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

by Jed McKenna

Sarah labors under the same misconception everyone does. She believes, in the broadest sense, that something is wrong and that she can make it right. What that something is, what’s wrong with it, and how it can be fixed all differ from person to person, but the general pattern is always the same: The truth, though, is that nothing is really wrong. Nothing is ever wrong and nothing can be wrong. It’s not even wrong to believe that something is wrong. Wrong is simply not possible. As Alexander Pope wrote, “One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.” Wrongness is in the eye of the beholder and nowhere else.

The fear of no-self is the mother of all fears, the one upon which all others are based. No fear is so small or petty that the fear of no-self isn’t at its heart. All fear is ultimately fear of no-self.

For instance, I see where Martin is and I can see that he has himself twisted up in some brambles. He may feel an urge to describe his current position to me in exhaustive detail, but I already know all I need to guide him out. Martin may want to spend the next twenty years studying the local flora, but I will encourage him to pull out a machete and hack his way out and continue his journey.

“My own awakening ran its course in less than two years, Martin. And that’s without any living teacher to help me. I’ve never heard of the process taking longer than that. I really don’t see how the process could take much longer than that.” When I say this, I don’t mean that it only takes two years from the first spark of spiritual longing. I mean two years after the point when the process of awakening actually begins; the primary epiphany, the first step. Let’s capitalize that: The First Step. I know that many people spend many years in meditation and spiritual practice without achieving full awakening, and I know that they think it’s because they haven’t crossed the finish line yet, but it’s actually because they haven’t crossed the starting line yet: The First Step. I

The point is that there’s really no point in trying to figure out all the possible reasons why seekers don’t find. It’s just another distraction, and there’s no shortage of those. The point is to wake up, not to earn a Ph.D. in waking up. Simply put, as Sarah surmised, waking up is job one, and then, if you still want to liberate all beings or promote world peace or save the whales, great—lucky beings, lucky world, lucky whales—but the bottom line remains the same: You’re either awake, or you’re not.

Placid and Self-Contained I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. Walt Whitman