To Be A Bold Swimmer

There’s only one enlightenment, and it only means one thing. It’s perfectly specific; not vague, nebulous, or open to interpretation. Anyone who says otherwise is simply wrong (what we in the truth game call an asstalker). In the sleeping dreamstate, we have as many kinds of enlightenment as Eskimos have snow, but once you have at least partially processed the initial nondual insight, you see clearly and unmistakably that true enlightenment is not based on love, peace, bliss, compassion, or some dishwater epiphany, it’s based on truth. (Otherwise, it’s not true.)

Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you,
you must travel it for yourself.

Not I, not anyone else, resides in a state of enlightenment; that’s not how it works. Think of Trinity when she and blindboy Neo break out of the clouds and into never-before-seen sunlight; it’s dazzling and wondrous, but they can’t stay up there. Trinity noses back down into the storm, back to darkness and drama, but now she’s seen, now she knows, and she can never unknow again (until the next scene where, with Icarus-like undertones, she dies).

Someone who is truly truth-realized is still able to perceive the dreamstate mirage. Waking in or from the dreamstate is like being in a theater watching a movie when all the lights come on and you get yanked out of the fantasy world you’d been inhabiting. You can still kinda see the movie, you can still follow the story, but it’s no longer an immersive experience, and re-suspending disbelief is not easy. Now you’re on the outside looking in; watching the film but not engaged with it. You have to make a conscious effort to take it seriously and enjoy the show, but now it’s no more interesting than the exit sign, or the kids necking in the front row. (Do we still say necking? Smooching? Face-sucking?)

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately – depends which way you want to go), authentic awakening has no selling power, whereas selling power is all the counterfeit New Age love-compassion-bliss version of awakening does have. I advocate adulthood, not enlightenment – waking in the dreamstate, not from it – not just for you, advaitin, but for everyone everywhere everywhen. Every human being who has ever gone off on a spiritual search was, unknowingly, in search of their own right and proper human development. That’s not full awakening, but it is where you get all the supposedly mystical goodies, and it’s everything everyone really wants. If you find yourself wandering around in Maya’s spiritual marketplace, stop reacting to all the bright lights and loud music, and start edging toward the exit. Stop navigating by stuffed toys, shiny baubles, and sweet smells, and let truth be your guide, sole and exclusive. Atheists, theists, agnostics (in the dreamstate, we’re all agnostics), and every person of every creed and belief in the world, would, if they were representing their own interests over those of the herdmind collective, drop everything in favor of integration – if only they knew.

It is not far, it is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you
were born and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

Maya compels your adherence to an agenda not your own. She doesn’t want you to change, she likes you just the way you are; domesticated, bovine, malleable, i.e., fat, lazy and stupid (no offense). The way it is is the way she likes it, but now you’re on the verge of becoming a renegade, an upstart, an agitator, and that’s going to wake Maya up, and she always wakes up cranky. As long as you stay in your lane and keep your head down, shepherd Maya loves you, but as soon as you raise your level of perspective even a head above the herd, Maya detects you and goes to work to keep you in your place. The problem, as you’re starting to see, is that the herd is not your place.

According to Maya’s priority – the dramatic production of the dualistic dreamstate – you are perfect just the way you are. If you think you’re not perfect just the way you are, better yet; striving and discontent are the root of all drama. Even your flaccid, lukewarm, half-hearted spiritual seeking – following the same dead-end path as billions before you – is quite to Maya’s liking. It’s only when you become divergent, when you start bucking the system, when you start getting out of line, that you trip her alarms and she swarms you like white blood cells at the site of an infection. Stay in the spiritual carnival and you’re fine; start edging toward the exits and you trigger her alarms (so ‘twere best done quickly).

A sincere effort to awaken begins by understanding and disavowing all forms of cheesedick peace-love-bliss spirituality, including pop-nonduality. All is not one, that’s just Maya’s subtle adjustment to ease prospective escapees gently back into captivity, with them none the wiser. It sounds pretty true, but pretty true is still totally false. Stop participating in that nonsense and start thinking for yourself. I can’t overstate this point; I just spent five minutes snooping around what masquerades as modern spirituality and nonduality, and was quickly reminded what a cesspit of misinformation and misdirection it is. When it’s bad, it’s terrible, but when it’s good, it’s much worse. The most effective lies are always the most true.

If you were standing here in front of me and I was the kind of person who takes people by the shoulders and shakes them, I’d take you by the shoulders and shake you to impress upon you the importance of using writing (and solo walking) to take control of your mind. Stop feeding at the trough of putrid oneness-based nonduality. All is not one because there is no all; there is only consciousness. Your sock collection and the moons of Jupiter and the ghost of Christmas past are not all one; they’re all appearance, like the socks and moons and ghosts in your nighttime dreams. Do you flit around in your nighttime dreams declaring it all to be one? No, but you can elevate your level of dream-perspective from sub-lucid to lucid and understand where you really are. All that oneness stuff is just a Siren’s song luring you to the same rocky doom as countless seekers before you.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer,
you must find out for yourself.

The dreamstate is the right place to be, but a segregated human child beyond the age of sexual maturity is a ridiculous thing to be. Fuck enlightenment, hasten thee to adulthood. That’s the answer to the question you’re asking by being here. You’re looking for something, which suggests that you feel something is missing. You’re right, but it’s not the sugary crap and sparkly toys they peddle in the spiritual marketplace. What you’re missing is not your divine essence or your higher consciousness or a breakthrough epiphany that will make everything make sense, it’s your right and natural human development that you were wrongly deprived of because you were sucked into an agenda not your own. That’s where the problem is. That’s what you’re looking for. That’s what you’re seeking to change.

I do not offer the old smooth prizes,
but offer rough new prizes.
These are the days that must happen to you.

In order to thwart and subvert you, Maya has launched armies of misinfo and disinfo troops for the exact purpose of blocking your egress. As long as you’re operating from the heart-level of belief rather than the mind-level of reason, you’ll go right where she leads you. She doesn’t care what you do in the dreamstate, just that you don’t leave. She wants you fully invested in her mock reality. She does not want you waking up and walking off stage and spoiling her dramatic production. And, of course, she is really an aspect of you.

Stop feeling and believing. Stop trusting your Mayan-controlled heart and your heart-controlled mind and your deceiving senses. Start thinking. Start trusting reason and thought. Not forever, just till you get out of this spider’s web and take wing. In order to awaken in or from the dreamstate, you must initiate a polar shift from 24-to-1 heart-to-mind, to 1.5-to-1 mind-to-heart, or thereabouts. Mind must become primary. That’s where writing comes in; spiritual autolysis. You have to externalize your thought process; get it out of Maya’s domain and into your own. No one can awaken otherwise; no one can even think otherwise. The reason we can’t think is that we think we do. When you start actively and aggressively thinking, you’ll start seeing, and you’ll see everything I’m saying for yourself. 

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
now I wash the gum from your eyes.
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light
and of every moment of your life.

Don’t let all the myriad conmen and bullshit artists sell you on the sickly-sweet version of nonduality that promises oneness, happiness, peace, love and self-knowledge. Nonduality is all about opening your eyes and seeing for yourself; nothing else. It doesn’t tell you what you’ll see, just how to clear the impediments that block your vision. You don’t become a lifelong nondualist any more than you become a lifelong taxi inhabitant; you get in, get where you’re going, and get out. When you arrive at your destination, you leave the taxi behind and never look back. Once the nondual leg of the journey is complete, assuming you survive, you never have any need of, or interest in, spirituality or nonduality again; you just go on about living your right and proper life. You’ll never again feel that some essential piece of you is missing because it no longer is. The missing thing is your own full development and expression. You weren’t meant to be a caterpillar for life; you have tremendous unrealized potential. That’s what this is about.

Do you love the idea of love, happiness, compassion and bliss? Don’t laugh, a lot of people do, including the biggest names in cheesedick spirituality and pop-nonduality. If your authentic nature has to do with love, peace, bliss and compassion, fine, maybe that’s where you’ll end up after you’ve transitioned to the integrated state of human adulthood, but longing for love, peace and bliss will never get you anywhere. It’s all sham and delusion, as evidenced by the complete and total failure of the billions who’ve come this far and gone no further. You can’t awaken to who and what and where you truly are because you are trapped in an agenda not your own, and within the context of that alien agenda, it is necessary that you remain in the eyes-closed, fear-based, halfborn, herdbound segregated state of human childhood. Your agenda right now, which we know because you’re here, is to break out of that false agenda and into your own.

To do that does not take meditation, mindfulness, chakra balancing or DMT, it takes your brain. You have a brain, but you are strongly discouraged from using it for anything more than following recipes and maintaining your place in the herd. You trust your senses and your feelings, your intuition, your heart, everything but the one thing that will never lead you astray; your power of reason. When it’s time to stop flailing around in this love-bliss-compassion quagmire, it’s time to try the one thing no one thinks to suggest; thinking. You can think originally and courageously. Not forever, however; thought has a specific endpoint, and plenty of nice stops along the way, but once you’ve gotten where you’re going, wherever that may be, you can retire your mind and take up whatever life pursuits suit you. If that’s a life of peace, love, bliss and compassion, yippee!

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
now I will you to be a bold swimmer.

Despite my efforts over the years, I don’t think I’ve adequately described what fear really is, or what Maya really is. Fear is not the feeling you get when your doctor asks you to come in to discuss your test results; fear is the very ocean in which you swim, the oily black cloud in which you’ve spent every minute of your life. You don’t know what it is because you’ve never known anything else; you can’t see it until you get out of it. Maya is the lord of that realm, and her prime directive is that no one leaves. She is the tender of the herd, the good shepherd, until you want to escape – then she’s the spider.

From where you are now, waking in and from the dreamstate follow the same path; same process, same direction, same everything. You go as far as your emotional fuel takes you; out of the herd, up the slope, down the pipe, and hopefully beyond. It’s only your final destination that changes, and that has already been chosen for you, so your awakening process is solely a matter of continuing onward and upward. Right now, the challenge before you is the process itself; pre-climb parking lot prep for the rigors ahead. It begins with claiming control of your mind.

For after we start
we never lie by again.