intro to enlightenment for orange people?

[Display_Name]

Wassup peeps,

So I'm a personal dev coach with the aim of targeting core issues and introducing orange people to awakening. For this, I usually post little value nuggets and personal development posts in various facebook groups, and then DM the people interested. Today, there was the simple intention of making a little post about gratitude and eliminating delusional comparison to others, that I completely lost myself in, and ended up devolving into a complete little manifesto on happiness and TLDR on self survival, the self, and a little (so far still materialist) introduction to enlightenment. 

I wanted to share because this platform is probably the platform that's been with me longest in my journey, and I thought it might be appreciated, also I will greatly appreciate any feedback from the woke MFers here. Again, I guess the goal is to introduce awakening to a pretty orange audience. So, anything I should adapt / expand / change? If not, enjoy:

 

HOW TO BE HAPPY MANIFESTO.

 

PART 1: ELIMINATING COMPARISONS, GAINING PERSPECTIVE AND GRATITUDE

 

PSA:

If you insist on comparing yourself to various people that have more than you in any way (Instagram, celebrities, models, musicians, CEOs, and so on) and on feeling jealous, wishful or treated unfairly by life, atleast be OBJECTIVE about it and compare yourself both ways.

 

Compare yourself to the paraplegic in a wheelchair.

Compare yourself to the blind person.

Compare yourself to the beggar on the street.

Compare yourself to the person with no arms.

Compare yourself to the starving boy in Africa.

Compare yourself to the sex trafficked girl in South America.

Compare yourself to the person with terminal 4 cancer.

Compare yourself to the stressed single mother raising 4 kids.

Compare yourself to the person with the genetic disease causing pain day in and out.

Compare yourself to the person being tortured to death by a mexican cartel this very moment.

Compare yourself to the person without knowledge or access to any personal development.

 

Need I go on? I could go on. I could go on for days.

 

I get it. You’ve been conditioned to equate certain life circumstances with higher value and joy than others. You see people online that appear to have more of this than you. What’s more, they appear to have gotten it by pure good fortune, and you haven’t.

 

Compare yourself if you insist, feel jealous if you insist.

 

Just be warned that your perspective is subjective, unscientific, and extremely inaccurate. Your meanings are entirely self - projected, and your resulting emotions are entirely self - inflicted. Be warned your scarcity mindset born out of ignorance will only manifest more scarcity.

 

Instead, I invite you to wake up to the possibility that if you are reading this with internet access, free time, money to get by, and awareness of the domain of personal development in any way, you are already in the top 1% of humanity when it comes to potential enjoyment of life. I invite you to not only compare yourself to the “top 0.001” of life circumstances, but also to the 99.99% beneath it. That’s only fair, right?

 

Infact, I invite you to the possibility of endless peace and joy being available to you that far surpasses the joy that can be experienced by any life circumstances or any seemingly abundant celebrities (lol, that’s a whole other can of worms, but tldr: they aren’t actually any happier), if you’re willing to drop your projected meanings and wake up to it.

 

I invite you to rid yourself of the self - harming delusions right now and to wake up to the joy that is already and always present by virtue of simply existing. Ask yourself “how am I experiencing this moment right now?” Isn’t is cool to exist, and experience? Or not? Maybe there’s residual emotion left over by some prior circumstance, argument, perception, experience, whatever. Ok, cool. But is it still present? Is it still needed? Does it make sense to still be feeling anything other than amazing right now, because of something that happened in the “past” (imagined memory you are generating right now)? If it doesn’t actually make sense, drop it, and enjoy being alive right now.

 

And if you don’t wish to do that yet, atleast be fair to yourself, clear your lens of perception, and get some perspective.

 

PART 2: THE HAMSTER WHEEL: UNDERSTANDING THE MIND AND IT’S INHERENT LIMITS

 

In the previous post I mentioned abundant celebrities only appear to be more abundant. What did I mean?

 

Quite simple!

 

Consider what a Self is. 

 

The self, in essence, is a system designed by nature to ensure the survival of the body, and the reproduction of it’s genes, as part of the infinite play of Creation.

 

How does it accomplish this?

 

Simply put: by perceiving it’s surroundings, interpreting it’s meaning, and differentiating it into good for surviving, and bad for surviving. That way it can obtain the good, and avoid the bad, to best survive and reproduce (reproducing = surviving from the perspective of genes. Put even more elegantly: persist.)

 

Put very simply, this is in essence the primary function of a Self. It’s all it does, in every moment. Perceive. Interpret. Compare. Evaluate. Obtain/Avoid. Rinse and repeat. 

 

Stripped to it’s bare bones, this is the human experience. Emotions serve as motivators to either obtain (=continue) or avoid, based on the evaluation of experience.

 

Now extrapolate that to the the people you’re comparing yourself to. The people that appear to have everything. Or more accurately, they don’t have everything. They just have what you don’t yet have, which is what your self machine has in this moment focused on as being important and valuable to it’s continued optimal survival. To them however, their self machine has already moved on to new things, and forgotten what has already been obtained. How so? Simple: satisfaction is not directly beneficial to survival. Only further obtaining/avoiding is. This never stops. Their mind is simply creating new problems to avoid, and more things to obtain. That’s all the human mind is designed to do. Create striving and avoidance.

 

Miserable millionaires? Depressed celebrities? Suicidal rockstars? Midlife crisis? The materialist trap? “I have so many things, why am I still unhappy?”

There’s why.

 

By the way. When I say “survival”, I don’t mean survival of the physical body. That’s the body, not the self. When I say “survival”, I mean survival of self. Ergo: the mind. The identity. Who you think you are, constructed by your subjective memories, interpretations, comparisons, conditioned values and subsequent desires and avoidances in the so called World. That is what is surviving here. Your identity. We’ve evolved past physical survival, but physical ain’t everything. We live in a world of self - projected meaning. Navigating it requires constructing a self according to those meanings, impacted by those meanings.

 

It’s the reason why early tribal humans fighting for their physical survival day by day can’t remain happy. It’s the reason members surviving in the paradigm of organized religion can’t remain happy. It’s the reason contemplative scientists surviving in the modern world can’t remain happy. It’s the reason rich stock brokers surviving on Wall Street can’t remain happy. It’s the reason a sexually abundant +1000 laycount pick up artist can’t remain happy. It’s the reason a famous beloved celebrity surviving in the domain of fame and status can’t remain happy. It’s the reason a postmodern millennial hippie can’t remain happy.

 

Somewhere between those exemplary archetypes I just very grossly threw together, you are. Surviving, according to your values. What do they all have in common? Surviving. Existing. Persisting. More accurately: navigating the world according to their own conditioned values. Perceiving, interpreting, comparing. Obtaining, avoiding. 

 

You know Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs? This is the substratum. The common thread between all needs. The machine that runs it.

 

The self. The identity. The mind.

 

 “You”.

 

PART 3: FINALE: BECOMING FREE OF YOU.

 

So here we are. If you’re not happy, “you” are the problem. Just as the sentence implies.

Oh dear. 

 

“Ok Simon, ya fuckin nerd. You think you’ve got it all figured out huh. Nice generalisations. Now stop mentally masturbating and go out and just live your life, earn money, do some shit. Stop your hippie postmodern relativism!”

 

Hold up, postmodern relativists and hippies and mental masturbators all fall into the very model I just outlined. They’re no better!

 

Ok, I did just go on a long intellectual rant. I was being somewhat poetic. I was making generalisations and assumptions and simplifications. You may have many objections. You may be very happy with your life. I’m not saying everyone is automatically a depressed sack of shit in my arrogant and pretentious world model. I know. There are many things that make you happy. There’s many great lifestyles that give great enjoyment. Nice things. Friends. Relationships. A good meal. A warm bed. Holidays. New clothes. Parties. Sports. Games. Beaches. Sex. Luxury. Work you’re passionate about. Purpose. Achieving goals. Helping others. Music. Art. Creating things.

 

These are all great things. I like them too. I like them a lot.

 

But is your happiness truly unconditional? Or does it go up and down depending on circumstance?

 

Bear with me for just a little longer.

 

I do have a proposed solution. To permanent happiness. Unconditional happiness. Something that can serve everyone, no matter what your beliefs, values and goals in life. 

 

What?

 

Very simple.

 

Freedom from...yourself!

 

“Fuck off.”

 

Ok, sorry. Simple, but kinda stupid. I get it. But if you’ve gone along with what I’ve said before, you can see that problems….are created by you. 

 

Who else could be creating them? Without you, there’s no experience. No perception. No interpretation. No differentiation. No evaluation. No action.

 

No problem.

 

Consider that it is possible to live life effectively, pursuing your goals, fulfilling your desires, being in relationships...doing everything you want to do, everything you feel is important to your life...while remaining unconditionally happy. At peace.

 

Consider that suffering is additive. Not an absolute truth of life we just need to accept. Acceptance is great, surrender is great, yes. But consider the possibility that suffering is truly, not absolutely necessary. Pain, maybe. Being tortured, damn. That would truly suck. But mental suffering, in all it’s forms: anger, addiction, fear, hate, shame, regret...optional.

How?

 

By completely disassociating yourself from your “self” and reassociating with what you really are: the awareness in which your “self”, and everything else in your experience, arises.

 

By that I mean your entire experience. As a whole. Prior to all the distinction and evaluation “you” generate. 

 

Consider that your entire experience, EVERYTHING you experience, are simply sensations, arising in awareness. What is your experience? Sights. Sounds. Smells. Tastes. Touch. Thoughts. Emotions (which are a composite of touch sensations in the body + thoughts).

Out of all these, your mind distinguishes and evaluates. Creates the motivation to obtain or avoid in the form of emotions (more sensations in experience).

 

That’s what you do. Your mind. Awareness itself, however, does not. Awareness simply receives. Is aware of it all, but nothing more. Everything simply occurs within awareness.

 

Usually, we believe awareness is something “we” are doing. I want to propose the reverse. Awareness is something in which “we” is done. Look closely at your experience. Are you “doing” awareness? Are “you” aware of anything, or is awareness simply aware of it, and also, of “you”? When you look closely, everything, including “you”, is happening inside awareness. Always. Yesterday, last week, last year. At birth. There can be no experience, without awareness. Experience is awareness. You, are not. You are part of experience, in awareness, separated from the rest of experience, by yourself. But not by awareness. Awareness includes, and transcends all, equally.

 

This means, were you identified with awareness instead of what you currently think you are: that feeling of being someone inside the head, having thoughts, having things in experience happen to you, and reacting to life, everything happening in awareness would be treated equally, and you would no longer be attached or subjected to the constant evaluation and reactions of the mind - body.

 

All problems vanish. What’s left is a simply but profound joy of simply existing, no matter what’s happening. You are no longer a separate individual at the receiving end of life, but life itself, whatever it presents itself as in that moment. All simply occurring as sensations within you: awareness.

 

This is the simple shift all major religions point to at their core: spiritual enlightenment. Nirvana. Christ Union. The Kabbalah. A bunch of others that aren’t arising in my awareness right now. But pretty much every contemplative tradition of people sitting down and looking closely at what is really true.

 

It’s also what science points to: the “external” world not actually being perceivable as such, but the “world” we perceive simply being an interpretation created in the brain. The problem is that this intellectual truth is not actually experienced as such by scientists, or almost anyone. The assumption that we are a real, separate entity at the receiving end of a real external world persists and is experienced as such. 

 

Actually living as awareness instead of as the identity requires a radical shift, and a letting go of everything we thought to be true. What monks sometimes meditate 50+ years for. What people sometimes experience on peak psychedelic trips. What some people rarely, completely randomly, wake up to. But usually keep to themselves because it seems utterly insane to the majority of humanity. 

 

It’s hard, again, because this shift, like satisfaction, is not directly beneficial to self-survival, or the mind. Infact, it ends up completely ending the mind and it’s constant machinations. So the mind will endlessly fight against it generating new thoughts and emotions to keep itself alive. A lot of survival and the fears that go with it are dropped, death is radically accepted, equanimity is gained in endless abundance. And joy. Anywhere, anytime. By simple virtue of existing. Of being empty awareness free of constraints. Things become effortless, and ridiculously enjoyable, even the mundane. Simply being is profound, and enjoyable. Peace is always there, it is what you fundamentally are. Fundamental wellbeing. 

 

Furthermore, it doesn’t mean you become a hermit without goals or drives or ambitions. Quite the opposite. It immensely frees you up to follow your human purpose without all the silly fears blocking you prior. Life becomes a game. An expression. Unloseable, only winnable. Even if you die, it’s ok. It’s only the body-mind ceasing to exist in awareness, awareness going back to to Nothing / the Infinite Universe from whence it came. Going home. All part of the Whole. Every mistake you ever thought you made becomes a laughing matter, a silly lie you told yourself. Every shred of self hatred or doubt or anxiety. Trivial. Nothing but sensations occurring within you, free of inherent meaning. The past and the future are nothing but imaginations you are generating within the endless Now of awareness. It is only Now. Only perfect. Always pure joy, of simply existing, experiencing, Now. That is enlightenment. That is true happiness. 

 

And the shift is possible, from my own experience, and the experience of many, many others. I started going down the rabbit hole 5 years ago. At first I thought it was simply hippie shit. Then I took a bunch of psychedelic drugs and realised there was something to it. I started waking up more and more, now sober. No hallucinations, only a shift in perception. A ceasing of mind activity, and identification. It can be a lightning bolt of a radical shift, all at once, for no apparent reason, or it can be a gradual shift, gradually practiced and realised through various practices. Contemplation. Meditation. Deconstructing the self. Looking closely at what is really happening. Questioning your assumptions about yourself and life. 

 

To be continued???? How to end???

Edited June 20, 2020 by Display_Name