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Post by satchitananda on Aug 6, 2019 9:38:11 GMT -5
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. Well, you've learnt the spiritual dictionary well enough to form half coherent sentences that are vaguely 'spiritual'.
Yet, they are devoid of any real meaning.
I hope so! |
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Post by satchitananda on Aug 6, 2019 9:46:41 GMT -5
 Well, Satch.. Ken might enjoy your company so. First, he is fond of this kind of ambiguities. This is what has kept him afloat for years.
Secondly, he is targeting yoga joints in Thailand now, lecturing to the young impressionable minds. The last one was in Surah Thani or some such; I have the link somewhere.
He will have no trouble at all in finding impressionable minds particularly in the yoga community. |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 6, 2019 9:47:59 GMT -5
Somewhere in one of your posts you said you think we have the same or close opinion of Jed. To clarify: our understanding, comprehension, vision - couldn't be further apart.
You are incorrect in your somewhat uninformed assertion. I have uncovered the identity of someone who's been conning people for quite a number of years. A lot of people benefited, as it saved them $1500 upwards. I do not publish their accounts of how they managed to avoid being duped, but many are grateful.
I have not received a penny for any of it (and it costs money to run the website and to investigate). Neither have I formed any silly 'following', despite the fact that it was absolutely possible. You can ask anyone who has ever communicated with me: I do not teach, do not engage in any teaching in private and have no intent to ever do.
I have not betrayed any of my sources, and the names are known only to me.
I answered every question you have asked of me here - without posturing and pretense.
Now, answer me this.. have I ever patronized you in the way you have just done above? Have I ever told you what you should or should not do? Have I given my opinion on the state of your being?
Do you understand just why 'Jed' does not engage the public?
I wrote a lot on Memento Mori, the best one was probably Dance Macabre. It will take you YEARS to understand the full implications of what 'Jed' means and meant in all of the quotes that you blindly post, without any real comprehension of their meaning. I don't wish you the best. I wish you - being, for as long as you can, and thereafter - nothing. This is the real 'no self'. People do not get it AT ALL. It is not of those 'ideas' that you so wish to discuss. It is Reality of existence.
You misunderstood. I used the word 'selling' metaphorically. You took it literally. I don't doubt your good intentions. I see no reason why. You didn't answer my question. I'll reply in detail, but you have to first answer my initial question: Did you or didn't you eventually sit down with 'Jed', face to face, and have a talk like adults? |
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Post by satchitananda on Aug 6, 2019 9:58:48 GMT -5
He will have no trouble at all in finding impressionable minds particularly in the yoga community. No doubt.
I have somewhat fond memories of you, Satch, simply because you once were exceptionally honest with me, and I haven't forgotten that.
This is much more important to me than any 'spiritual ideas, discussions and assertions.
I hope you will remain so.
I certainly will and I agree. We must finally and eventually chuck all ideas about spirituality into the garbage where they belong. |
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Post by laughter on Aug 6, 2019 10:44:46 GMT -5
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! deleted at tano's request Right, I remember this now: fake forum Jed was charging people money.  In my opinion, you did a public service. We'll never really know if Wise Fool Press would have made that statement about how the "real Jed" doesn't write on forums if you hadn't done your detective work. My understanding is that at least one of the fake forums was taken down, was that because of WFP legal? Is there still currently a fake Jed forum operating? |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 10:46:48 GMT -5
Abidance in being = peace of mind. "Cheap" is a value judgement. The peace of being is beyond all human/mind value judgements. Then peace of mind or happiness...not the right words to use. Perhaps not. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 10:53:55 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. Ah. Ok.
For me there seemed to be an implication there of taking one faulty idea at a time and actively destructing it.....when what really happens is that once the major foundational idea of separation have been seen through, the whole sand castle collapses, easily, effortlessly. If/when separation gets seen through, a whole avalanche of false ideas goes with it. No need to 'pulverize' idea by idea. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 10:57:28 GMT -5
Some people see things at a depth hardly noticeable to the majority. Hence, Jed will never be understood by his fellow human beings who THINK they delve deep, but in reality - are hardly scratching the surface of being and existence. Existence is harsh. It is harsher than most so called first world citizens will ever comprehend. They are protected by a thin veneer of 'civilization', but let me tell you something... most of this planet still lives in the Dark Ages, and the Reality bites one in the ass on a daily basis. Being a tourist on a two week to other parts of the world - simply doesn't cut it. As Richard Rose said.. "Life isn’t pleasure, it’s constant struggle driven by relentless tension. Look out the window. It’s a bloody carnage out there. Everything’s trying to eat something else, just so it can stay alive long enough to reproduce and provide more food and fertilizer for this slaughterhouse.”
That is all I have to say about the state of enlightenment. It is all a lie. Jed knows that. I know that. UG knew that. In case you are alluding to your experiences in Cambodia, I've been to Cambodia and neighboring countries as well, and that roughly 10 years before you went there. So what you are talking about on your blog sounds familiar. When I saw that picture you took from the road to SHV, I actually had trouble recalling seeing any paved roads at all outside of PP or Angkor Wat at the time. So what you may call harsh conditions has probably already been a vast improvement in comparison to what I encountered there a decade earlier. And this comparison thing is important to keep in mind. If you move from a 1st world country to a 3rd world country without proper preparations (studying history, customs, culture and language), that can be the shock of your life because the contrast is so extreme. The mistake many people make is looking at the living standards they encounter from the perspective of living standards they are used to. What may seem atrocious conditions to the western mind, often is just normal to local minds. Another thing to keep in mind is LOA, i.e. the fact that the people and circumstances you encounter are always a match to and reflect your actual inner state of being. So if someone who is traumatized goes to such a place what kind of people will s/he encounter? And what kind of stories will s/he then tell about that place and what conclusions will s/he draw about that country? Tricky business. Said that, it's probably true that most of the world - technologically speaking - lives in the dark ages. But it is has been my personal experience based on visiting and actually living in such place that it's the other way around in terms of mental attitude. I don't much about Rose, I've read a lot of 'great teacher' reviews about him, but if that quote is indicative of his general perspective, then I'm very disappointed.Some good points here.
And yes, one who is regarding life in general as a 'nightmare' is clearly not awake.
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Post by laughter on Aug 6, 2019 11:00:30 GMT -5
Then peace of mind or happiness...not the right words to use. Absolutely not the right words to use, yes. Right, the way I took it was Jed leading the reader's mind with the ambiguity about what he meant by "peace of mind". |
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Post by Reefs on Aug 6, 2019 11:02:04 GMT -5
You misunderstood. I used the word 'selling' metaphorically. You took it literally. I don't doubt your good intentions. I see no reason why. You didn't answer my question. I'll reply in detail, but you have to first answer my initial question: Did you or didn't you eventually sit down with 'Jed', face to face, and have a talk like adults? Metaphors are not usually conducive to Clarity and honesty of expression. Regarding your assertions of 'love/hate'... this kind of BS tends to come from women whose emotionally driven reasoning cannot see any motivation other than some illicit 'love' story. It amazes me every time. To put you at ease.. no love or hate was present. I don't know the guy that well, or hardly, to be precise, aside from email correspondence and those few meetings in Snooky. Which 'Jed' do you mean in your question? The Cambodian impostor? No, I never sat down with him and see no need. There was a need those year back since I wanted to know what was true about the situation. Of course, Kenneth would not 'sit down', as it would have meant disclosing who he really was - not McKenna. Which I eventually discovered, with proof, for myself. As I said on the website... I have around 10GB of 'Jed' data, both Ken and the real one. What has been published is a minuscule part of it. To pre-empty your further wondering 'why'... why do some people want to find out the identity of Jack the Ripper nearly two hundred years after? Or of some other entities that happened to exist throughout history? Who bloody know, it is not exactly that they are 'in love' with Jack, are they? I don't know. It is a drive to preserve a tiny piece of history, to not allow it to go the way Jack went. I don't expect anyone to understand this drive, in the same way I don't expect myself to understand the drive of some people to keep ants as pets or to scale the tallest buildings of the world or peep into the telescope to find the next galaxy. Each to their own.
Well, if you don't want to come across as a teenager who got jilted by her favorite pop star idol then you may want to make some changes to your blog and how you present yourself. Because that's exactly the impression people will get. And I'm not even a woman. And the fact that this 'Jed' relationship is basically limited to virtual reality only just adds to that impression. To your questions: Now, answer me this.. have I ever patronized you in the way you have just done above? First off, I don't agree with your 'patronizing' characterization. Secondly, I'm not aware of you having said something similar to me recently but you may have done so in the past. You certainly did talk like that to Laughter just recently. Have I ever told you what you should or should not do? Yes. Have I given my opinion on the state of your being?
Yes. Do you understand just why 'Jed' does not engage the public?
This is about you, not Jed. Stop hiding behind 'Jed'. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 11:06:58 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. Yeah, I agree.
I've been looking for a particular quote of his I shared a few months ago, but can't seem to find it. Jed specifically states in it that being awake means you no longer care at all or find anything of importance within the dream. Very brown-bearish.
I think he's gotten close to that in a few of the quotes you've shared here....specifically the one where he talks about no longer being interested in anything but walking with his dog and the insinuation that this is how it will be for anyone who is enlightened.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 11:14:27 GMT -5
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. I was raised catholic, but never bought into it....and it always baffled me how grown adults, including my own parents, somehow had. So there really wasn't much to deconstruct...if anything, the seeing of how intelligent people could be bamboozled in that way had me seeing pretty early on, the depth of mind's shenanigans. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 11:16:13 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! From what I've heard, the dude who wrote the first three is not even involved with the latter books. But again, who knows.  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 11:20:55 GMT -5
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? Literally, yes, and then it seems he even adds personal judgements of 'bleakness, darkness'.....
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2019 11:24:54 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 Not quite the "mansion of delights/life as a playground" view, is it? |
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Well, Satch.. Ken might enjoy your company so. First, he is fond of this kind of ambiguities. This is what has kept him afloat for years.
