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Your definitive guide to becoming an obnoxiously happy person!

If you’ve ever ventured down a ‘spiritual path’, you probably have a vague idea that the mystical state of enlightenment or awakening is the ‘holy grail’, or goal, in the spiritual journey. The problem, of course, is that we really have no idea how to get to that ‘goal’, and no real idea of what the goal is in the first place! We have some indistinct ideas about mountain tops, chanting, and meditation. And a lot of frustrating instructions to do rather mundane-sounding things, like ‘be here now’.

This site is designed to make awakening clear, and this handbook is designed to make this site clear.

Understanding Your Current Situation

The first step in Awakening is to get a good look at your current situation, and understand how and why it creates the problems it does. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all live according to a model of reality. If you live on earth and are a homo sapiens, you probably live according to the Standard Dualistic Model, since that’s terribly fashionable right now. Not only is this model exceedingly popular, but it also sucks, as I mention elsewhere in this site.

I suggest learning more about the Standard Dualistic Model for a clearer grasp of what dualism is, and to better understand why the SDM causes us no end of grief.

What Next?

Once we’ve seen how dualism works, we can make an educated decision about whether we want it to be our working model of reality. If we don’t, then we have two choices before us:

We can either adopt a new model of reality.

Or

We can ‘wake up’, and see that the world works just fine without having to lay any models over it at all.

The truth is that awakening is the easiest thing you can do. I mean that in a literal sense, not a cryptic sense. Waking up is simply having no model at all. When we can see life unclouded by models, it’s easy, because life presents itself perfectly clearly. The reason we find waking up difficult is that we’re so accustomed to using models, we’ve become convinced that life can’t go on without them (sort of like trying to imagine life without television). Since we’re convinced of this, we’ll do almost anything to fool ourselves into creating a new model of reality, instead of just waking up. Thus, as we keep trying to ‘wake up’ or become enlightened, we’ll actually just keep creating ever more complex models of reality, all of which (if we look carefully) are based on the Standard Dualistic Model.

Zen tries to get you to ‘wake up’ by frustrating you. It intentionally leads you down the path of creating ever more complex models of reality, and then pulls the carpet out from under you, showing you that all your efforts are futile. Eventually you figure out that it’s no use to try to make it happen, and when you finally give up, it happens!

On this site, I use a method that’s a little different than the Zen method. Instead of trying to frustrate you, I’m going to try to show you, by re-direction, that you have powerful tools at your disposal– the tools of reasoning and awareness.

You’ll remember that, as I mentioned before, we have two choices before us. Since our current dualistic mindset is quite good at laying traps for us, it’s often easier to begin with the first choice– developing a new model of reality.

Now, I must clarify what I mean by ‘easier’. I mean ‘easier’ in the sense that it’s easier to hike three miles down a river to get to a bridge than it is just to wade across. Although it would take us only two minutes to wade across, it’s emotionally more difficult. We’re afraid of leeches, and don’t want our feet wet, and maybe we don’t know how deep the water is. Even if someone assures us that it’s just fine, we’re still afraid. So we walk all the way down-river to the bridge, and then all the way back up.

You can choose either route.

Although I’ve included a ‘Shortcut to Enlightenment’ section below, experience has shown me that people often have more blocks to ‘waking up’ than they care to admit. Therefore, I’m going to ‘cater to the masses’ and tailor this handbook to follow the ‘easier’ bridge-route method.

The Shortcut to Enlightenment

Encased in this small section is all you need to know to ‘wake up’. However, if it’s not working out, feel free to take the bridge-route, which will resume in the next section below.

To fully awaken, all you need to do is begin to relentlessly examine every perception you have. You’ll soon be able to discriminate between your imagination (which occupies 99.9% of your normal perception) and actual perception. Simply watch, become aware of which perceptions are which, and everything will become perfectly clear. The most important instruction I can give is to be truly relentless – look at everything in your perception. Every concept, every idea, every memory and thought and assumption. Even look at ‘who’ is doing the looking!

This is what is meant by ‘being here now’. When there is only perception, that is Awakening. If you can describe it or think about it or form an idea about what it is, that’s not awakening.

Here’s the secret –

Just now.

It’s no use to pretend, because unless you join certain religious organizations, there are no medals or awards or titles for being Awake. In fact, if you go around telling people that you’re enlightened, they’re just going to think you’re a deluded ego-maniac. Trust me on this one. You can also visit the Pitfalls page to see if any of the content there makes sense. If this is all confusing or seems difficult, just move on to the section below.

Creating a New Model of Reality

Here’s the bridge-route. It’s much longer and more convoluted, but that’s okay. It’s pretty fun along the way.

First you have to choose a new model of reality. Now, to be perfectly clear, any model of reality is really going to dualistic-based. This simply means that it divides the world into arbitrary parts, and because of that, it causes problems as we try to fit those parts back together. But the problem with the Standard Dualistic Model is that it frames all those relationships between those parts in a certain way. And the way it frames them is usually in a conflict-oriented method.

The very best dualistic model you can use at the moment is called the Intention-Manifestation Model, sometimes referred to as the Law of Attraction. This model simply re-defines the nature of the relationships between the different ‘parts’ of the world. Try having a little fun with the I-M model of reality– learn more about it and then experiment with it!

Conclusion

The reason switching models works so well is that it shows us, in reality, that the world isn’t anything like our usual, Standard Dualistic Model assumptions. It also convinces us, through direct experience, that we have the power to change our own realities. When we’re really convinced, it becomes much easier to take the next step – Awakening.

Explore posts in the same categories: Awakening and Reality, Enlightenment Handbook

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 18th, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Awakening and Reality, Enlightenment Handbook. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.