The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left-brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement

by Chris Niebauer

In fact, there is nothing you can do to improve yourself in any way except to see that there is nothing you can do.

The interpretive mind has a built in failsafe such that when one is about to uncover that thoughts are not reality, the “reality” of thoughts will intensify to make sure that they are taken seriously.

in letting egoic thoughts show how silly and insecure they are, the ego eventually becomes the way through itself.

The egoic mind will try its best to keep replaying a game of winning and losing, but you don’t take it seriously any longer, which makes the game more playful.

Experiencing the playful nature of the universe may be more useful than the blissful state of enlightenment and perhaps the most playful act of the universe is to pretend that thoughts are genuine reality.

when no one is thinking about it, it doesn’t exist at all.

The deeper you go, the more you are forced out, and the more you are forced out, the deeper you go.

However, there can also be a great comfort to realize we can’t control our beliefs or egoic thoughts and never could, since this is not who we really are.

musterbation

Recognition that you are not the interpreter but the awareness that is being channeled into it takes the seriousness out of beliefs.

interpretations only exist as acts of perception.

One cannot have an ego without an observer because it is the observer that creates the perception of a pattern.

The egoic pattern you see in a teacher or anyone else, is you (or rather the result of your pattern-perceiving interpreter), it is just being directed outward as opposed to inward.

one can get the best glimpse of the interpreter by its absence, when it is still and we are no longer looking, as there are no patterns to be perceived in stillness.

The interpreter has become the master, not the servant to awareness, and it is a master you can never see because it is as transparent as the space in front of you.

we don’t see our ideas as ideas but rather as how the world really is.

Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the world that seems so real is only in the eye of the pattern perceiver;

Turn the pattern perceiver down and one finds depression. In depression one doesn’t see meaningful patterns or connections and life seems meaningless.

The law of opposition is a built-in protective mechanism that prevents most from ever noticing there is an interpretive mind.

the mistake we make is that because we have an idea of ourselves, we think this is a genuine something, when it is only an idea, a pattern perceived by the pattern perceiver.

But the only way to give the illusion that “it” isn’t “it” is to install invisible, transparent interpreters that look outward and see patterns that are really “out there” and look inward and find egos that are really “in there.” I’ll bring this up later because it is the essence of human drama.

that is exactly how it is supposed to

Just as the pattern perceiver can never see beyond the pattern you cannot go beyond your ego because it is in its eyes that you are created.

anyone who can enjoy the luxuries of worry and anxiety likely has their basic needs met.

Having a value system that things will make you happy actually results in unhappiness and this is simply due to the nature of the perceived need for more

it is the same interpretive machine that is behind both the self-improving needs of the ego and the material needs of always wanting more because it is always trying to be what it is not.

More money and a better self are both never ending games of the left-brain because of the law of opposition.

it is only in a genuine embracing of less that one can ev...

happiness is linked to valuing aspects of the world that don’t “get old” but rather get better with time such as social connections and experiences, that...

If you have ever listened to teachers such as J. Krishnamurti or Mooji,

in seeing the ego as only an idea one realizes there is nothing one can do to improve anything.

there is no path to follow except the one you make.

the mind’s interpretation about money is a powerful one for most of us and one that almost always triggers a negative emotion.

Once it becomes “me” people have a hard time parting with it.

Agreement often is the ally of the ‘what” system since it convinces us some “thing” must really be out there.

the opposite of remember is not to forget, but rather dismember.

“Oh I remember taking those pictures.” However, this is a good way to try and turn a process or event into a thing.

when we look out we experience things not verbs and we altogether miss the space in between.

Every meaningful pattern depends on space, background and emptiness including the ego.

“One with a why can deal with any how”

Every thought of the egoic mind is a representation, a symbol of reality such that we hold in mind an idea of what is, not what actually is.

Just because you have an image of who you are doesn’t mean there is an actual self behind that image and that has been the reoccurring theme of this work.

To know the world by the senses is as direct as we can get because it minimizes the layers of egoic thoughts. This is why things often seem to slow down when one is seduced by a simple sensory experience like feeling the wind or sun on the skin.

The left-brain always turns perfection into a flaw.

Remember the egoic mind is like a two year old and I would never tell my two-year-old son to not do something unless I actually wanted him to do it.

I define complaining as finding some fault with reality.

In being aware of complaints one sees the law of opposition in action.

all complaints turn into the belief that there is something wrong with reality and reflect the nature of the interpretive mind working on the law of opposition. One complaint sends a ripple that influences other beliefs and from this more and more negative emotions result from it.

This is tied to the interpreter’s need for more, something different and something better.

we have seen this turns up in the futile efforts of self-improvement and in material efforts of collecting “things.”