Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing (The Enlightenment Trilogy Book 1)

by Jed McKenna

Truth is infinitely simple, delusion is infinitely complex. There’s

Truth at all costs. Truth regardless of consequence. Truth at any price.”

“Think for yourself. That’s the golden rule. Think for yourself. Make it your mantra.

if you want to be more true, then the way to do that is by becoming less false, less full of shit. If you want to be less full of shit, then the way to do it is to go inside yourself with the spotlight of discrimination, find the shit, and illuminate it. Illumination destroys it.

I wish someone had told me that I wasn’t like everyone else not because I was defective, but because I was designed for other things.

Rigid ego can scuttle the ship before it gets clear of the harbor. I’ve watched much smarter people than myself, much braver people than myself, break their ships fatally on the rocks because they were too full of themselves to release control.

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.

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 same. That’s how it is at the core. 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.

there’s only one objective of the journey and that I wasn’t there yet.”

East and West, are going to someday awaken at least to the degree of realizing that, by any reasonable standard of success, the pursuit of spiritual awakening has proven to be the most abysmal failure in the history of man.

I think the bubble is a magnificent amusement park and leaving it is a damn silly thing to do unless you absolutely must.

“So who are the priests of all religions?” she asks me. “They are your shepherds,” I respond, “keeping the sheep in the fold, away from the cliffs.”

“And who are the saints and sages of the great spiritual traditions?” she asks. “They are your final level of containment. They are the weavers of the final web, masters of subtle misdirection; convincing because they are convinced. For every million that get near the edge, perhaps only one steps over.”

think of belief and faith as being ways of dealing with things you can’t know for sure,

We erect ego to compensate for the lack of direct self-knowledge.

The deepest truth of any person is no-person. One may insist otherwise with every thought and feeling, but that doesn’t change the truth. It’s not fear of death that drives humans, it’s fear of non-being. Oblivion.”

“Create, project, maintain. Constantly.”

“Perception is reality. There is nothing else. Just like in a dream.”

“Lao Tzu said that what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

Think for yourself and figure out what’s true. That’s it. Ask yourself what’s true until you know.