A Course In Awakening: An Academic Approach To Enlightenment

together.

Purpose

You are here to become enlightened. I won't disrespect you with clever questions such as who becomes enlightened? Such responses only confuse the seeker. Your search has brought you to the right place. You will be given all the models of understanding you need to get yourself to awaken. You will be given directions and indicators to help you gauge exactly how close you are getting to the center of realization. Each step you take brings an immediate reward, giving you the courage needed to take more difficult steps. There is no need for grace. You are fully in charge of precisely when you will awaken. No other books are needed for you to achieve this goal.

Most likely you have read dozens of books on spirituality, attended many satsangs, retreats, and meditation centers in the hopes of finally understanding what enlightenment really is, only to leave more confused and frustrated than when you arrived. All the abstract words you read or hear that are left undefined such as divinity, source, grace, consciousness, emptiness, ego, and forgiveness tend to put you in a blissful state of hopefulness. These don't give you direction on the practical things you can do to move forward. They are like a drug which keeps you coming back teasing you into thinking you will eventually understand. This lack of clarity in teachings is a trademark of semi-awakened teachers. Truth is plain and obvious through simple awareness. I will strip away the magic, and reveal the simple machinery and how to work it, making it child's play for you to become enlightened.

Since my awakening in Spring 2003, I've spent all my efforts on turning the study of enlightenment from an art into a science. I've read hundreds of spiritual books and attended many seminars for the sole purpose of learning the language of spiritual teachers and comparing and contrasting their teachings. Since I had a sharp and powerful awakening before starting my search, I could easily see which teachers were impostors and which were very pure. Many had technically awakened but had tended to drag in illusions from their particular teacher's lineage, so much so, that their truth was diluted by false beliefs to the point where I couldn't see how anyone could awaken under their tutelage. A few teachers, though, had awakened on their own due to life crises; these were the ones that I found to be completely free of all illusions. Not surprisingly, these teachers got little respect in the spiritual community since they didn't sell any illusions. These are the teachers which will take you straight into awakening.

You can awaken. This is not some superhuman feat. I've met many people locally, who have awakened on their own due to personal crises. Most of these people had little or no exposure to spiritual teachings. Awakening is a rare event in our culture and also in most other cultures since there is no real understanding of it. There were some earlier cultures, such as the Hopi Indians, which I think did understand it and expect it. Many of their Grandfathers did attain it as a norm of their society.

Awakening is not something that will make you great; it is simply a stage of psychological development. You may feel a lot of resistance over that last statement. The statement is attacking any illusions you may have surrounding the concept of enlightenment. You will need to deal with your illusions later. For now, it is important to drive home the idea you will need to change your psychology. We only need to deal with the mind. The mind is the only thing preventing you from residing in Being. If you come into acceptance of the idea of enlightenment as a natural stage of psychological evolution, you will be immediately rewarded with a deep understanding of the scope of the problem that you need to solve.

You can awaken, but there will be emotional pain involved. The pain will be equal to the amount of satisfaction your ego currently enjoys. I know its a little abstract at this point, but I will clearly define all those words so you too will know the exact price you will need to pay to move up a stage. The price may be too high for most people; but I'm still going to write this book for those few who will go the distance.

One last thing before we go on...do not underestimate the power of what you are reading or listening to in this book. Enlightenment is very real and the explanation is very precise and elegant for this new model of awakening. This model has been tested against the hundreds of books I've read for fitness. This book makes explicit the truths not quite fully understood by those authors. You can liken this to Copernicus realizing the Earth rotated and revolved around the Sun and how all the motions of planets and stars suddenly became greatly simplified through the new model. Be willing to read or listen to this book a dozen times or more before some major illusions drop which were preventing you from experiencing the truth.

My Awakening

Many people enjoy hearing stories about how someone awakened. I believe this is because they intuitively know that it is more a process than an event. I'll share my story not as entertainment but as an outline of what is important as context for the rest of the book. For this I need to start at the very beginning.

There is a part of me that is ageless, an awareness...that which senses what is going on. I assume I've always had this awareness but I don't have any memories from when I was younger than four. After four years of age the number of memories rapidly increases. This leads me to believe that experiencing physical laws and using them as metaphor gives us language and objectivity which plays a large role in the ability to remember things and events.

From first grade on, I felt very separate from other people. I was aware that most children were needfully social while socializing was irrelevant to me. I spent the next ten years playing in gardens, forests, streams, and nature. Some authors have picked up on these two indicators as being somewhat important to awakening. I see them as a strong connection or communion with physical reality.

From age 17 to 21, I was seeking truth through religion and morality. At first religion was more evolved than me and I learned from it. But after a few years I saw all the oversimplifications, fears, and inconsistencies in that system. It then took a couple years to completely overcome the influence of religion and center into Humanism as defined in Carl Roger's book A Way of Being. All process or evolution is progressive so keep an eye on the direction in which your interests change.

From age 21 to 25, I deprogrammed from religion. Mentally, it was one of the most difficult things I've done. Religion is so effective at disconnecting beliefs from rationality and keeping them divided that it is almost impossible to heal that separation. It is truly a period of instability and insanity when you have two foundations that appear to be mutually exclusive.

From age 25 to 30, I got married and had three children. This is what I call my materialism stage although I was always primarily concerned with providing for the family. During these years I read many self help and business goal oriented books but was filled with existential anxiety. Having children teaches lessons in caring for others unconditionally, lessons that cannot be taught through other means. Marriage also has its lessons on communication, respect, consideration, and caring.

From age 30 to 40 is when I was into New Age, Mystical, and Spiritual books. Albeit, work consumes most of one's time both at the office and at home studying and improving skills needed to perform the job. In my case, I was still learning new computer languages trying to keep up with a rapidly changing field.

From age 40 to 42 is when I went through many simultaneous major life crises such as divorce, lay offs, lawyer bills, moving, etc. My main purpose in life was rasing my kids so by being forced into a role as a weekend dad sent me into major depression for those years. I would fall back on religion and rise back to spirituality over and over again depending on my depression level. Something I think is important is that I maintained a positive intention to always do the right thing through the whole ordeal. I was losing everything yet I felt good about myself by behaving as I wanted to instead of fighting for what I thought was fair. This authenticity, I attribute to be a key aspect of awakening.

A few months before I turned 42 I decided that the emotional pain of not getting to raise my children all the time was too much. In my hoplessness I decided to let go of William and everything associated with the identity. Immediately I was free; I was no person yet I was alive and experiencing everything freely. It was instant peace and joy. Everything was brighter, more real, more alive, similar to when I was a very young child playing outside.

The next week or so after releasing the self was very strange, I had some thoughts that this was too weird and that maybe I should go back into ego. After all, William was always a kind person. But, the pain was too great and I just couldn't go back. As I plunged forward I noticed that most everything I was about to say no longer seemed true. I was beginning to see through all the illusions I had once believed.

For the next six weeks, each night I would go to bed and watch the body go into sleep paralysis and go to sleep while I maintained awareness in the empty darkness until morning when the body would awaken. It seems strange that it eventually turned back into normal sleep with dreams and all. I attribute it to the mind no longer doing the 95% useless thinking needed for defending the ego throughout each day’s confrontations.

From age 42 to 44 I centered into Being and identified myself as not separate from nature and as arising from the evolutionary processes of the universe. During this time many small dormant illusions arose which I would deal with immediately. It was also during this time that I listened to Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now audio book. It was my first exposure to a teaching of enlightenment. Like Eckhart, I realized it had already happened to me before I knew what it was.

And to finish the story, from age 42 to 52, I read hundreds of Zen, buddhism, non-dualism, and spirituality books to prepare for writing this book. I've had thousands of insights and deeper awakenings since my first major one over ten years ago. Awakening is truly an evolutionary process. I think I understand the language and concepts used by others sufficiently to now be able to convey my experience with clarity but from a developmental point of view.

Awareness

Awareness is an abstract word and people are never quite sure they know precisely what the experience of it really is. Without a proper experience of it they may waste decades in transcendental meditation spacing out on strange states of mind and have nothing to show for their efforts. Cultivating awareness is a core practice of most spiritual systems. Your awareness is needed for every exercise coming up so you will need to grasp it right at the beginning of this book. Let's enjoy a few stories about it.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a famous neuroscientist who gave a talk at a TED conference on her experience of having a stroke. She later wrote a book on it called My Stroke Of Insight which became quite popular. While her rational brain is in the process of dying, she watches her knowledge disappear. She loses her ability to name things or distinguish separate objects. She also notices that she is becoming aware of reality and experiencing freedom and peace and joy. Eventually she gets to a hospital and endures several years of relearning and recovery. She claims she experienced enlightenment but eventually lost it when the rational mind recovered and her ego regained control.

I'm going to talk about a model I created after hearing an interview with Thomas Ray. He is online at life.ou.edu and by the way, all models are made up by someone.

We are born with over a dozen physical structures in the brain. We have no awareness of nearly all of these structures. Most people think there is only one center of awareness but there are actually two. The first is the affective or feelings center and is quite active in toddlers. As we are domesticated by parents and society, the second center, which is logic and cognition, tends to become dominant and eventually suppresses the first center. The first center is never completely suppressed; it sort of just quietly watches the thinking center. The child center would like to be acknowledged but it knows the logic center will reprimand it. The child center watches the adult center get ahead through its rational finesse of capitalism, relationships, and survival. The child center sees that the rational center is exploitative and self-serving and inhumane, but it never says anything; it just watches. Eventually this child center is so far back in the shadows, it is forgotten.

I'm going to propose that this child center is the true intelligence of a human. I say that because it is the awareness that allows the logical center to have leaps into new ways of seeing things and paradigm shifts to new levels of ability. It is generally during restful moments of the thinking mind that the affective mind can passively get through with its insightful solutions.

So the question is Do you experience something watching the thinking mind, something that is non-judgmental yet able to keep the thinking center from going off the deep end? If this is how you experience awareness, then your task becomes one of nurturing and knowing yourself to be this awareness, this silent witness. And, simultaneously knowing yourself as not being the thinking mind is the second task.

Have you experienced overwhelming beauty in nature, perhaps a waterfall or redwoods, where the thinking mind stopped and there was just awareness? Where within the thunderous roar or howling wind, there was just inner silence and awe. Perhaps you could make this into a practice. Go to an art museum and find a piece on display where an artist has captured such a moment. Perhaps listen to Folk, Classical, or Spiritual music to find the silent awareness that inspired it.

Awareness never tries to control; it simply observes and brings intelligence into the thinking mind. The mind tries to control everything. Our task is to recognize awareness, awareness becoming aware of itself. With every recognition, the future frequency and duration of recognition will increase, until awareness is virtually ever-present during your waking hours. Practice this by noticing when you are controlling life and when you are witnessing life.

Mind can be thought of as arising from brain activity. We generally don't recognize this because we are so strongly pulled into thoughts that we miss the transition from peace into crisis. Awareness does not require brain processing. Become aware of quiet moments between thoughts. Become aware that the self does not disappear when the brain stops thinking. Look for and recognize the peace that can be found in between thoughts.

Let's go back to the two centers of consciousness and rename them to see if we can gain a deeper understanding of what is happening. Let's call them the awareness center and the rational center.

The rational center is concerned with facts, experience, algorithms, processes, cause and effect, goals, predictions, and outcomes. Notice that all these are time based