You Are That Which Observes

 “Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.”

― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The trouble with most people's concept of Enlightenment is that they think it adds something to them. It doesn't. The Ego wants to add things, to become more, to be important, to have a shiny "I Am Enlightened - Look At Me!" badge, but it can't.

YOU, the Ego, is that which is awoken from.

You never existed. You were just a construct, reliant on false memories, conveniently forgetting those gaps in time when you didn't exist because you forgot to pay attention to the thoughts.

Let me make that  clear again:

The little you, the Ego, CANNOT be enlightened, because it's not real.

For anyone who is still trapped in seeking and not understanding, Enlightenment takes things away, it does not add them. The truly enlightened know very little, because we are trying to express truth and truth cannot be expressed well in language.

What you truly are exists before language.

• You do not see, seeing happens.
• You do not taste, tasting happens.
• You do not touch, touching happens.
• You do not hear, hearing happens.
• You do not smell, smelling happens.
• You do not THINK, thinking happens.

You are as real as the 'it' in the phrase "It is raining".

Post-enlightenment brings with it the realisation that there is no 'do-er'. That life just happens and that you are not the body, or the mind, but you are the totality of everything.

You no longer 'know' anything that can be expressed well in language, because language cannot express that Truth. The best we can do is 'truthy' posts, like this one.

You don't need some super-experience of one-ness, some Samadhi High, because those are experiences, and they only happen to the ego. It just becomes something you understand, that you cannot find an edge to the real 'you'. That you cannot imagine a place in the universe where 'you' do not exist, because what you actually are contains the whole universe.

You truly are the Creator and Destroyer of all you perceive.

Use Only Enlightened Teachers

In this day and age where there are thousands of so-called gurus, we have to be careful who we choose to listen to because if we make the mistake of following someone who is ego-centered in their true intentions, then we will lose time, money, and opportunity costs (among other things). -- Paul Lenda (Shift)

There are many false teachers and charlatans in spirituality. In all kinds of spirituality. The main concern in this blog is that of post-enlightenment, liberation, freedom from the ego and, even in those pursuits, there are many false teachers.

A false teacher is anyone who is trying to teach you something which they do not truly understand.

Some do it because they want money, or because they want fame, or because they want followers. All of them are lying to you. All of them are wasting your time, insofar as time exists. You need to be wise to find the true teachers and yet, until you truly understand enlightenment you are unable to separate the false from the true.

Take for an example: Buddhism.

There are many branches of Buddhism. From the Tibetan style to the Zen style and everything in between. I am sure there are many enlightened teachers in many of those styles, and yet there are more who are not. 

I have listened to teachers in Buddhism who obviously have no understanding of the enlightenment process, other than that which they have read in books, or been taught by their equally inexperienced teachers.

Enlightenment is not an experience for the ego, just to clarify that once again. 

Enlightenment involves a total absence of ego. The ego is that which is seen to be false, to never have existed, to be merely a convenient construct like all language.

If a teacher is not capable of looking at you and the world from beyond the seat of the ego, then they cannot teach you. If they want your money, or your loyalty, or your worship, or your body then you can be sure that they are not Awake.

I met a leader of a spiritual tradition a few years ago who was teaching workshops and trying to bring people to a point which we would term enlightenment, but had never discovered that they, themselves, did not exist. 

They said all the right words but they interspersed it with name-dropping and tales of their personal interactions with famous people. Some of those famous people truly are awake, but this teacher, this leader, is not.

It is easy to fool people because the people do not know they are being fooled.

Enlightenment is a paradox and only someone to whom it has occurred can understand that paradox. Much of our teaching on enlightenment is misunderstood because those hearing cannot grasp the viewpoint from which we speak.

It is not hard to wake up as long as you are willing to let go of all your baggage. 

There can be no conditions as you approach enlightenment. You cannot hold anything back. You must give up every opinion, every belief, every position, every story because only egos hang onto those.

It has been very hard to write this blog post, to try to clarify the difference between an enlightened teacher and a charlatan. I seek no followers. All my needs are met by the universe because I am the universe. I give instruction freely and I have no time for charlatans.

Truth is the most important thing in a post-enlightenment worldview. This is why the answer to many of the questions people ask me is often "I don't know.", because that is the truth.

In an ego-less world we embrace uncertainty. As a teacher of mine once said many years ago:

"You can either be right, or you can be Awake – the two are mutually exclusive."

Nothing Has Ever Died

“All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.” -- Adyashanti

Since the beginning of life, nothing has ever died.

This is not some strange philosophy. This is not some weird new-age belief. This is a simple, scientific fact. It also aligns nicely with the whole process of Enlightenment. I have never seen anyone else discuss this, although it is something that I have been teaching for years.

Think about what life is. Really think about it. Take several seconds or a minute and think about what creates life. Think about the biological process. Think about DNA. Think about how things reproduce.

If you have got all that in mind before we continue then the answer is obvious as to why nothing ever dies, nor ever has.

Some time way back in the evolutionary past a soup of amino acids came about, possibly in a warm vent, a hot bubbling pool, some heated mud. Those amino acids came together to form the first life.

That first life then, as it does now, self replicated by dividing its genetic material and making a copy. 

The simplest lifeforms in our world still do the same thing. Everything from amoeba up to bacteria. Also, if you give it some thought, this still applies to humans.

Leaving aside all our ancestors on the trail to becoming Homo Sapiens, ever since the first identifiable member of our species walked upon the earth they have replicated themselves in the same way. The host body creates a copy of its DNA. A sperm or an egg exists that is part of that host, created from the same genetic material as that host, alive inside that host. So the human divides itself and makes copies from its own material, its own flesh, its own self.

In our biological method of reproduction, the sperm from the male is introduced to the egg from the female to create a new life – but is it new? Isn't it really half of the male's self and half of the female's self? So as long as this reproduced version continues, then so does the male and so does the female. They have simply procreated by dividing their own cells and then allowing those cells to combine with those of another organism to which they are related.

I'm not talking about kissing cousins here, I mean in the simple fact that at some point they shared a common ancestor who divided its genetic material and passed it on in the same way and is therefore still alive in them.

So you take it to its logical conclusion and neither of them is a separate living being. 

They are formed of the genetic material from that common ancestor who still lives because all of her cells never died. That common ancestor can be traced back in a line through various species and forms of reproduction all the way back to that primordial soup, that bubbling mud, that heated pool and those amino acids.

The original life which formed in that pool never died – it divided, it copied itself using its own material, its own flesh, its own life. That original life still exists in everything that is alive on this whole planet.

There is only One Life. One original ancestral mud pool. One life that has developed and adapted to whatever environment or situation it found itself in. One life that became you. One life that became me. One life that became the trees, the birds, the fish, the insects, the bacteria, the viruses and everything else that lives, however you understand that life to exist.

Nothing has ever died, because there is only One Thing going on.