Enlightenment Handbook, Part Four
By this point, hopefully having read The Enlightenment Handbook Part One, Two, and Three, you’ll have a clear understanding of what dualism is, and how we populate the world with all sorts of imaginary things that cause us no end of trouble.
If this doesn’t feel clear to you, it’s time to sit down and take a good look at some of the objects you’re creating in the world, and ask a simple question – “Just how does this object serve me?”
At first you can do this with the obvious objects of the world, such as a tree. If you explore what a tree really is (or what you mean when you say ‘tree’), you’ll find that any line you want to draw around it is arbitrary. Ten different people might come up with ten different definitions of what is ‘tree’ and what is ‘not-tree’, depending on how deeply they think about it.
The lesson? We’re running around in life drawing lines in an otherwise smoothly flowing world. This doesn’t change the world, but it does change how we see the world. As we look around at the smoothly flowing reality, all we see are the chopped up bits and pieces that we’ve created in our minds, thrown haphazardly together.
If the real world is a flower, the world we’ve created in our heads is a flower that’s been put through a shredder and then taped back together with duct tape.
More Subtle Objects
After examining the more obvious objects, it’s time to look at the more subtle objects we’ve created – not trees and cars, but things like ‘linear time’, ‘me’, and ‘energy’. These are basic foundation-blocks that hold up the immense structures in our heads. For instance, if we look carefully enough at Time, and see that there is only the Now, this realization will dissolve almost every other object we’ve created (since they all depend on an idea of time). It’s like pulling the rug out from under your belief system.
These objects, though, are deeply ingrained. Even many people who consider themselves enlightened will still insist that there is time, that there is consciousness, or an ‘I’ driving the machine of our bodies.
Our Objects Won’t Abandon Us
It can be easy at this point to get fearful. If I start seeing that there is no tree, then I’ll walk right into it! If I see there is no ‘me’, I’ll die or something! If I start seeing that there is no right or wrong, then I’ll just run amok, killing and raping and stealing!
Don’t worry. Trees won’t become invisible, you won’t evaporate, and you won’t suddenly be filled with urges to pillage. Recall that dualism works in opposites, which is why your mind is filling in all these strange scenarios. Non-dualism is something else entirely – and it can’t be understood in opposites. If you are thinking that ‘no-evil and no-good’ means that people will run amok, then it’s a clear sign that your mind is still thinking in the same old patterns.
The scary truth is that it is those very patterns which create the effects we fear. People are killing, raping, and stealing because of this setup – because they are no longer able to see the world as a whole flower, and can only see the taped-up monstrosity. This is why many of our most ‘righteous’ figures have been found to secretly harbor desires to do ill deeds. As creatures of opposites, we hold within us a desire to do good, and desires to meet our own ends, by any means necessary. This is the battle between the angel and the devil on either side of our head, or Freud’s moralistic Superego and greedy Id.
But this battle is only a fabrication. You don’t really have two sides battling inside you. Your natural state is to see the flower just as it is, and to arise perfectly in each situation you encounter.
How Does the Object Serve Me?
So simply ask, truthfully, how your objects serve you. The fact is that if you look around you in any moment, you can see the world just as it is, and move within the situation at hand. What good does it do you to create all these divisions in the world? For instance, if you actually trusted yourself to do what was right in any situation, would you really go purchase a gun and rob the local bank?
If you look carefully, you’ll probably find that you, and the world, are pretty darn perfect just the way they are.
What About Serving the World?
Dualism creates conflict. It’s the only thing it’s really good at. And the internal conflict it creates soon affects entire nations (as nations are built out of people filled with conflict).
Dualism, then, creates not only personal misery (fear of death, stress, frustration), but world-misery (war, famine, crime).
You can’t solve the world’s problems by working within the dualistic model. It only creates more conflict!
Take racism in the
Then came along some truly great and well-meaning folks, and they did change the outer situation. African-Americans now enjoy many of the same ‘rights’ as Caucasians. But the root of the problem was never fixed, and racism is still everywhere.
Simply take a look at the motto of one of the groups working for equal rights. “Fight Hate and Promote Tolerance”.
Fight hate? If we can’t see the conflict in that statement, we’re truly in trouble. Let’s hate hate!
Promote tolerance? Tolerance?? Think about what ‘tolerance’ means for a moment. It certainly doesn’t imply embracing other people with open arms. One ‘tolerates’ mosquitoes. The word ‘tolerance’ tells it just as it is – the best dualism can do is to try to ‘fix’ the problem by making the most of a negative situation.
But there is another answer. Awakening yourself will dissolve all of your conflict. And you’ll no longer act as a conflict-creator everywhere you go. You’ll not only cease the self-destruction we all practice every day, but you won’t sow additional discord in the world.
It is the only way to really create peace.
Don’t Fool Yourself
In Part Five we’ll be going over practical methods for ‘waking up’. But it is important, at this point, to become aware of the single stumbling block you’ll encounter along the way.
Fooling yourself.
We all hold some concept of Enlightenment, and that concept probably makes it seem very appealing. But as long as we have a concept of enlightenment, we’re making it into a duct-taped flower, and we’ll never be able to truly Realize the Now.
As you learn more about enlightenment, you’ll be given many tools which can actually make your journey more difficult. Nice Scotch tape that is nearly invisible. Fancy ways to piece the shredded flower together so that it looks more ‘natural’.
If you develop one skill in this life, devote yourself to paying attention to what is going on in your mind. Your thoughts are capable of changing course in a quarter of a second, and you are an expert, by now, at dualism. We’re capable of finding the most ingenious ways to use dualism to create ever more subtle versions of the flower. And it’s easy to settle for a flower that just looks quite real, instead of holding out for the real thing.
Turn your expertise in dualism to your own advantage – pay attention to how you formulate objects and how you create divisions. If you become aware of the process, you’ll start to see yourself doing it at the most surprising times.
Remember, Enlightenment is just this – seeing the real, unchopped flower. That flower is what we might call Reality. But we’re so busy trying to piece together the shredded version that we ignore the fact that if we simply open our eyes, Reality is right there. It’s really that simple. But our object-creation is so powerful that we refuse to see it.
Instead of the indescribable Now, we have the sensation that there is a ‘me’ interacting with the rest of the world, and we’re convinced that everything out there is linked by cause-and-effect, and we’re convinced that everything out there once came into existence, and will someday die or fall apart.
These seem like the most obvious truths to us, but they are merely chopped-up bits of flower, and it takes all our life energy to keep trying to piece them together.
Let’s give up the effort and just See. We’ll talk more about this in Part Five.
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