Written on June 13, 2010 by Tom Stine
“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.”
Written on March 15, 2010 by Tom Stine
My friend Takuin Minamoto recently answered this question on his blog, and I was thrilled by his response. Takuin defined enlightenment as follows:
Enlightenment is limitless expansion within a limited field.
I love this definition because Takuin masterfully dropped all the centuries of spiritual baggage attached to this one simple word and took it directly to the heart of the matter. As he further explained, the limited field he is referring to is the world we find ourselves living in, the experiences that pass through our awareness moment to moment. It is a limited field, isn’t it? While it arises from the infinite, in and of itself it will always be contained, confined, bounded, limited. No question, our world is a limited field.
But enlightenment is the infinite, the limitless, expanding through the world of limitation. When we awaken, one of the first things we know is that what we thought we were isn’t. We get a taste for the aspects of limitlessness: nothingness and everything-ness. We know ourselves to be limitless, empty of all form and yet all form. Beyond, within, a part of and not a part of.
And as this limitlessness expands through the point in the limited field that we refer to as you, interesting and miraculous things begin to happen. As the false identity is shed, what is left in its place is nothing but this limitless expansion.
As a businessman once said, “Good ideas are borrowed, the best ideas are stolen.” Well, this is one case where I will merely borrow the best. My hat is off to Takuin for his excellent definition of enlightenment.
Takuin has comments ongoing on this post, so feel free to leave comments for him. I think I’ll open comments here, too, so I can see what’s on your mind. Namaste.
Written on March 12, 2010 by Tom Stine
A reader sent me the following email:
What I’m wondering is in the phrase, “…after enlightment, chop wood, carry water”. The thing is, I’ve lost my zest for my career which I must recapture in order to find work (was laid-off) and to pay my mortgage. In the absolute, I understand there’s no one here. In the relative, I need to find the energy, but I’m no longer interested in the Game–the whole illusion thing. What to do?
I love this question and the entire subject it represents. It gets right to the heart of the seeming paradox between awakening/enlightenment and the world we find ourselves in. What to do about this paradox?
Awakening to the truth of what we are, that there is no separate self, no “me,” is to barely scratch the surface of what enlightenment truly is. Enlightenment includes in it a process that is often termed “embodiment” because it is a process of the awakened realization penetrating all of the body-mind and undoing all remaining traces of identity. This embodiment results in what I often call a “house cleaning” of the body-mind. All beliefs are undone, thoughts and feelings become transformed, and the mind drifts into the background of experience.
Sometimes an awakening is full and complete, and then with it goes all sense of identity as a self. But these full and complete, total awakenings are rare. Typically, most of us experience an initial awakening to the truth, but then discover that we still feel like a “me” even though we’ve seen, truly seen, that we are not. And so, now we get to deal with all kinds of mental-emotional “stuff” that will be (often) slowly be seen through piece by piece. It can be a difficult time, but also immensely enjoyable.
Embodiment is a major part of the state I have been referring to as half-awake. It is the post initial awakening, pre full “enlightenment” state. These are somewhat arbitrary distinctions I’m making, and there really aren’t such things as these states. But, well, there sort of are. I’ll use these terms as if they mean something simply because it helps to make some distinctions that will be helpful to most people.
So, with that overview, let me look at my reader’s question more clearly. Let me start with “after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Quite simply, this old Zen saying is clear: after enlightenment. Until embodiment has occurred, after enlightenment is not the state “you” are in. If my reader has had a true, real awakening to the truth of his being (”there’s no one here”), then the thing to do at this point is to work through the embodiment process.
I would contend that the very situation he finds himself in, laid off with a need for a job and very real financial obligations, is exactly what embodiment is all about. You see, what we are, as Nisargadatta called it “The Supreme Reality,” is not content to simply wake-up and sit in a cave staring at “its” navel. It is All of Life, everything in existence, including jobs, bodies, careers, mortgages, houses, dollar bills, etc. It is everything. It has manifested itself as all of form. Including, as my reader puts it, “the Game-the whole illusion thing.” The Supreme Reality has manifested itself as the Game of Human Life, and it is going to play it to the fullest!
Therefore, what I would suggest to my reader, and to everyone, is play the Game of Human Life as best you can. Not the way you did ten years ago, not the way you did before you realized a bit of the truth of your being, but instead from that realization. Instead of having as your motivation for playing the Game the usual motivations such as money, sex, fame, all those things, you now have a much more interesting motivation for playing the Game of Human Life. And the new motivation is freedom. Freedom from all that seemed to keep you stuck in the belief in limitation. You now seek nothing less that the limitlessness that you are.
Everything in your world becomes about freedom, about being free of all the beliefs, fears, etc, that drive the body-mind. You use things like finding a job, paying a mortgage, having a relationship, etc, as a way to discover freedom. You spend some time taking a good hard look at the contents of your consciousness. You see through illusion after illusion after illusion. You develop a relentless drive to be free, to see everything for what it truly is: the divine, the Supreme Reality manifest. You know everything as you. Not think it, not believe it, but know it, truly, wonderfully know it. That’s enlightenment.
And in the process of doing all the above, you gain a love for the Game of Human Life. It may be, in one sense, illusory, but it is the only game in town! It is Your Game, too. What you are is the creator of this odd game, and why on earth wouldn’t you want to play it? It’s your game!
I’ll write some more at a later date about embodiment and “how to do it,” as if there really is such a thing as a prescription for embodiment. There isn’t, but there are some things worth doing. In the meantime, get a book by Byron Katie
and do some digging into your beliefs. It will help. 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 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 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:
- Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing
- Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment
- Spiritual Warfare
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):
Written on January 30, 2009 by Tom Stine
A reader passed along the following from Anthony deMello:
“Is Enlightenment easy or difficult?”
“It is as easy and as difficult as seeing what is right before your eyes.”
“How can seeing what is right before one’s eyes be difficult?”
To that the Master responded with the following anecdote:
A girl greeted her boyfriend. “Notice anything different about me?”
“New dress?”
“No.”
“New shoes?”
“No. Something else.”
“I give up.”
“I’m wearing a gas mask.”
