Open Enlightenment

The Dirty Little Secret of Awakening

There is something wrong with the Dharma.

A sickness is festering, unchecked, in the shadows of the great Saints, Sages and Prophets. Its symptoms include the countless examples of psychological, physical, and sexual abuses visited upon students and devotees by gurus, the financial exploitation, corruption, fraud, murder and drug abuse perpetrated by teachers from both the East and West, the political infighting evident in every major lineage and school, the outright failure of many traditions in producing awakened practitioners, the reluctance of genuinely awakened individuals in coming forward and openly discussing enlightenment, and the casual racism, sexism, fascism and homophobia still found in ‘spiritual culture’.

Ironically, all of this is the result of an endeavour to uphold the highest standards of morality.

Gestation

It’s been just over nine months since my final awakening, and I’ve recently become aware of how easily I became infected with the sickness, and since beginning to teach, the potential for just how severe the symptoms could become.

Since beginning this blog last year, we’ve been visited by a number of individuals who are so badly infected by the sickness that their only chance of recovery – if any – is a Dharma lobotomy. I expect that what I’m going to write here is probably going to attract more of this type, and probably with further accusations of my awakening being anything but genuine or full (see how many times you can spot something that can’t possibly mean I’m enlightened). But if the Dharma is ever going to recover, someone has to bite the bullet and expose the Dirty Little Secret no one wishes to address.

Early detection

Post-awakening is just as much a learning curve as pre-awakening. For a couple of months after my awakening, I felt like I had been emptied out. I was effortlessly present, blissed out, calm and contented. I had of course experienced something similar with my peak and partial awakenings, and so I knew that this state wouldn’t last forever.

So what had permanently changed?

Although many gurus speak about the eradication of the ego or the self, I already knew pre-awakening that many genuine teachers found this model inaccurate and misleading; and my experience confirmed this. I still had an ego, a self or personality; but it did seem as if the subject/object divide had disappeared for good, and had been replaced by wholeness or completion at a fundamental level. So that must be it: I was no longer a subject!

And the sickness had slipped in by simply changing its name.

Diagnosis

We can readily identify the sickness by considering perhaps the most essential (no pun intended) concept of Buddhism: No-Self.

According to Buddhism, No-Self is one of the three characteristics evident in all phenomena, including human beings. If we observe a sensation close enough, we can see that it has no ‘essence’, despite the fact we readily assume all subjects and objects to possess such a quality.

What this has come to mean, however, is the idea that if we believe or act as though we possess a self, say by performing any actions that can be considered ‘selfish’ or ‘egotistical’, then we are acting from a place of ignorance.

Ergo, the enlightened person must be completely selfless.

In my own case, if I am no longer a subject, that means I must act as if I no longer have the concerns that a subject possesses, no? Which, for all intents and purposes, is exactly the same thing as believing I am selfless.

Furthermore, as I am awakened, I cannot possibly act with selfish, egotistical or ‘ignorant’ intent.  My motivations must always be pure then!

Now stick me in a room, surround me by devotees who also behave as if I am infallibly selfless and pure, and watch as I play out every whim unburdened by conscience (‘My devotees bitch and moan when I force them to practice for 48hrs straight/give me their inheritance for my Open Enlightenment centre/play out my sexual fantasies. Of course, they wouldn’t complain if they were awakened like me; I need to make them work harder/give me more money/perform more interesting sexual feats, more often!’).

The abusive guru and the gullible devotee is but one of the many symptoms of the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness (IBS).

The Dirty Little Secret

The awful truth about awakening (and this has taken me a while to really understand with a degree of clarity) is that the self, ego, personality and even the subject don’t go anywhere, which means that selfish, egotistical, personal and subjective behaviour all remain. If you are greedy, angry and homophobic before awakening, chances are you’ll still be greedy, angry and homophobic afterwards.

If we define awakening as the recognition of our original nature, we can say that the awakened person is simply aware that all phenomenon is original nature; this includes all of the neuroses, issues, and prejudices that come with being a human being. This does not mean the self, ego, personality or subject are eradicated; they are simply seen as perfect, whole and complete. (Get over it.)

Or, to speak in Buddhist terms, No Self does not mean there is no self, but that the self is empty, along with everything else (including your ego, personality, issues, psychosis, facial ticks…and even emptiness itself!).

Perhaps if the concept of Empty Self replaced that of No Self we might go some way to inhibiting the spread of the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness.

Further Symptoms

With selflessness as the yard stick for awakening, it should come as no surprise that:

• Many Dharma practitioners deny and suppress their angry, greedy, lustful, attached, ignorant, anxious, weird, disturbed, restless, unhappy, sad, mad, bad and selfish emotions, thoughts and behaviours, only to have these unwanted and unloved aspects of themselves play out while the practitioner remains oblivious and ignorant to the fact, and usually within a Sangha or group of similarly deluded hypocrites, where everyone pretends they’re the most ‘enlightened’ people on the planet!
• Many awakened practitioners mistakenly believe they are not awakened because they are evidently not selfless.
• Many schools and lineages of enlightenment will not tolerate discussion of awakening for fear of being accused of displaying pride or attachment, resulting in many genuinely awakened practitioners remaining silent about the phenomenon for fear of expulsion/exclusion.
• By denying their prejudices even exist, the racism, sexism, fascism and homophobia (and even heterophobia!) of many practitioners are left unchecked and unaddressed within the ‘spiritual’ community.
• By investing in a poor model of awakening based on the ideal of selflessness, the mainstay of the Dharma community is catastrophically failing in facilitating awakening in themselves and others. The vows of many traditions and lineages have become nothing but a joke.

Treatment

Thankfully, treatment is free and available to everyone, and recovery is fast and virtually guaranteed.

The treatment is three fold:

1). Be honest with yourself and everyone else, even if you’ve invested a lot of time and energy in a certain worldview, tradition or identity that encourages the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness. If you really care about awakening, show some integrity.

2). Now that you can consciously accept the existence of your ego and issues, you should address them. Sociopath? Have some therapy! Full of hate? Explore the nature and possible root cause of your anger! Proud? Make your competitiveness work for the cause by becoming the best awakened teacher the world has ever seen!

3).Take a sitting session for a minimum of half an hour once a day. While it is true that just before and after awakening selflessness and compassion (amongst other wonderful attributes) spontaneously arise, which positively transform the world like nothing else can, this kind of ‘perfect meditation’ passes; it is therefore down to a daily practice to foster the natural expression of openness, compassion, freedom, wholeness, peace, generosity and selflessness that demonstrates our original nature. Whether awakened or not, enlightenment must be practiced in order that we transform the world; sitting is one such method.

It should be noted that despite everything I’ve said, enlightenment does have a profound effect on a person, and it can change his or her behaviour in a very profound sense; but exactly how and to what degree appears to vary with each individual. I like to think that enlightenment doesn’t produce the perfect human being, but it does produce a better one.

Right, let’s have it

Come on then: just how unenlightened am I?

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Magick

A life-long interest in the paranormal led me to occultism. From there it was a short hop into spiritual practice. And from there (conceptually, at least) only another step toward enlightenment.

The insights I’ve gained I owe to magick more than religion. Tarot cards, ouija boards, ghost-hunting and UFO-spotting, sorcery, invocation of spirits and demons – these have played a role in my enlightenment. Going to church, puja to Buddha, adhering to the eight-fold path – have played none.

Yet the difference between the eastern paths to enlightenment and the western magical tradition is not that great. The eastern traditions – Buddhism included – accept the validity of magick and sanction the development of magical abilities, but this is often treated as an extra and there are frequent cautions against acquiring magick at the expense of insight.

What we call ‘reality’ has no intrinsic existence. The lived experience of this understanding is awakening, but what follows even from the mere idea is a notion that ‘reality’ is, therefore, quite malleable stuff. To an extent, it can be bent and shaped at will. Reality is determined by our perception, and perception by our belief. Magick is an intervention at both these levels (and others besides) to alter reality. Meditation is an act of magick.

There is nothing like magick for gaining a first-hand experience of the insubstantiality of reality. The danger is that we may become so occupied with our bending and shaping that we never get around to realising how the bender and shaper too lacks any inherent existence.

Here lies the underlying tension. If we allow people the leeway to muck about with their reality, can they be trusted to progress beyond magick? But if we protect them with faith and rules from the temptations of anarchy, will they garner enough insight to understand the vital role of magick in seeing through the self?

People do not get enlightened by following rules or by proving an idea – not even their own. People get enlightened by having the courage to pick apart their experience and discover something that transcends all rules, ideas and experiences.

But the rule that there are no rules is a rule. And the rule that we should not make up rules is a rule. And the rule that there is no need for rules is a rule.

When people tell me I shouldn’t hold a certain view, or that I don’t need to hold any view, what I hear (all too often) is someone merely parroting an idea.

Probably it was an idea given to them by a teacher, intended to protect them from a pitfall further along the path. But now they’ve mistaken it for a reality, and although they’d do better to concentrate on taking it apart (after all, isn’t that what the teacher always says?), instead they’re waving it in other people’s faces.

The hard part is accepting that you’ve fallen into the trap of faith and religion. The remedy, however, is always magick.

Just keep waving that wand and eventually – poof – it’ll all disappear.

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Doubt and Faith

The last few weeks have been disappointing.

Website

First of all, people just do not want to do things unless money is involved. Three designers have promised to help, one because he owed a favour, and two on a gift economy basis.  Not one has delivered anything.

Someone promised to build a salesforce back end, with an additional site for an online community with all kinds of whizz-bang features. I learned how to write copy, then wrote all the copy for the new site, and fleshed out the IA, all in time for the deadline….which came and went.

As a result, I’ve given up on the idea of a bespoke site with a bespoke design; we’re going to stick with word press and apply a nice skin. Out of sheer desperation, I downloaded GIMP the other day in the hope that I can learn how to use a graphics package, and knock up a logo myself. How sad.

Then, instead of re-inventing the wheel, we can just use facebook, twitter and other social networking services to aid in the cause.

Detractors

Boy, have they been coming out of the wood work this month! I’m not talking about people who question stuff on this site (and elsewhere) as a genuine inquiry into the subject; I’m talking about ignorant, lazy, and patronising people who in some cases haven’t even bothered to read what they are criticising. Having an inbox full of such e-mails and websites full of such comments can really begin to challenge your faith in humanity. I have wondered a few times if I’ve really wasted the last few years of my life in trying to demonstrate that magick is a genuine enlightenment tradition, and if I’m wasting my time now in trying to demonstrate that enlightenment is a very real, accessible experience for everyone; because so many people seem not only ungrateful, but actually resentful! I’m feeling quite tired of defending my position at the moment, when I’m not quite sure why I have to. Explains why a lot of teachers don’t answer comments or e-mails in person.

Anyway, to alleviate the burden I’ve written a little FAQ for detractors so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.

Online communities

The Dharma Overground is a great idea: an online community for discussing the practicalities of enlightenment, such as what to practice and what to expect in terms of states, events and stages, run by people who have actually experienced enlightenment.

Sadly, anyone can go on there and call themselves an arahat (someone who has experienced enlightenment), and although there are some genuine arahats on there, there are a few who I believe are not, based on how their experience sounds like mine prior to enlightenment, and therefore nothing like my actual experience of enlightenment, or the Buddha’s, or Daniel Ingram’s, or Adyashanti’s, or Ramana Maharshi’s, or Lao Tzu’s, or any other respected teacher’s description of it.

These pseudo-arahats are into a movement called Actual Freedom and (I’ve chosen my words very carefully here) it is absolute dog shit. It is vile, anti-enlightenment, counter-initiatory guff. And it really saddens me to see other members of the Dharma Overground check it out and buy into it. I am absolutely baffled how intelligent people actually think psychosis is desirable (and I’m not just calling it psychosis because I don’t like it; the specific types of psychosis – such as ‘permanent’ depersonalisation – are listed on the site).

Now there is an Actual Freedom forum for people interested in the anti-enlightenment movement on the Dharma Overground, a site dedicated to honest and practical discussion of enlightenment. I’m at a loss for words.

Faith and Tradition

All of this leads very nicely to my new found appreciation for faith and tradition. To practice in order to engage with enlightenment requires faith in both the description of enlightenment offered by those who claim to have experienced it, and their ability to describe it accurately enough as to not be misleading.

There are so many individuals throughout history and alive today who have described a phenomenon called enlightenment in similar ways that mustering up the faith in enlightenment is not very difficult to do. If practice begins in earnest, that faith is vindicated to an extent by even a small degree of progress on the path. But no matter how great an experience might be, if it does not match the deep features of what has been described as enlightenment by this body of peers, then it is not what they are describing. Faith is required right up to the end of ignorance.

The value of an accurate description of enlightenment (that we can have faith in) is its ability to take away the focus from the attainments of the teacher. Either your experience matches the description, or it is not recognised as enlightenment by the body of peers that ascribe to that description. No ifs, buts or maybes. No questioning the teacher’s ability to accurately describe enlightenment, or even the teacher’s own attainments. This doesn’t mean we end up with teachers who have no experience of enlightenment; on the contrary, if the teacher’s experience doesn’t match the description, then they cannot be a teacher.

My primary task at the moment is to create a description of enlightenment that we can have faith in. That is not to say that such descriptions haven’t been provided before (I’m very much enjoying Dogen at the moment), but we need a clear, honest 21^st Century description for Westerners, by a Westerner.

I then want to start a tradition, where people can have faith in the teachings and the teachers, which can then eventually give way to direct, personal knowledge of enlightenment. I’ll be starting my first group soon in London, just as soon as I’ve created these damn banners…

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