I Want to Be Like Jed

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.

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Related Posts:

  1. How Do You Know If Someone Is Enlightened?
  2. A Must Read: An Interview with Adyashanti in The Sun Magazine
  3. A Few Thoughts on Jed McKenna
  4. Before Enlightenment: Embodiment
  5. Read Jed McKenna

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Guru Quotes

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what’s true, then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

—Jed McKenna

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.

—Oscar Wilde

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.

—Charlotte Joko Beck

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.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

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.

—Eckhart Tolle


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.

—What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula

Twittering...

  • Same is true of mind, "I", self, consciousness, etc. :-) || RT @Kalieezchild RT @Jyakunen: you will never find an "ego" -- absurd concept. 2 weeks ago
  • RT @Takuin If someone is hateful to you, or if you have been insulted, you may feel some kind of pain. But who, exactly, is being hurt? 2010-08-05
  • Spirituality: 6.7 billion caterpillars insisting they know what it's like to be a butterfly. Why not just become a butterfly and find out? 2010-07-27
  • If everything you thought was true turns out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, what then? 2010-07-25
  • RT @Takuin What if you woke up tomorrow and the search was gone? If nothing were left, what would you do? || Eat ice cream. Duh. :-) 2010-07-25
  • RT @AkebonoJishi Objective fact is just a notion -- like "Emptiness." || Beautiful, isn't it? 2010-07-23
  • RT @Takuin packing it in @ 3250 meters. || Very cool! I can't wait to see it next summer. Definitely coming to Japan. No climbing, tho. :-) 2010-07-16
  • Why is everyone so intent on silencing the mind? Just leave the damn thing alone and it shuts up all by itself! Make some tea, sit, and rest 2010-07-16
  • RT @noah8423 Either Truth is awake in you, or not. ... the thinking must stop to make room for that light. || Why MUST thinking stop? 2010-07-16
  • So many people know. Yet how many know that they don't know? ☺ 2010-07-14
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