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spiritual materialism. The universal tendency, he shows, is to see spirituality as a process of self-improvement—the impulse to develop and refine the ego when the ego is, by nature, essentially empty. “The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use,” he said, “even spirituality.”
the true and joyous liberation that inevitably involves letting go of the self rather than working to improve it.
mundane material pursuits in sacred garments.
Training one’s mind, body, and speech in accordance with the truth would bring about the understanding and wisdom that produces peace.
Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it.
The absence of ignorance, of being crowded in, of paranoia, opens up a tremendous view of life.
we have become so absorbed in our confused view of the world, that we consider it real, the only possible world.
the “three lords of materialism”: the “lord of form,” the “lord of speech,” and the “lord of mind.”
the words materialism and neurotic refer to the action of ego.
The lord of form refers to the neurotic pursuit of physical comfort, s...
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attempts to create a manageable, safe, predictable, pleasurable world.
ego’s ambition to secure and entertain itself, trying to avoid all irritation.
The lord of speech refers to the use of intellect in relating to our world.
The lord of speech refers to the inclination on the part of ego to interpret anything that is threatening or irritating in such a way as to neutralize the threat or turn it into something “positive” from ego’s point of view.
the use of concepts as filters to screen us from a direct perception of what is.
The lord of mind refers to the effort of consciousness to maintain awareness of itself.
when we use spiritual and psychological disciplines as the means of maintaining our self-consciousness, of holding on to our sense of self. Drugs, yoga, prayer, meditation, trances, various psychotherapies
try to imitate spirituality,
Ego translates everything in terms of its own state of health, its own inherent qualities. It feels a sense of great accomplishment and excitement at having been able to create such a pattern. At last it has created a tangible accomplishment, a confirmation of its own individuality.
religion may provide us with a rationalization for creating a secure nest,
our technology cannot shield us from war, crime, illness, economic insecurity, laborious work, old age, and death; nor can our ideologies shield us from doubt, uncertainty, confusion, and disorientation; nor can our therapies protect us from the dissolution of the high states of consciousness that we may temporarily achieve and the disillusionment and anguish that follow.
the three lords seduce us by creating a fundamental myth: that we are solid beings.
and it is the root of our suffering.
So the practice of meditation involves “letting be.”
“in your meditation practice you should not impose anything too forcefully on your mind, nor should you let it wander.
feeling the flow of energy without trying to subdue it and without letting it get out of control, of going with the energy pattern of mind.
meditation practice must begin with ego’s outermost layer, the discursive thoughts which continually run through our minds, our mental gossip.
The more we generate thoughts, the busier we are mentally and the more convinced we are of our existence.
In true meditation there is no ambition to stir up thoughts, nor is there an ambition to suppress them. They are just allowed to occur spontaneously and become an expression of basic sanity. They become the expression of the precision and the clarity of the awakened state of mind.
The world exists, therefore I, the perceiver of the world, exist.
Labeling becomes simply the act of discrimination.
there is no need to struggle to prove our existence,
There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.
we find some comfort in pretending to follow the path.
Whenever we begin to evaluate, deciding that we should or should not do this or that, then we have already associated our practice or our knowledge with categories, one pitted against the other, and that is spiritual materialism,
step out of the bureaucracy of ego.
If you really appreciate an object of beauty, then you completely identify with it and forget yourself.
At that moment there is no world;
“Knowledge must be burned, hammered, and beaten like pure gold. Then one can wear it as an ornament.”
Because America is looking so hard for spirituality, religion becomes an easy way to make money and achieve fame.
you are working with the totality of the whole,
beyond “this” and “that.”
One has to work with a kind of “middle way,” a complete state of “being as you are.”
If you are not willing to let yourself grow, then you fall into the self-destructive process of confusion.
Surrender means opening oneself completely, trying to get beyond fascination and expectation.
We must surrender our hopes and expectations, as well as our fears, and march directly into disappointment, work with disappointment, go into it, and make it our way of life, which is a very hard thing to do. Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious, and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing. This automatically brings a feeling of disappointment.
We have the feeling that every step of the path we tread should be a lotus petal, and we develop a logic that interprets whatever happens to us accordingly. If we fall, we create a soft landing which prevents sudden shock.
Once we open ourselves, then we land on what is.
open psychologically and surrender completely by identifying ourselves with the lowest of the low,
prepare ourselves to be an empty vessel,
