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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 20:21:30 GMT -5
Yes, the irony! I figured that much already. And it's also obvious that Jed had problems filling his books with actual content. In the second book, maybe 1/3 is just quotes from other books. It's that bad. And this wisefoolpress entity just seems to exist to publish the Jed stuff, right? The story I am hearing and have been hearing for a while, says there is not just one author of those books....wisefoolpress is a group project (opinions vary on precisely how many...some say up to four folks have contributed)...and that supposedly accounts for some of the apparent differences between books and even at times within the same book. The differences I see are not in terms of perspective or style. In that sense the books are identical. The difference is that the later books have been put together a lot more hastily and sloppily and the author(s) also very obviously ran out of ideas/material. |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 20:39:49 GMT -5
You don't see the possibility of an element there of "Be wary of expecting a sage to behave appropriately" kinda thing? Oh, absolutely. However, IMO, an 'anything goes' attitude is as erroneous as is a long 'dos and donts' list. Jed's general attitude is 'I'm lucid in the dreamstate, nothing is real, nothing of any value, I'm in the funhouse of Maya, Maya's amusement park, so who cares? who gives a f***?' and it's just a mask, a facade. Tano has written about this on her blog. As I've explained to Laffy, SR (the way I use the term) means all existential questions are gone, and with that the aspect of self that was tied to these questions is also gone, and with that aspect gone are perspectives/attitudes/behavior patters that could only come from that (false) aspect of self. Just as an example, Jed's attitudes re: his own death and his memento mori practice strikes me as very very odd for some supposedly SR. The basic personality remains though. So in the end, it's a very individual thing, there's no standard sage behavior in terms of specific behavior but that doesn't mean anything goes either. There is a certain baseline and beyond that anything goes may indeed be the case. But anything goes without a baseline, that's just ego games, IMO. |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 20:47:20 GMT -5
As I see it, that there really is the value of the books. They provide fodder for dialogue....for argument.....for digging into the whole idea of what it means to be SR. There are not actually many writings out there that stir up controversy in the way these writings do....they shake things up a bit, and I think that's a good thing. Yes, I look at the books in a similar way. They provide a good amount of contrast and stimulation. And despite my mostly negative review here, I see sound advice and insights as well. Personally, I couldn't care less who that author is in real life and if his books are just a marketing device or not. I'm in this for the ideas discussed. That's it. The background Tano provides is an interesting addendum though, but not essential. |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 20:53:06 GMT -5
I agree, posing as the most enlightened dude ever right from the start in the first book comes across as him just having fun slaying holy cows and breaking taboos. But the further you read, the more you'll realize that he actually believes that, especially the parts where he criticizes the various traditions. What's also quite telling is that he doesn't get Zen and koans. That's typical for over-intellectual people. I've seen this on the forum a lot. Initially his criticizing of tradition put me off, but these days I see all too clearly just how much of a crutch tradition is if one is not willing to ultimately, completely let it go.....stomp on it even. (If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him, comes to mind here...) One can still 'get' Zen and Koans but see the whole dealy, ultimately, as unnecessary.
Certainly. But as I said, different people see different things in these books, depending on their personal background. My background is similar to Tano's - no religious or spiritual education. In my teens and later in college/university I thought that was somehow a disadvantage because I had nothing to rely on, but from my now perspective, it's been a blessing, nothing (or not much) to deconstruct and basically no drama/trauma in that regard. I think you mentioned once that you had a rather strict religious background. So to you Jed's point about traditions may seem a lot more important than it does to me. |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 21:00:15 GMT -5
Hmmm.....almost sounds as though there IS in fact a bit of fear lurking about regarding the possibility of getting sucked back in.....? Odd.
Yeah, that's the thing that struck me as most odd in the books in general: the ever present second guessing. He comes across as rather sure in the first book, almost to the degree of c.ockiness. But that sureness slowly starts eroding in the later books as he slowly shifts focus from non-duality to spirituality in general to self-help. And that's one of those many ironies again: these books are essentially self-help books! |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 21:02:41 GMT -5
Here's my impression: He obviously doesn't have a clue what peace of mind means. His "I am fully enlightened, self/truth-realized, abiding non-dual awareness etc." is just identity poker of the most advanced kind. IMO, he knows all too well how suffering feels, quite simply because he still is in a state of suffering. It's all just mental patch work. Yeah, that was my thought too after reading that quote. He's clearly defining "peace of mind," as a sort of 'donning of rose colored glasses' rather than an absence.
Peace of mind as an absence, could never be any of those things he attributes to it.
Agreed. And speaking of absence, he seems to take the term 'nothingness' literally. Did you notice? |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 21:04:20 GMT -5
So why does UG call his "enlightenment" the calamity? Because it coincided with a complete physical breakdown. |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 5, 2019 21:15:12 GMT -5
I agree. And dare I say it sounds an awful lot like 'obliterate/destroy'...? Well, to be clear about what I mean, I can see an incremental process happening that way for some people, and the more drawn out and gradual it is for them, the less of a discontinuity self-realization will be. Some people talk about drama at the point of realization, and it can happen that way too. From what I've read of Jed in the first book and in this thread, seems he thinks this gradual process is necessary and that there's always a particular pattern to it. Yes, he thinks his 'mental breakdown' model of enlightenment is the standard procedure. It's not. What I have noticed is that a lot of people in spiritual circles at some point reach rock bottom and fall into depression. And some find a way out of it and then label it 'dark night of the soul' and some - like Jed, it seems - seem to wear their 'dark night of the soul' experience like a batch of honor. And that's where the really weird theories start, and this is the only context where I see the 'mental breakdown' model of awakening/enlightenment making any sense. Point being: you don't have to go to rock bottom, you don't have to go thru a mental breakdown, waking up doesn't have to be that messy (as Jed claims), there are cleaner and more straight forward ways. And those who walked the lighter path are the ones who don't see anything to write home about after they've arrived. So you won't hear about them. Quite to the contrary to those who walked the drama/trauma path, they are usually the ones who write all the books and gather a following and get all the attention (as we can see here). |
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Post by tenka on Aug 6, 2019 1:48:48 GMT -5
To me it's obvious that he hasn't really suffered if he has to ask that question . If people need to meditate their way into a relatively peaceful state, it might be because their sense of identity and reality is rooted in so much falsity that it can't but help but lead to their suffering, which will inevitably return once the artificial morphine has worn off. In the same way suffering is had through a sense of identity the same is had through peeps that deny it . Walking your dog as Jed say's and does is what it is to be fully awake, enlightened, truth-realized. I wonder if he knows of the blissful comparison of there being no Jed and no dog .. I wonder if he realizes that identifying himself in reflection of the dog is suffering compared to not . All I know is that if one doesn't understand the relevance of a peaceful mind, then one hasn't as yet suffered enough . |
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Post by laughter on Aug 6, 2019 2:22:55 GMT -5
If people need to meditate their way into a relatively peaceful state, it might be because their sense of identity and reality is rooted in so much falsity that it can't but help but lead to their suffering, which will inevitably return once the artificial morphine has worn off. In the same way suffering is had through a sense of identity the same is had through peeps that deny it . Walking your dog as Jed say's and does is what it is to be fully awake, enlightened, truth-realized. I wonder if he knows of the blissful comparison of there being no Jed and no dog .. I wonder if he realizes that identifying himself in reflection of the dog is suffering compared to not . All I know is that if one doesn't understand the relevance of a peaceful mind, then one hasn't as yet suffered enough . Pretty much every adult knows the difference between relative peace and inner turmoil. Most people attribute the disturbance to external factors. There's really no such thing as too little or too much suffering. Seriously. There's no need for any of it, and I certainly wouldn't wish an extra helping of suffering on anyone. Jed's pointing to something transcendent of relative peace of mind, and he's not wrong when he writes that there are many people whose beliefs are central to the cause of their suffering, often the same beliefs that provide them temporary peace of mind. |
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Post by tenka on Aug 6, 2019 3:08:02 GMT -5
In the same way suffering is had through a sense of identity the same is had through peeps that deny it . Walking your dog as Jed say's and does is what it is to be fully awake, enlightened, truth-realized. I wonder if he knows of the blissful comparison of there being no Jed and no dog .. I wonder if he realizes that identifying himself in reflection of the dog is suffering compared to not . All I know is that if one doesn't understand the relevance of a peaceful mind, then one hasn't as yet suffered enough . Pretty much every adult knows the difference between relative peace and inner turmoil. Most people attribute the disturbance to external factors. There's really no such thing as too little or too much suffering. Seriously. There's no need for any of it, and I certainly wouldn't wish an extra helping of suffering on anyone. Jed's pointing to something transcendent of relative peace of mind, and he's not wrong when he writes that there are many people whose beliefs are central to the cause of their suffering, often the same beliefs that provide them temporary peace of mind. Jed is using a mindful experience of dog walking in order to reflect upon being fully awake, enlightened, truth-realized. So using this reference to then transcend anything relative isn't going to work . Saying ''peace of mind, what’s the point''? when using dog walking as an example actually reflects a peaceful mind compared to let's say working in a customer complaint's call centre for 12 hours a day that doesn't. Would Jed after 12 hours of customer complaints say what's the point of a peaceful mind? If Jed is totally pointing to beyond the relative here then like said nothing relative that is used to reflect being fully awake, enlightened and truth-realized will make any sense . I don't follow Jed at all, perhaps some well read peeps of Jed's here will see something I don't . I see mixed contexts here and for me that rarely ever works . It's the illusory fish in a real pond type of analogy .. He is trying to transcend the relative, relatively speaking lol . |
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Post by laughter on Aug 6, 2019 4:23:56 GMT -5
Pretty much every adult knows the difference between relative peace and inner turmoil. Most people attribute the disturbance to external factors. There's really no such thing as too little or too much suffering. Seriously. There's no need for any of it, and I certainly wouldn't wish an extra helping of suffering on anyone. Jed's pointing to something transcendent of relative peace of mind, and he's not wrong when he writes that there are many people whose beliefs are central to the cause of their suffering, often the same beliefs that provide them temporary peace of mind. Jed is using a mindful experience of dog walking in order to reflect upon being fully awake, enlightened, truth-realized. So using this reference to then transcend anything relative isn't going to work . Saying ''peace of mind, what’s the point''? when using dog walking as an example actually reflects a peaceful mind compared to let's say working in a customer complaint's call centre for 12 hours a day that doesn't. Would Jed after 12 hours of customer complaints say what's the point of a peaceful mind? If Jed is totally pointing to beyond the relative here then like said nothing relative that is used to reflect being fully awake, enlightened and truth-realized will make any sense . I don't follow Jed at all, perhaps some well read peeps of Jed's here will see something I don't . I see mixed contexts here and for me that rarely ever works . It's the illusory fish in a real pond type of analogy .. He is trying to transcend the relative, relatively speaking lol . My understanding of Jed's bottom line on transcendence is that, essentially, nothing "works". He's right about how that reflects with respect to peace of mind, in that relative peace of mind is only ever temporary. Many people mistake relative peace of mind for something other than relative, and that's why he asked the rhetorical question as to what the point of it was. I've got no interest in engaging on Jed's assertion that having no genuine interest other that taking walks, preferably with his dog, is what it means to be to be fully awake.  .. and I'd agree that sometimes he mixes existential contexts, many people do - the notion of an enlightened individual is an inherent context mix - the question is, whether they're conscious of it while they're doing it. |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 6, 2019 5:26:36 GMT -5
Cast away
Q: What would be a movie about someone like you?
Jed: Cast Away. Tom Hanks character found himself thrust into the unadorned paradigm of the awakened being. Being alone on a desert island is a good metaphor for the awakened state. By getting stranded on that island, he has effectively died to his life, but without physically dying. Prior to the crash, the Tom Hanks character, Chuck Noland, had everything we think of as a life—friends, career, family, fiance—as well as the countless other big and little things we take for granted until they’re gone. It’s all about context. Chuck Noland, at the beginning of the movie, has a full, rich context.
He fits in his world, he has a robust belief-set, he is a part of things and things are a part of him. And then, bam!, his plane crashes and it’s all gone. Suddenly, simple survival is his only context. What does that leave? A man without a context. A man who is in all respects, except physically, dead. A man with twenty-four hours a day with nothing to do but sleep, eat and stare at the waves. The differences between him and the man he buries and eulogizes with such Zen-like succinctness are negligible. That’s what the truth-realized state is; the absence of context. There's no artificial framework in which to say one thing is better or worse than another.
Before the plane crash, Chuck’s context was reflected back to him by virtually everyone and everything in his very meaning-rich and clock-centric environment. After the plane crash, all that’s gone and there’s just one thing left to reflect it; a volleyball with a bloody handprint that kind of looks like a face. It’s not much, but it's all he needs to pretend he’s not completely alone on an island in the middle of nowhere. That's what context is and that’s what it does: it tells us that we’re not completely alone on an island in the middle of nowhere. It provides the illusion of a populated environment in which meaning and values can be perceived and applied; where it matters what we do and what choices we make. All context is artificial. There is no true context.
Jed McKenna, Spiritual Warfare, Chapter 27
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Post by Reefs on Aug 6, 2019 8:11:05 GMT -5
FFS, Reefs... you are providing a free platform for 'Jed' so that he could continue to strip humans of their rightful earnings. I've finished reading your blog (the Jed series). I'm still not clear if you actually had the opportunity to sit down with him and have a real talk after all, face to face, like adults. Or has this all been limited to those handful of chance encounters and your email conversations? And as someone who hasn't been involved in any of this, I still don't get your obsession with this ‘Jed’ character. Seems to me like some kind of love/hate relationship you've developed there that you want to shake off but somehow can't. And you are also memorializing it with your blog. Not sure if that's your intention or if you are even aware of this. The overall impression I get is 'Jed' has helped you on your way but you also somehow feel betrayed by him because he didn’t live up to your image of him. I found this blog entry here interesting: I mean, what did you expect? On the surface, this seems as if you want to keep people from making the same mistakes you've made. Which sounds like a noble cause taken at face value. But it also looks like you are selling something when you get proactive like that. As the saying goes (and as you are saying yourself): words don't teach, only life experience teaches. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. It would be like seeing a bunch of people who are dying for a drink lining up in front of a popular bar to get a coke, but you try to convince them that this is not a very healthy choice for them and that you know what you are talking about based on your own experience. And so they listen politely to your story and thank you for your concern and then either a) get the Coke anyway or b) ponder it for a while and turn around and go to the next bar to get a Pepsi. They've got going whatever they've got going. I know you do understand energy. You may succeed in preventing them from falling into this particular 'Jed/Ken' trap, but as long as that same energy is present in them, their experience won't change, you are just postponing the inevitable. It's just going to be different faces different places but in essence the exact same experience over and over again. After you've turned them away from Jed, they will walk right into a similar trap in a different place with a different name. If they don't actively seek you out for help, the chances of helping them are basically zero. Anyway, enough with the psychoanalyzing. I liked what you wrote here: I'm going to post a couple more Jed quotes from the third book and then I'm done with this Jed stuff. Really not worth all the hype. And I hope you'll do the same and move on or the hype will continue. The party is over (as you say). But as long as you've got this blog going, the party will continue (at least for you). Ever heard the saying, choose your enemies carefully because you will become exactly like them? I wish you all the best. Cheers and good luck! |
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Post by satchitananda on Aug 6, 2019 9:30:05 GMT -5
Then peace of mind or happiness...not the right words to use. Absolutely not the right words to use, yes. They are absolutely the right words to use because it is the ego which gets enlightened and liberated and it is the ego which experiences peace and happiness. Unbounded awareness doesn't need to get enlightened because it already is. |
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.. and I'd agree that sometimes he mixes existential contexts, many people do - the notion of an enlightened individual is an inherent context mix - the question is, whether they're conscious of it while they're doing it.