Awake: It's Your Turn

This is about waking up in your life exactly as it is.

We're not trying to change anything, we're just trying to be here and accept everything. Then we can make changes if we feel it's appropriate.

In fact, you will face every distorted belief and repressed emotion that is hidden inside you at one point or another. What’s more, the old strategies of avoidance, distraction, and resistance will become less viable options as realization deepens.

Don't remember why I highlighted this. I think I recognized that for myself, as I became better at acceptance it wasn't necessary to avoid or distract or resist. That doesn't quite line up with the way he says it but it's in the same ballpark.

You will never be given more than you can tolerate

I absolutely loath wooshit talk like this. Who's making that choice? Who's overseeing this process and knows what my secret limit is? He makes a lot of nonsense statements like this and I can't tell if it's an artifact of language, or he's sloppy with his wording, or he genuinely believes some silly nonsense like the universe won't give you more than you can take.

You are voluntarily coming into contact with forces that are vastly more powerful than you (or anyone) can begin to imagine.

This sounds like wooshit intended to impress the rubes.

This is your life, so doing what feels most authentic and relevant to you regardless of social expectation is what will be most fulfilling.

More talk in a style I don't care for. Talk about authenticity is very often (and ironically?) fake in that it's there to fool the rubes. There's only you, so whatever you do is authentic. If you cave in to social expectation and say the expected thing then that's authentic. There's no secret you at the center of the tootsie pop waiting for the third lick to set it free. When people talk about their “authentic” self what they usually mean is an inauthentic, imaginary, better, version of themself that they wish they were.

And that wishing is the source of their suffering. This is duhkha, and to fix it you start by accepting your authentically flawed self and then, from acceptance, you can start to make changes.

be meditated!

I like this phrasing, don't meditate, rather be meditated.

Or not, further reflection makes it feel a bit woo. Or not, I can't decide.

Late add: This reminds me of this morning when the universe was drying it's face.

fallacy of false alternatives

The fallacy of false alternatives is binary thinking and non-dualism is the antidote.

embody your deepest truth

I hate talk like this. There's no such thing because someone would have to decide what's true. You can do that _for you_, but that's just _your_ truth. If you act like that makes it special, or “deep”, then you're putting yourself on a pedestal and that's just your ego talking.

You have every right to answer its call.

More woo talk. You don't have any rights and there's nothing to call you. This phrase might be an artifact of language but could, and should, be avoided.

your yearning for truth

Your yearning for truth is ego bullshit.

The universe is huge and terrifying and it doesn't know or care that we exist. That leaves us in a constant state of anxiety because WE'RE NOT IMPORTANT and we desperately want to be, we want someone to care. That's perfectly natural and there's nothing wrong with it. Our yearning for “truth” is just us looking for something stable to hold onto so that we can be a little less afraid. It's our ego pretending we're special, that we know the “truth” when really there's no truth to know. There's only the way things are and our little ape brains couldn't hold it all even if we could somehow sense it. We are limited, and we'll be a lot happier when we learn to be okay with that.

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside! — Rumi

This. There is no truth. There's just what is. The Tao. The Dharma. The way things are. But we'll never know more than a tiny fragment of that because we're apes stuck on a rock circling a single star. And that's okay. It's just fine and even with our limited vantage point and capabilities there are infinite miracles to behold. We just need to stop making up stories and look around.

When I’m finally enlightened, it will be like this and that, you can remind yourself of this simple truth: “It’s already here. Even if it isn’t a moment-to-moment reality for me right now, I trust that it is here, not there, or something that will come later in my life.”

Truth. This story about “when I'm enlightened” is duhkha. It's wishing things were different instead of living in reality.

What we are looking for is what is looking. — St. Francis of Assisi

Thou art god.

Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god. ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

What this really comes down to is recognizing and reversing the ways in which we habitually reject life at various levels through perceptual distortion. By experiencing reality through layers of perceptual filters, we subtly, and at times not so subtly, reject our momentary experience. We do this through habituation, and we don’t realize the cost. This rejection is human nature, or at least it is from the collective human delusion of separation.

We tell stories. Those are source and means of our distortion.

The Universe is on your side

🤢🤮 The universe doesn't have a side, it just is.

This is more anthropomorphizing bullshit, pretending that universe has attention, that it's watching and that it cares about you. Your ego needs this to feel important, to be less scared and lonely, to pretend it's safe. Your ego needs it, you don't.

It is more common to use spirituality as an excuse to run away from our responsibilities or to avoid acknowledging truths that we find to be inconvenient or uncomfortable. Everyone has this tendency to some degree, but for some people this is a prominent distortion in their life.

Highlighted without note. I think I liked the idea that our stories create “distortion”. That's a good phrase.

So, consciousness is that mutable, flowing space that is always there when you are awake, that feels like you.

I marked the page here. I believe it was because this page starts the analogy of the reflection in the pond, which I liked.

This doesn’t mean there will be no thoughts. What it means is that your identity isn’t threatened and fractured by fluctuating and inconsistent beliefs about yourself and the world on an ongoing basis.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it's so very true and accurate.

If you do this in the right way and with some persistence, something might happen—something surprising, something life-altering, something radical. What can happen is that all of a sudden that corridor, with all of its facts and experiences, can suddenly be seen to be what it is: merely a collection of thoughts. When this happens, there is far less interest in these thoughts. When that occurs, the entire timeline and identity tied into it is suddenly seen to be quite illusory. It’s as if a hole has been blown in the side of that timeline, and you are able to stick your head out the side and see what’s really going on. What’s “out there” is wholly indescribable, but let me just say that it’s unimaginably vast and radically intimate.

Highlighted without note.

It’s quite clear that there’s been a fundamental shift into a way of being that is not subject to time in the way we think about and experience it. That being the case, coming and going doesn’t even apply.

Highlighted without note.

Not subject to time… because we know there's only now so we're not concerned with time?

Peace is not the absence of anger, sadness, or discord. It is full acceptance of these and all other experiences with no resistance whatsoever.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it's an excellent definition.

resistance to these emotions and experiences

Highlighted without note. I assume to emphasize the truth in the statement.

birthright

Suspect. Sounds like the universe owes us something. It does not. We are privileged to exist as part of it, that's enough.

Life is simply what it is, and it makes no excuses for that. It is not embarrassed about any part of itself. Life never holds back. Life doesn’t second-guess itself or think that part of itself should not be there. Only the divided human mind can do that.

Highlighted without note. Truth. Life tells no stories, it just is. Humans make up stories and then decide to be unhappy because the story doesn't match reality. That's on us.

be fully authentic

Drop all your stories.

I don't like the word authentic because it implies there's a correct way to be when there really isn't. Just be. Don't let yourself make up stories and then act from the stories. That's false, fake, inauthentic. Just be. Look at the situation with no stories and do the thing you /have/ to do.

the deepest peace that is what we all really want

…hmmm. We want security. We want to feel safe. Does peace cover that? Maybe it does.

Our little monkey brains are in a near constant state of terror and anxiety. Peace is acceptance. Peace accepts that the universe doesn't know or care that we exist. Peace accepts that our life as the exact same value as the life of that fly we killed because it was annoying. That we are no more important than fly and can be snuffed just as easily something larger finds us annoying. Peace accepts that we will die soon. Peace accepts that everyone and everything we love will change and be lost. Peace gives a serene little smile and says that's all fine because we had a chance to appreciate all the miracles around us.

not allowing

not allowing …yourself to feel something “negative”. Just be.

Awakening is not a new way of looking at life.

I kind of disagree. It's looking at life without the stories. Just life.

there are no actual boundaries anywhere. There are only apparent boundaries.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it sounds like wooshit.

PS I just coined the term wooshit. It's bullshit that uses woo to explain things. It's things like pretending that the universe has a plan for you when you know that it doesn't know or care that you exist and that you're just soothing your terrified ego.

birthright

that word again

unconditional love

puke now or later?

natural reality (how reality is experienced after liberation)

Reminded me of Steve Hagen, not sure why.

This knowing, which is not apart from the knower or the known, excludes nothing and has no boundaries.

Feels like a Steve Hagen paragraph.

Zen is life

Highlighted without note.

…life, just as it is, with no stories.

If it had a voice, it would say, “Here… Here… Here,” and “Now… Now… Now.”

Highlighted without note.

previous experience of being in an enclosed identity somewhere on a timeline

Highlighted without note.

I had no words for it because I couldn’t put my finger on what specifically had changed

Dropped stories.

I suspect that what changes is that we just experience life without wrapping it in stories.

imprisoning paradigm that some things are good, and some things are bad. That paradigm is rooted in the delusion of separation

Inspect this…

Good and bad are stories, not sure what that has to do with separation. I'm kind of inclined to think that just as your brain creates the illusion of separation, it creates the illusion of non-separation after enlightenment. Why would you automatically assume that your post-enlightenment world is any more real than the pre-enlightenment world? You experience both of them in the same consciousness and through the same sensory organs (including the brain which we know makes up a lot of shit). I get the it “feels” more “authentic” and “genuine” but those feeling arise in the same space that the old, false, feelings did. Why think one is more real than the other? More useful perhaps, but is it more real? I'd contend that reality doesn't matter so long as it's more useful.

My heart opened, and I stopped caring

Highlighted without note. Sounds right.

without having to think or worry about what did or didn’t get done.

I will do what I can and I will not do what I can't. And that's fine.

Acceptance.

natural and spontaneous perfection

puke

It's not “perfect”. Perfection implies a story about a right and wrong for a thing to be. This is nonsense. Lose the story and things are the way they are.

Perfection is a judgement.

Ultimately, we realize that suffering ends when we stop trying to end suffering.

Highlighted without note. I assume because it's true.

This is about waking up in your life exactly as it is.

We're not trying to change anything, we're just trying to be here and accept everything. Then we can make changes if we feel it's appropriate.

In fact, you will face every distorted belief and repressed emotion that is hidden inside you at one point or another. What’s more, the old strategies of avoidance, distraction, and resistance will become less viable options as realization deepens.

Don't remember why I highlighted this. I think I recognized that for myself, as I became better at acceptance it wasn't necessary to avoid or distract or resist. That doesn't quite line up with the way he says it but it's in the same ballpark.

You will never be given more than you can tolerate

I absolutely loath wooshit talk like this. Who's making that choice? Who's overseeing this process and knows what my secret limit is? He makes a lot of nonsense statements like this and I can't tell if it's an artifact of language, or he's sloppy with his wording, or he genuinely believes some silly nonsense like the universe won't give you more than you can take.

You are voluntarily coming into contact with forces that are vastly more powerful than you (or anyone) can begin to imagine.

This sounds like wooshit intended to impress the rubes.

This is your life, so doing what feels most authentic and relevant to you regardless of social expectation is what will be most fulfilling.

More talk in a style I don't care for. Talk about authenticity is very often (and ironically?) fake in that it's there to fool the rubes. There's only you, so whatever you do is authentic. If you cave in to social expectation and say the expected thing then that's authentic. There's no secret you at the center of the tootsie pop waiting for the third lick to set it free. When people talk about their “authentic” self what they usually mean is an inauthentic, imaginary, better, version of themself that they wish they were.

And that wishing is the source of their suffering. This is duhkha, and to fix it you start by accepting your authentically flawed self and then, from acceptance, you can start to make changes.

the movie Revolver

Highlighted so I'd remember to check out the movie. The internet says it's pretty shit but these are decent quotes.

free of suffering

…but not free of pain

Something discrete and short-lived, such that we feel we are always at risk and need to constantly protect ourselves.

Highlighted without note.

This is our lived experience courtesy of a monkey brain that's smart enough to understand the nature of life and dumb enough to pretend it's not so.

we feel compelled to defend its integrity

, this is me always explaining to myself why I'm doing things.

deeper selves

👅

Might be unintentional but many people will read woo into this statement and that makes it wooshit.

By adulthood

START_HERE I flagged the page and a couple more.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

FINISH_HERE End of the flagged pages.

Quite simply, we’re wired for it. The complexity of the human nervous system is such that rudimentary thoughts begin to form at a young age and develop in complexity as we mature. By young adulthood, we have built a complex thought-based identity in which we have taken up residence.

No… but yes. This is corretish but if you didn't have languarge would you still have thoughts? You'd have something but it wouldn't be the stories that we use to create.

Expanding: So what about a wolf boy, raised by animals and never learned to speak. I don't believe he's enlightened. He's just an animal. He's neither concious nor unconscious, but is that “better” than being a sleep walker? No, it just is.

Language gives us stories which let us dream amazing dreams. But those same stories can, and almost always do, trap us. Maybe we're like a wolf with a leg caught in a trap, but this wolf is able to live a full life and do all the wolfy things, but it's leg hurts. Not a good analogy but sort of and I'm not going to take time to make it better.

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.
— Brian Aldiss

It knows

I don't think it knows anything. It just makes suggestions and we run with them.

knows better

No it doesn't, it's not a person. It's an automatic process.

Still another assumption is that the realization of presence will be “not now.”

What? This feels mangled to me. If not now when are you going realize presence? It's always now so it can't be “not now”.

Can you walk into that memory?

Not physically, but your brain makes those stories feel pretty damned real. And why not, it's making up large chunks of reality anyway.

magician of the mind

Anthro. It's not a person in your head, stop talking about it as if it makes decisions to decieve you. It's just doing what it does and it probably does it because in some way it's been useful for human survival.

illusion of time

I think he means the idea of the past and present. That's not illusion, it's more like foreign lands that we don't have direct access to.

The past is a now that already happened and the future is a story about a now that might happen. We can't go to either of them so effectively they don't exist, except that they did or will. But the future that becomes now won't have anything to do with our story, although it might be influenced by our actions which might be influenced by the story.

any situation where our competency has been called into question

Fear, insecurity.

Highlighted because my recent thinking is that almost all human actions originate from fear.

the mind has to invoke time

The mind isn't an autonomous individual trying to fuck with you. It's you, trying to avoid the terror of existence by lying to yourself.

illusion of control

Truth.

The world is terrifying in part because we have no control and precious little influence. We make it less terrifying by pretending we have control over things.

Do you see how the magician of the mind has plucked you out of the peace and connection with your environment (that is always available in the present) and shot you experientially into the past and then experientially into the future?

Responsibility dodge. There's no magician, you did it to yourself.

You're the magician and you do the trick so neatly that you fool yourself.

led by this magician

THERE IS NO MAGICIAN. It's YOU, all the way down.

A thought has two jobs: to get your attention, then to redirect your attention to the next thought.

A thought has no jobs. It's just a thing that happens and WE run with it, mostly out of ignorance and habit.

Understanding and knowing how these mechanisms function is not the same as disentangling our identity from them.

TRUTH

Just because you know something doesn't mean you can do anything about it. Sometimes the thing is an elephant and all you can do it ride along and hope for the best… and continue to train the thing so that maybe next time…

unsettling, disturbing, and occasionally terrifying thoughts. Here are some examples:

NO. The real fear is the truth. We are meaningless and inconsequential. Nothing we do matters. (It matters to this one!) We will die and be forgotten and it will not matter that we lived.

This is the great terror that drives humanity. We know this is true and we flee in terror before it. But “fear is the mindkiller”, and we should turn and face our fear to find what remains.