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Post by Reefs on Jul 19, 2019 21:19:40 GMT -5
Nothing to do
Jed: Since one of the things I’m trying to do with these books is hold the awakened state up for display, I should mention one of the more peculiar things about it, which is that I have nothing to do. I don’t have any challenges left, and I can’t just make one up. I can write this book and maybe stay involved with communicating on this subject in some minor way, but the fact remains; I have nothing to do. I like being alive, but I don’t really have anything to do while alive. I like to sit and be, I like to appreciate the creative accomplishments of man, especially as they involve his attempts to get his situation figured out, but appreciation is a pretty flat pastime.
I’m not complaining, just expressing something about this state that most people probably aren’t aware of. I am content, and contentment is overrated. I have no framework within which anything is better than anything else, so what I do doesn’t particularly matter. I have no ambition, nowhere to go, no one to be or become. I don’t need to distract myself from anything or convince myself of anything. There’s nothing that I think isn’t as it should be, and I have no interest in how others see me. I have nothing to guide me except my own comfort and discomfort. I don’t seem to be too bored or unhappy about it, so I guess it sounds weirder than it is.
Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 2
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Post by Reefs on Jul 20, 2019 7:09:56 GMT -5
Sleepwalkers (1)
Jed: To the awakened mind, the unawakened can be a source of frequent dismay. The distance between awake and asleep is so infinitesimal that it’s hard to remember they’re a universe apart. Zen parables about instant enlightenment seem suddenly probable, as if just the right event—the whack of a stick, a poignant non sequitur, an overturned bowl—could suddenly snap someone into full awareness.
The unawakened mind sees an enormous barrier—the proverbial gate—between itself and the awakened mind. The awakened mind sees with perfect clarity that no such gate exists. Hence, frequent dismay. The really strange thing about being awake isn’t being awake; it’s the people that aren’t. They’re walking and talking in their dreamstates; some of them declaring their deep commitment to waking up while doing everything possible not to.
Have you ever been around a sleepwalker who had their eyes open and was performing a task, even speaking? It’s pretty eerie. Now imagine the whole world is like that. It’s eerie and it’s lonely, but more than that, it’s dubious. It lacks credibility. It’s not believable. Even at the level of consensual reality, it’s hard to accept that these people are all really asleep.
I’m able to interact to some degree with sleepwalkers, but they’re speaking from within a dreamstate world that I can’t see and only barely remember. They might say they want to wake up, but it quickly becomes apparent that they have some dreamworld notion of what awake means that might involve anything so long as it doesn’t disturb their slumber. Ego’s guard dog is ever-vigilant, and it bites. They say that sleepwalkers get violent if you try to wake them; a curiously apt parallel.
Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 2
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Post by laughter on Jul 20, 2019 7:54:22 GMT -5
Nothing to do
Jed: Since one of the things I’m trying to do with these books is hold the awakened state up for display, I should mention one of the more peculiar things about it, which is that I have nothing to do. I don’t have any challenges left, and I can’t just make one up. I can write this book and maybe stay involved with communicating on this subject in some minor way, but the fact remains; I have nothing to do. I like being alive, but I don’t really have anything to do while alive. I like to sit and be, I like to appreciate the creative accomplishments of man, especially as they involve his attempts to get his situation figured out, but appreciation is a pretty flat pastime. I’m not complaining, just expressing something about this state that most people probably aren’t aware of. I am content, and contentment is overrated. I have no framework within which anything is better than anything else, so what I do doesn’t particularly matter. I have no ambition, nowhere to go, no one to be or become. I don’t need to distract myself from anything or convince myself of anything. There’s nothing that I think isn’t as it should be, and I have no interest in how others see me. I have nothing to guide me except my own comfort and discomfort. I don’t seem to be too bored or unhappy about it, so I guess it sounds weirder than it is. Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 2 What the author is describing isn't all that mysterious, although certain flavors of existential insight can amplify it - it's based in simple sanity on agency and the meaning of the action of life, ie: purpose. But this definitely follows your criticism that he's writing from a personal perspective, and in my opinion mixing contexts. He's right of course about the absence of any need to distract or convince, but personal purpose becomes quite clear with .. well .. clarity.  And it doesn't mean that there isn't any. |
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Post by Reefs on Jul 20, 2019 9:04:02 GMT -5
Sleepwalkers (2)
Jed: I’m perfectly aware that these people’s lives [at the social gathering] are theirs to do with as they wish. I’m perfectly aware that it’s their party and that I’m the turd in the punch bowl. I’m perfectly aware that I’m the reality-freak and that they’re just children playing in their own playground, minding their own business. It’s not that I want to crack their shells just for the sake of shaking them up. I don’t want to assume the role of spiritual mucky-muck with this crowd or any other, and I sure as hell don’t want to save anybody. Save from what? Life?
What always makes me buggy, though, is that life played by the rules is more wonderful and exciting by countless orders of magnitude than life played by make-believe. It’s a great, amazing, perfect thing, and they’re totally missing it. The game of their lives is passing them by as they sit around the dinner table swilling wine and inflicting their daintily coifed opinions on each other. They’re busy playing dozens or hundreds of mind-numbing little games in order to avoid the only real game, and I can’t help but think that if they’d just learn to deal with their fear a little bit, they could pull up a seat and get in on the game of their lives. It’s about what really is, and what really is is actually very cool once you get to the place where you can look at it directly and begin to understand your relationship to it.
It’s not about truth-realization or spiritual enlightenment, it’s just about facing facts, the facts of life, and most people go through their entire lives doing nothing other than avoiding the facts. What makes me buggy isn’t that they’re a bunch of fúcking morons; we’re all fúcking morons. It’s that I know something that I’m sure they’d really like to hear, and I’m sure that I could get through to them if I just express myself clearly.
I'm the real fúcking moron, of course, the odd man out, and I’m sure my thinking closely resembles that of any wide-eyed fanatic who thinks they’re the only one with the inside line. In my own defense, I’d like to say that I get caught up in situations like this one quite infrequently. For the last few years I’ve pretty much stayed clear of people altogether, and that’s worked out to everyone’s satisfaction.
Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 2
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Post by Reefs on Jul 20, 2019 9:52:12 GMT -5
What the author is describing isn't all that mysterious, although certain flavors of existential insight can amplify it - it's based in simple sanity on agency and the meaning of the action of life, ie: purpose. But this definitely follows your criticism that he's writing from a personal perspective, and in my opinion mixing contexts. He's right of course about the absence of any need to distract or convince, but personal purpose becomes quite clear with .. well .. clarity. And it doesn't mean that there isn't any. I'm really glad I followed this recent hunch of picking up Jed again. I find this last series of quotes very interesting and very clarifying about Jed's actual perspective, especially the sleepwalker quotes. I can absolutely relate to what Jed is talking about there, I know exactly how that feels, what he is trying to express there. Actually, I could have written all of that myself more than 20 years ago! Jed perfectly describes my attitude and perspective at the end of my seeker days. It was a time when I was done with the search and the realized the sheer silliness of the spiritual circus, but lightening hadn’t struck yet (I was only semi-aware of that fact, at best). Kinda funny that to Jed this state is the post-SR perspective while to me it is only the last stage of the pre-SR perspective. But as you have been alluding, it’s what I’ve suspected all along while reading ‘D@mnedest’. So, in a sense, he’s just confirming my suspicion from the first book in these quotes. And now it makes perfect sense to me why he says the things he says, and why he says it the way he says it. Mystery solved! In retrospect, I’d describe that state as some kind of twilight zone, definitely wide awake in the social consensus trance sense of the word, but still fast asleep in the mental presence sense of the word. It’s probably best described as mind-enlightenment. And usually ESA and mind-enlightenment go together as I've found out later. So, Jed there, in a less exaggerated version, could have basically been me more than 20 years ago.  |
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Post by laughter on Jul 20, 2019 10:49:41 GMT -5
What the author is describing isn't all that mysterious, although certain flavors of existential insight can amplify it - it's based in simple sanity on agency and the meaning of the action of life, ie: purpose. But this definitely follows your criticism that he's writing from a personal perspective, and in my opinion mixing contexts. He's right of course about the absence of any need to distract or convince, but personal purpose becomes quite clear with .. well .. clarity. And it doesn't mean that there isn't any. I'm really glad I followed this recent hunch of picking up Jed again. I find this last series of quotes very interesting and very clarifying about Jed's actual perspective, especially the sleepwalker quotes. I can absolutely relate to what Jed is talking about there, I know exactly how that feels, what he is trying to express there. Actually, I could have written all of that myself more than 20 years ago! Jed perfectly describes my attitude and perspective at the end of my seeker days. It was a time when I was done with the search and the realized the sheer silliness of the spiritual circus, but lightening hadn’t struck yet (I was only semi-aware of that fact, at best). Kinda funny that to Jed this state is the post-SR perspective while to me it is only the last stage of the pre-SR perspective. But as you have been alluding, it’s what I’ve suspected all along while reading ‘D@mnedest’. So, in a sense, he’s just confirming my suspicion from the first book in these quotes. And now it makes perfect sense to me why he says the things he says, and why he says it the way he says it. Mystery solved! In retrospect, I’d describe that state as some kind of twilight zone, definitely wide awake in the social consensus trance sense of the word, but still fast asleep in the mental presence sense of the word. It’s probably best described as mind-enlightenment. And usually ESA and mind-enlightenment go together as I've found out later. So, Jed there, in a less exaggerated version, could have basically been me more than 20 years ago. Interesting, thanks for taking the time to express that. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2019 15:27:03 GMT -5
What the author is describing isn't all that mysterious, although certain flavors of existential insight can amplify it - it's based in simple sanity on agency and the meaning of the action of life, ie: purpose. But this definitely follows your criticism that he's writing from a personal perspective, and in my opinion mixing contexts. He's right of course about the absence of any need to distract or convince, but personal purpose becomes quite clear with .. well .. clarity. And it doesn't mean that there isn't any. I'm really glad I followed this recent hunch of picking up Jed again. I find this last series of quotes very interesting and very clarifying about Jed's actual perspective, especially the sleepwalker quotes. I can absolutely relate to what Jed is talking about there, I know exactly how that feels, what he is trying to express there. Actually, I could have written all of that myself more than 20 years ago! Jed perfectly describes my attitude and perspective at the end of my seeker days. It was a time when I was done with the search and the realized the sheer silliness of the spiritual circus, but lightening hadn’t struck yet (I was only semi-aware of that fact, at best). Kinda funny that to Jed this state is the post-SR perspective while to me it is only the last stage of the pre-SR perspective. But as you have been alluding, it’s what I’ve suspected all along while reading ‘D@mnedest’. So, in a sense, he’s just confirming my suspicion from the first book in these quotes. And now it makes perfect sense to me why he says the things he says, and why he says it the way he says it. Mystery solved! In retrospect, I’d describe that state as some kind of twilight zone, definitely wide awake in the social consensus trance sense of the word, but still fast asleep in the mental presence sense of the word. It’s probably best described as mind-enlightenment. And usually ESA and mind-enlightenment go together as I've found out later. So, Jed there, in a less exaggerated version, could have basically been me more than 20 years ago. It might be worth considering that SIE was first published in 2004. So it's probably fair to say that it would have been written circa 2002/03. |
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Post by Reefs on Jul 26, 2019 7:48:41 GMT -5
Me, me, me (1)
[fan mail] Question: Some say you’re not enlightened because you talk about me, me, me too much. Like you got too much ego.
Jed: None of it has anything to do with me. Any time you look at a group of people, any group, really, you can place the individuals on a spectrum of ego attachment. At one end of the spectrum are those who identify completely with their false self, and on the other are those who wear their ego impersonally, like a loose garment. In the world and of the world at one end, in the world but not of the world at the other. Since this degree of attachment is the only true measure of human age, the spectrum could just as well be represented in years; say, eight to sixteen.
The audience for a spiritual book is the same; it can be viewed on a spectrum of ego attachment, which we’re saying is like a more accurate way to look at people’s age. A book like 'Dạmnedest' is going to reach a much wider audience than it’s really best suited for. It says harsh things; very grown-up things. It says no belief is true. It says gurus and meditation and spiritual teachings are all gentle deceptions meant to soothe the inner coward, not forge the inner hero. So 'Dạmnedest' looks like a spiritual book, but it’s actually an anti-spiritual book. It looks like it’s for everyone, but it’s really for very few.
Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 8
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Post by maxdprophet on Jul 26, 2019 11:47:57 GMT -5
Sleepwalkers (1)Jed: To the awakened mind, the unawakened can be a source of frequent dismay. The distance between awake and asleep is so infinitesimal that it’s hard to remember they’re a universe apart. Zen parables about instant enlightenment seem suddenly probable, as if just the right event—the whack of a stick, a poignant non sequitur, an overturned bowl—could suddenly snap someone into full awareness. The unawakened mind sees an enormous barrier—the proverbial gate—between itself and the awakened mind. The awakened mind sees with perfect clarity that no such gate exists. Hence, frequent dismay. The really strange thing about being awake isn’t being awake; it’s the people that aren’t. They’re walking and talking in their dreamstates; some of them declaring their deep commitment to waking up while doing everything possible not to. Have you ever been around a sleepwalker who had their eyes open and was performing a task, even speaking? It’s pretty eerie. Now imagine the whole world is like that. It’s eerie and it’s lonely, but more than that, it’s dubious. It lacks credibility. It’s not believable. Even at the level of consensual reality, it’s hard to accept that these people are all really asleep. I’m able to interact to some degree with sleepwalkers, but they’re speaking from within a dreamstate world that I can’t see and only barely remember. They might say they want to wake up, but it quickly becomes apparent that they have some dreamworld notion of what awake means that might involve anything so long as it doesn’t disturb their slumber. Ego’s guard dog is ever-vigilant, and it bites. They say that sleepwalkers get violent if you try to wake them; a curiously apt parallel. Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 2 Much of Jed's schtick seems stuck in adolescence. I don't mean 'spiritual adolescence' vs 'spiritual adulthood.' I just mean that it sounds like any other teenager fed up with adults jabbering on about meaningless stuff while the world literally burns. Not only is the content of the adult dialogue escapist, but it can be done with a profound detachment from sincerity. Devoid of "mean what you say, say what you mean." As such it's a caricature, and thus strawman. Not saying there aren't characters out there like that. It's just cheap. |
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Post by Reefs on Jul 28, 2019 20:31:58 GMT -5
Me, me, me (2)
Question: So when they say you can’t be enlightened…
Jed: Me personally? It has nothing to do with me. Anyone who tries to drag me into it is just trying to distract themselves away from the real message, the grown up message, which is one of self-determination. Very scary stuff. If they say they don’t believe I’m enlightened, they’re right and they’re wrong. They’re right because no one is enlightened. I said so in 'Dạmnedest'; there is no such thing as an enlightened person; it’s an immutable contradiction. They’re wrong because when you talk about enlightenment, what I am is what you’re talking about, whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. They’re basing their statements on other things. They might feel that enlightenment is a subjective thing, an in-dreams thing, or perhaps they think that I, as an author, am seeking their approval or their verification; that my authenticity is for readers to decide. The spiritual marketplace seems to foster this buyer-seller dynamic rather than the most rigorous scientific-type inquiry, which would be much more appropriate for something so important.
Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 8
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Post by Reefs on Jul 28, 2019 21:12:59 GMT -5
Much of Jed's schtick seems stuck in adolescence. I don't mean 'spiritual adolescence' vs 'spiritual adulthood.' I just mean that it sounds like any other teenager fed up with adults jabbering on about meaningless stuff while the world literally burns. Not only is the content of the adult dialogue escapist, but it can be done with a profound detachment from sincerity. Devoid of "mean what you say, say what you mean." As such it's a caricature, and thus strawman. Not saying there aren't characters out there like that. It's just cheap. As Jed says in one of his books, the goal of the books is to put the enlightened state of being on display - abiding non-dual awareness. And if you actually believe that, then yes, you'll be very disappointed after reading the books. Because, as I've explained to Laughter, what Jed describes in his books is the twilight zone state of being, not the post SR state of being. But once that is clear, you'll be much more able to appreciate his books. There are some really good insights in the Jed books, especially the first one. His description and criticism of the spiritual circus is spot on, IMO. And his descriptions of the process of waking up from the consensus trance is spot on, too. All in all, I find the books a bit cheap, too. If you compare Jed's books to Niz' books, then Jed's books will look like 99% filler and only 1% substance, while for the Niz books it's the other way around. And Jed seems to try to compensate for that lack of actual substance with bombast and strong language. And that's getting a little old after a while. In the later books, he seems to have had trouble finding actual content for a book. As an example, in the second book, there are actually entire (!) chapters that consist of just quotes from other authors, or he just fills almost entire chapters with email threads from his (fictitious?) students, only interrupted by an occasional comment from Jed. What the heck?! |
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Post by Reefs on Jul 30, 2019 10:23:49 GMT -5
East vs. West (1)
Jed: America kicks spiritual ass. I am confident in saying that the American seeker could do as well or better in his own language and in his own country than he could by searching all of the East and going back to the Buddha.
The modern seeker need not feel that the answers he seeks are buried in distant lands, in ancient texts, in foreign tongues. We’ve produced spirits every bit as courageous and clear-spoken as any found in the East. Although we don’t have to, we can now comfortably dispense with India, Japan, China, Tibet and the rest. All anyone could possibly want is right here, in our own language and in our own general vicinity of time.
This isn’t meant in the spirit of an East-West pissing contest. I’m just sharing what I feel is a pretty interesting observation: America is not the spiritual third-world. We don’t have to become archeologists of spirit tramping desperately through the ages and around the world, as if what we seek was only to be found at the furthermost extremes of our reach, or just beyond. Our own time and place provides all we could need. Our own people have made their own journeys and have returned to tell us in our own language what they’ve found.
Wherever you go in time or place, the reality of the seeker’s situation is always the same; that more is less, translations are untrustworthy, the spirituality that serves society is not the same that serves the individual, ego rules the roost, and 99.99% of all the world’s so-called wisdom, East and West, is, for the purposes of awakening, about as useful as a glass of warm spit with a hair in it. Ptui!
Jed McKenna, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Chapter 12
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2019 22:29:13 GMT -5
Jed McKenna is to nonduality what The Archies are to rock and roll, what Patterson is to literary fiction, what zazeniac is to poetry, what Enigma is to frogdom, what Laffy is to porn studs. Poor imitators. I have so much more to say, but I shouldn't. He reminds me of the frat guys that used to come to party at this boarding home I lived in with several beautiful female foreign students, not the Delta guys from Animal House, but the prissy Omega Theta Pi guys.
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Post by satchitananda on Jul 30, 2019 22:41:39 GMT -5
Jed McKenna is to nonduality what The Archies are to rock and roll, what Patterson is to literary fiction, what zazeniac is to poetry, what Enigma is to frogdom, what Laffy is to porn studs. Poor imitators. I have so much more to say, but I shouldn't. He reminds me of the frat guys that used to come to party at this boarding home I lived in with several beautiful female foreign students, not the Delta guys from Animal House, but the prissy Omega Theta Pi guys. Isn't he just saying that you don't need to go to a particular place, either geographically or culturally, to find truth? |
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Post by laughter on Jul 30, 2019 23:50:29 GMT -5
Jed McKenna is to nonduality what The Archies are to rock and roll, what Patterson is to literary fiction, what zazeniac is to poetry, what Enigma is to frogdom, what Laffy is to porn studs. Poor imitators. I have so much more to say, but I shouldn't. He reminds me of the frat guys that used to come to party at this boarding home I lived in with several beautiful female foreign students, not the Delta guys from Animal House, but the prissy Omega Theta Pi guys.  ... gotta' say though, those last two quotes were pretty good. It's possible to find fault with them, but not unambiguously.  |
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And it doesn't mean that there isn't any.
... gotta' say though, those last two quotes were pretty good. It's possible to find fault with them, but not unambiguously.