Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing ET1

The process of awakening might be viewed as the transition between these two poles; the journey from fear and wrong-making to gratitude and open-eyed acceptance. If you don’t see what I am calling fear, rest assured, you can. Make the effort to see it somewhere and you will begin to see it everywhere, including, most importantly, in yourself. Don’t, however, rely on your current definition of fear and look for that. You won’t find it. Loosen up. Bring your A game. Observe, think, dissect, detect patterns. Watch for motivations, then find the motivation beneath the motivation. Abandon your assumptions and approach it from the other direction; not from within but from without, not from the micro but from the macro. Even from men and women who are successful, calm, poised, and self-possessed, fear exudes like a noxious stink. If we exude it too, then we are not aware of it, not sensitive to it and not offended by it, but it’s there, everywhere, in everyone, and once you can sense it directly and recalibrate your filters accordingly, you will have made a major stride toward dispelling your own toxic cloud.

Admittedly, this is all a bit theoretical. I didn’t come at the whole thing from this angle and I don’t know if it can be done. I just know what I see and that it’s there to be seen by anyone who looks—really looks in a hard, thoughtful manner through fresh eyes—and I know that any time we see more of what is true and less of what is false, we are making actual progress.

Do you want to awaken? To stop being a false, artificial, self-benighted being? Then developing and sharpening this sense—the ability to detect fear and the source and emanations of fear—amounts to nothing more than disengaging your own autoimmune system; the subsystem of ego that keeps this poison from making you sick. Yes, to get it out you must let it in, breathe it deep, and allow yourself to become sickened by it. The way out is through, and there can be no rebirth without first a death.

The man in whom Tao acts without impediment
Does not bother with his own interests
And does not despise others who do.

He does not struggle to make money
And does not make a virtue of poverty.

He goes his way without relying on others
And does not pride himself on walking alone.

While he does not follow the crowd
He won’t complain of those who do.

Rank and reward make no appeal to him;
Disgrace and shame do not deter him.

He is not always looking for right and wrong
Always deciding “Yes” and “No.”

The ancients said, therefore:

“The man of Tao remains unknown.
Perfect virtue produces nothing
No-Self is True-Self
And the greatest man is Nobody.”

Chuang Tzu

The reason for all the excess is that there’s no saying it directly because there’s no it, so everything has to be communicated indirectly—what it’s not, what it’s like—never what it is.