Jed McKenna's Enlighenment Trilogy

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9780 by Ona Kiser
Sometimes it's interesting to look at how these reactions (being engaged or repelled by a certain teacher/author's descriptions of awakening) tie into our expectations. I remember reading Adyashanti early on in meditation practice and thinking "blah blah blah goo goo gah blah blah" - I really had no clue what the hell he was talking about. I didn't like him because he seemed to be talking about some really odd abstract something or other that had nothing to do with my fantasy about waking up, which vaguely involved ideas of being a powerful someone special. It wasn't very thought through.

I liked the more "do stuff" approach that the intersection of pragmatic dharma and magick offered. "Say these words, sit like this, count this, name that" as well as the message I got from some people that "a regular guy who has a beer at the pub can wake up" - in other words, it soothed my fear that meditation or waking up might turn me into some kind of dreamy bald california dude saying "blah blah blah". I'd get to hang on to my "I'm a secret rebel" persona, feel cool, etc.

Both of the above fell apart eventually. But just as examples of how we have fears and fantasies about waking up that aren't always even conscious. I figured out both of the above in hindsight.

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9781 by Chris Marti
Yes, "what I am doing" is a better way to put it, Kate.

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9782 by Chris Marti
My comments are crude and rude, so here's a master at explaining this concept in a more civilized, poetic manner:

Adyashanti Says It Better

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9785 by Ona Kiser
Adyashanti's a fricking genius.

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9799 by Kate Gowen
Ooh-- I wanna learn how to give my own name to a link like that, Chris. Totally cool!

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9813 by Chris Marti
Kate, use the web link tool in the posting editor. That link looks like a little globe with one link of a chain over it.

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9817 by Tom Otvos
Hmm, that site seems to be dead to me at the moment. But he is someone I need to look at again. I remember being put off by him (for no good reason I can recall) early on, but maybe it is worth another look. That said, the Jed McK process reminded me a lot of Ruthless Truth...not quite that ruthless, but very similar.

-- tomo

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9845 by Chris Marti

"Over time I began to see how delicate and challenging it was for most seekers to find the courage to question any and all ideas and beliefs about the true nature of themselves, the world, others, and even enlightenment itself. In almost every person, every religion, every group, every teaching and every teacher, there are ideas, beliefs, and assumptions that are overtly or covertly not open to question. Often these unquestioned beliefs hide superstitions which are protecting something which is untrue, contradictory, or being used as justification for behavior which is a less than enlightened."


That's the truly relevant piece from the Adyashanti link I posted. It's about having the courage to face what you might find in your spiritual quest. Courage, guts, balls, chutzpah. We should ask ourselves, "What am I protecting?"

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11 years 2 weeks ago #9916 by Laurel Carrington
I'm feeling more charitably inclined towards Jed McKenna since reading his third book. There's one thing in particular that's stuck with me: that you have to give up hope, absolutely. It was when I totally gave up hope that I could "fix" my husband's depression that things finally turned around. Now there's a lightness between us that was never there before. That process has served as a kind of template for my own liberation. It sounds cruel to tell people to give up hope, yet it's that clinging kind of hope that holds us back, the hope that we can somehow find a way of fixing ourselves. And I'm still doing that. I get depressed when I find things slipping away. My health, for example, which makes it difficult for me to have the life I think I ought to have, and then as long as I'm hoping to change things I'm not living the life I do have. There's a grinding sense of insufficiency that I'm always trying to make good.

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11 years 1 week ago #9924 by Chris Marti
In my version of that "give up hope" means "accept things as they really are." A more positive spin :cheer:

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11 years 1 week ago #9926 by Laurel Carrington
Agreed. I think old Jed tends to accentuate the negative, big-time. And what he calls hope is really just delusion that we can find satisfaction of our desires, or push away those things we don't like. In my case, I still do it but I catch myself at it. Then there's sometimes a bout of depression, which slides through me much more quickly.

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11 years 1 week ago #9935 by Tom Otvos

Jed McKenna wrote: Depression is fear with hope removed. It arises as we discover that something we thought could be ours will never be ours. Unhappiness is when we worry about not having something. Depression is when we realize we will never have it. And freedom is when we realize nothing is ours and nothing can be ours so that, in effect, nothing is not ours.


-- tomo

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11 years 1 week ago #9951 by Chris Marti
Which means, essentially, accept things as they really are ;-)

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11 years 1 week ago #10001 by Kate Gowen

Tom Otvos wrote:

Jed McKenna wrote: Depression is fear with hope removed. It arises as we discover that something we thought could be ours will never be ours. Unhappiness is when we worry about not having something. Depression is when we realize we will never have it. And freedom is when we realize nothing is ours and nothing can be ours so that, in effect, nothing is not ours.


Seems like a much less insightful take on depression than Gabor Mate's idea that depression is "the body saying 'no'." -- to me, anyhow. The body says 'no' to a great many more circumstances than frustrated desire. Sometimes it says 'no' for reasons that make better sense than we can understand until we accept that "no means no."

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