Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
- Rumi -
The paradigm gap
Talking about truth or consciousness is impossible because of what is called the “paradigm gap”.
Truth cannot be expressed or captured. We can only talk about what’s not, not what is.
We can only speak in terms of duality, opposites. We cannot know or conceive anything outside of duality. We fail in trying to capture something that cannot be captured in terms of our experiencing structure, the dualistic reality. You will never be able to express the truth, because it’s a movement and you cannot capture, contain or express it.
There’s consciousness, but no one can express it and no one can grasp it or point at it. You cannot find it because it isn’t lost. It’s everywhere at all times -never absent, never distant, but you cannot put it into words. That is the paradigm gap.
We can really only talk about what’s not, not what is.
“The awakening process is a process of deprograming, a process of unlearning what is untrue. The term untruth realization is the least misleading term for Awakening because one does not realize truth, rather, one undergoes the long self-peeling process of unknowing what is untrue – everything except I Am.”
- Jed McKenna -
The search for truth is absurd, because it’s a thing which you cannot capture, or give expression to. You have to become less false by illuminating what is not true and let the truth reveal itself, what remains is the unspeakable truth.
So, instead of seeking for the truth, you illuminate what is not, what belief you are holding to be true.
The only truth is I Am - I Exist.
That is the only truth.
Everything else is a concept.
- Ramesh Balsekar -
I am is the fundamental constant of knowledge, everything else is a belief. You can’t know Consciousness directly until you unknow everything in the way of it.
The Awakening process
Truth realization is a deconstruction process. It is not about more, it’s about less. The only construction required for awakening is that which facilitates demolition.
Also, lets repeat again that awakening is not a self development journey at all. Neither it is a seeking process. It’s a deconstruction process of all what is un-true. All what is not. Nothing remains standing.
NETI NETI
(not this, not that)
"In the seeing of who you are not, the reality of who you are emerges by itself.”
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj -
“The belief in things which are untrue is what imprisons us in the dream state. We must question all of our beliefs, ideas, opinions and assumptions down to the very source of our being until that which is true, real, and everlasting reveals itself. I am is the absolute truth. Everything else is a belief. Awareness is all.”
- Adyashanti -
Spiritual Autolysis
Freedom is an incomplete idea. You have to be free from something. What you want to be free from?
What is Enlightenment?
Enlightenment is freedom from falsehood.
Awakening is the process of deprogramming.
Enlightenment is the unprogrammed state.
- Jed McKenna -
Jed McKenna proposed a deconstruction practice he called Spiritual Autolysis, which is a very simple but profound practice. The first step is to go for the truth. Self inquire... What is true about who I am? Tear away layer after layer. All you have to do is sit down and write the truth, and keep writing until you’ve come up with something that is true.
This is not a diary about self exploration or feelings and insights. It’s not about personal or spiritual evolution. This is about what you know for sure, about what you are that is true. It doesn’t matter where you start. Write and rewrite. Make it cleaner and cut out the excess of ego and follow it wherever it leads until you’re done.
With this process you tear away layer after layer of untruth masquerading as truth. Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic, your own opponent.
What is true? or Who am I? is the question at your very center. Use this inquire relentlessly as a tool for drilling down through all the layers of ego and delusion.
In the process of untruth unrealization, one dismantles one’s fictional persona by peeling away the built-up layers of false identity until all that’s left is that which can’t be severed, destroyed or further reduced; truth, I-Am point of awareness.
The suspension of disbelief
What is preventing us from awakening? The unchallenged assumptions we hold in our belief system of reality, and, the blind acceptance of the mass mentality (the consensus reality) are the main cause of our lack of doubt.
When you go to a movie, you make a deal with yourself to relax your discrimination and let the movie in. This is call “willing suspension of disbelief”. You know the movie isn’t reality, but you will sit quietly for two hours and allow yourself to experience it as if it were. You suspend your disbelief in order to form an empathic bond with the characters and the movie. We do the same with reality.
We never look because we never doubt, and we never doubt because we are full of unchallenged assumptions, we accept appearances and ride on the tide of consensus.
As a practical necessity, we all suspend disbelief all the time. Somewhere inside of us we know that fast-food lunch is more harmful than nutritious, but we eat it anyway. This is because seriously, it's not what we eat that's crazy, is all. Where to draw the line?
We could never eat in a restaurant or buy in a normal grocery store without suspending disbelief (making ourselves forgetful) about the quality of what we consume. We have to be dumb assholes about everything so we can end the day. We cannot get rid of the suspension of disbelief because it is the operating medium within the dream of life, and we are not only in the dream but we are the dream itself.
We are programmed from birth to suspend disbelief and let ourselves pretend reality is real, but if we want to stop pretending and find out what’s really real, we have to reengage our critical disbelief systems and become rabidly, fanatically, pathologically skeptical.
No amount of skepticism could ever be too extreme. Truth doesn’t need your devotion. It need you to open up your eyes. By being skeptical you are not defending a position, you are sharing your honest observations, honest to the core, transcending sacredness and holy unchallenged beliefs. Truth realization doesn’t require anything but purity of intent.
In the core of Buddhism it’s said that there is only one sin: The sin of ignorance. There’s nothing else. It is not the kind of ignorance where you don’t know something. It’s the kind where you do know something that’s not true.
We believe that we are rational beings and can mock those who we assume to be less rational than us, but we could ask ourselves, What if we are not rational? And what if the appearance of rationality is presented before the perception of reality? What if we're under a spell that tells us we're awake?
The human experience has to be completely convincing, involving our senses and mental state, so a degree of suspension of disbelief must be imposed on the players.
It is not the lie we believe that keeps us in the dream, but the lie that we never question. The dream may be real, but it's not true. It may seem to exist on its own, but it does not.
Hold nothing sacred
Don’t hold anything sacred, holy or divine; only true or not true. All that you consider sacred and profound is against the process of awakening. Take your inquiry seriously and hold nothing sacred. Holding nothing sacred means that nothing is assumed to be true and all of your assumptions are fair game. The more spiritual they are, the more they are fair game. Ultimately it is your most sacred and unquestioned assumptions about yourself, others, and life that are most important to question.
Be careful with tradition
Tradition is the deeply rutted path that gets formed after many years of being followed by the herd. The uncritical acceptance typical of the herd mentality is the soil in which all false beliefs take root. Tradition is just a word for beliefs you accept as true without verifying it for yourself. Instead of self-reliance and self-determination, most people just buy a belief system where no thinking is required.
For the alternative seekers, just take in consideration that running apart from the herd is certainly better than running with it, but of no substantive difference if you’re still running in the same direction.
Do not believe on the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honor for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it. It’s self-verified or it fails, simple as that. You are on your own.
What is faith?
Faith is just another face of fear. It is a defensive mechanism of the frightened heart trying to rule over the doubting mind. Fear overshadows reason and gives rise to faith. Let’s be honest; this is not a faith and trust business, this is a self-verification business.
Self reliance
I consider that the Buddha’s real teaching is “Figure it out for yourself”. If Prince Siddhartha made it on his own, you can too. The Buddha was just some guy who got serious and figured it out for himself, so maybe that’s his real teachings - that you can figure it out for yourself. Maybe the point is that he wasn’t a sort of deity but that he was just a guy like you or me.
Truth has no teaching, requires no guru, and is not a spiritual pursuit. The search for truth is not a spiritual endeavor and never was. The last thing you need is more knowledge. Waking up is not a theoretical subject one masters through study and comprehension. Much of the teachings you will read in your life is a finger pointing at the finger pointing at the moon rather than at the moon.
The Vampire analogy
If vampires really walked the earth there would be teachers and classes where you could signed up if you wanted to become a vampire yourself, as, I suppose, some people would. If the teacher were a vampire himself, he might just bite everyone and swap fluids or whatever and they’re all vampires.
But if the teacher were just a regular human and not really a vampire, then you might find him handling down specific rules for his students to follow: Don’t go out in the sunlight; Don’t eat garlic; Don’t drink holy water; Don’t drive wooden sticks through your heart, and so forth.
And vampires wanabees would stand in line and pay their money to hear it. They would return to their lives and struggle to follow their teacher’s instructions in the hope that, by doing so, they would eventually achieve vampirehood.
But, as we all know, that’s not how to become a vampire, that’s how to play a fantasy. If you just want to be happy and acting like a vampire makes you happy, then super, that’s definitely the thing to do. But, if you want to become a vampire, then wearing black and getting your canines sharped isn’t going to do the trick.
There’s no outside authority. You have to verify everything yourself, directly, without the obstruction and distorting filters of interpreters or middlemen. If you adopt something someone said, it’s only after you have verified it for yourself. You must sort this out for yourself because your self is the thing to be sorted. You are on your own. The first rule in this business is that you are on your own.
When we hear the frase “Kill the Buddha!”, it means further. Get up! You’re not there yet, keep moving. You think you’re there but you’re not. Whoever it is, whatever it is -is just another projection of your own bullshit. Kill the thing and keep going. That’s what it means.
At the moment, as humankind, we are living our worst case scenario. So don’t rely on the beliefs that we see around as the norm. Cultivate a skeptic mind and approach. Open your eyes. Look. Nourish your discontent. Start fresh. Think for yourself. Trust in self reliance. You’re completely on your own.
The golden rule in the process is Think for yourself. Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. That’s all you need to know to awaken. Sit down, and ask yourself what’s true until you know. Don’t follow. Stay with the question. What is true?, Who am I? Everything is available for direct knowing.
Those who know how to think
need no teachers.
- Mahadma Gandhi -
Recommended article: Wrongness Vs. Natural flowing