that would make a Freudian analyst pee his pants.
Third: One criticism of Jed is that he seems to deny the “heart” aspect of awakening. He even seems to be disdainful of things of the heart. If you read Jed from a slightly broader perspective, however, you see the heart in what he says. Jed says he “doesn’t do heart” not so much as a dismissal of what we can call Love but as a pointing out that squishy, gooey, New Age stuff (or any religion for that matter) will almost certainly NOT result in awakening. The failure rate is almost 100%. 99.9999% to be completely not-exact.
That to me is a real value of Jed McKenna. He slams home a point that almost no one asks: what is the success rate of most spiritual teachers and teachings? If we answer honestly, we have to say: pathetic. Assuming, of course, that you measure success as awakening (enlightenment). Very, very few wake up. Jed tries to explain why.
Fourth: I’m reading and recommending Jed because he offers something valuable. A wake up call. If you are on the Enlightenment path, then get down to business. Do it. Find out who and what you are. NOW. Sit down and wade through the ego. See what happens. I’m also recommending it because there is some AMAZING material for those who are not going to attain Enlightenment, a whole huge discussion that he calls Human Adulthood or the Integrated State. You get that in book 3, and it is wonderful. I can’t even begin to describe it here. But suffice it to say, if you simply want a better life, Jed explains how to have that happen. I agree with him completely. You gotta grow-up.
Fifth: As Adya correctly points, all spiritual teachings are TEACHING TOOLS. They are meant to hit the reader between the eyes and stir up something real and vital. They are never to be taken literally as the truth. Jed’s books, Adya’s satsangs, Gangaji’s satsangs, Ramana’s teachings, you name it, none of it should never be taken literally. And, yes, people do. And their is nothing you can do about that. If you are in the spiritual teaching business, just say your piece and let it go. Humanity will do with it what it pleases. And somewhere along the way, someone will benefit greatly because the real purpose of all these words took place: to cancel out some of your beliefs and allow a glimpse of truth to happen.
Sixth: The problem people have with Jed is the same problem most of us have with EVERY teacher. The problem is a question our egos love to ask: HOW AWAKE ARE THEY? People love to play the “my guru can kick your guru’s ass” game. If I’m into Adya, I think he is the most awake being on the planet. If you are into Ramana, he’s the most enlightened being ever. Jed rubs you the wrong way and so you think he is the height of ego. That’s how the mind works, isn’t it? Mine is better than yours. Everyone plays the game. I’ve played it, too.
But guess what? Sailor Bob Adamson said it best: ”The only difference between an awakened one and one who hasn’t awakened is that the awakened one knows that there IS NO DIFFERENCE!” Go Sailor Bob!! Yep, that’s it. Not one shred of difference. From the perspective of Truth, no one is more awake than someone else. At best, and again this is just a metaphor, one person is a little better at pretending to be asleep than another. But still…. how can the One reality be different? How can there be an iota of separation between us? It may appear that way, but that’s our only problem!! Appearances can be deceiving!!
So, is Jed the bomb? Is he the most important, biggest, etc? Hell no. Jed isn’t the most awake being. There’s no such thing. Get to the place where you know what Sailor Bob means.
That said: I also feel I have a pretty good meter for where someone’s consciousness lies. On one end of the scale is very egoic. On the other end, hardly any ego, every clear. Jed’s at the clear end. How clear? I don’t know. How much ego left? Don’t know. Does he need to “awaken” some more? Don’t know. Adyashanti? Very clear. More awakening? Don’t know. Don’t care, either.
As for other spiritual teachers who have the label “enlightened” attached to them, my meter says they ain’t so hot. But so what?!?! If my meter says still egoic, then I don’t touch their teachings. Doesn’t mean I’m right, it just means I’m not interested in their teachings. I certainly think some of these so called “enlightened” gurus have experienced a great deal of awakening to the truth. But full blown enlightenment? Not according to my meter. But hey, my meter may suck!! It really doesn’t matter in the end anyway.
None of this stuff is a problem unless we take it all seriously, like it matters. It doesn’t. The truth is to let all that stuff go and just enjoy the dance of life. Nothing else to do. As Jed and Adya (and Ramana and Nisargadatta and many others) point out, it’s all about surrender in the end. True surrender. What you are surrenders its illusions to the Truth. Just let it all go!
So, again, get Jed McKenna’s book. Believe it or not, I’ve got more to say about Jed and enlightenment, but I’ll save that for my next post.
Written on March 1, 2009 by Tom Stine
I haven’t recommended anything in a long time, so here are three books to read, all by the same person, Jed McKenna:
These 3 books are fantastic. They are a very clear and detailed explanation of spiritual awakening. Jed does a nice job of showing some of the ins and outs. I don’t necessarily agree with every last word of his, but for the most part, Jed has written books that capture my experience quite well.
One curious thing, however: who is Jed McKenna? If you google him, you will come up very short. He seems to hardly exist. There is even some speculation that the house and ashram he describes in the first book may in fact never have existed. So, the stories in the books may be fictional to some extent. However, the information is not fictional in the slightest.
Read and enjoy. If you would like to buy the books from Amazon, here are the links (from which I receive a tiny commission):
But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.
Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?
A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.
So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.
Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.
The disappearance of this fundamental question [How do I know the state of an enlightened one?], on discovering that it had no answer, was a physiological phenomenon, a sudden ‘explosion’ inside, blasting, as it were, every cell, every nerve and every gland in my body. And with that ‘explosion’, the illusion that there is continuity of thought, that there is a center, an ‘I’ linking up the thoughts, was not there anymore.
