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You and I—and billions of others—were brainwashed into a deep, dark trap.
This trap—this unconscious collective belief—is the reason millions of meditators practice diligently their whole lives but never realize full-blown Awakening.
The worst thing about this trap that it’s invisible. When we’re stuck in it, we’re like a fish who, immersed in water all its life, doesn’t know what ‘wetness’ is. Except ‘wetness’, for us, is what the Buddha called samsara: the realm of ignorance, delusion and suffering…
I spent 30,000 hours studying and practising spirituality to realize what I’m about to tell you in 20 minutes. If you care about being of benefit to yourself and humanity, please give me that long to explain.
My earliest memory is of a profound sense of awe and wonder. I remember contemplating—in a felt way—*why* any of this (life) should be going on. For whatever reason, when self-awareness occurred in my experience, I was able to acknowledge it. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate this to anyone: I was 4 years old! But this acknowledgment created a kind of ‘zoomed out’ perspective from which I could perceive everything else that occurred. Rather than always being totally immersed in what was going on, there was often, instead, a sense of it being really weird that anything should be going on at all. Of course, a huge part of what was going on for me at that time was socialization: traditional parenting and schooling—as it was in the ‘90s—with all its assumptions and beliefs, and with all the rules built upon those assumptions and beliefs.
I was told dozens or maybe even hundreds of times each day that if I did certain things I was ‘good’, and if I did other things I was ‘bad’. Not that my behaviour was good or bad—that’s a very different message. No, I was told that I, myself was good or bad, then praised or punished accordingly. I suspect that sounds familiar…
Of course, socialization has its place: we don’t want children playing in traffic or picking their noses opposite dinner guests. But it also creates and sustains the trap this video is about, which does a particular and severe kind of damage to us all…
When, as children, you and I picked our noses, we were acting on natural impulse. And we couldn’t differentiate that impulse from the one that urged us to give our mother a kiss or share our chocolate with a friend.
Then, when we were told that we were ‘bad’ for following some of those impulses—and when, following that, we were punished—a belief was handed down to us that we were not good enough as we were, and must change ourselves in order to be acceptable.
If you grew up in church, this belief was formalized for you: ‘if you do good things you’ll go to heaven; if you do bad things you’ll go to hell. God is watching when you pick your nose, and he thinks you’re disgusting.’
But this belief is not held only by religious people: religion and culture were pretty much the same thing until 60 years ago, and we’re still suffering the hangover. So even those of us with non-religious parents were trained to believe we were born broken and had to whip ourselves into shape, until we were able to ‘prove our worth’. Only instead of heaven, we were told to prove we were worthy of—
- Affection
- Grades
- College
- Work
- Money
- Housing
- Marriage
- Retirement
- Happiness
We were told that if we didn’t prove our worth, then we’d fall off the bottom rung of the societal ladder. We were told that if we did nothing, we were unworthy of happiness by default.
Of course, no-one says it like that because they’ve never articulated it to themselves. This is an unconscious collective belief. And it doesn’t only make your worldly life hard, but it actually makes it impossible to realize Awakening—because as long as you’re trying to improve or purify a self, you’re reinforcing the very illusion you need to see through!
Now, it’s easy to see why this belief is so common. In a survival situation—when we’re starving, freezing, or defending ourselves—a strong and very useful sense of self kicks in to keep us alive. And, of course, what we now call a ‘survival situation’ was just called ‘life’ for almost every human being who ever lived—from their first steps to their dying breath! But in the modern world, if we’re lucky enough to live in a peaceful territory, we don’t have to think about those things. And now, thanks to this privilege, more and more of us have the opportunity to transcend our animalistic instincts, stop running the individualistic mental/emotional processes that kept our ancestors alive, and Awaken. But if only it were that simple…
Approaching the age of 30, I started exploring spirituality for stress relief. I heard mainstream gurus promising freedom, peace, happiness, etc. It sounded too good to be true, but I kept exploring. I experimented with guided meditations; I read; I listened to dharma talks; I spoke with teachers. But something still didn’t feel quite right. It took 3 years of dedicated study and practice for me to put a finger on this, but eventually I realized something I’d never heard anyone state explicitly—
99% of spiritual teachings promise freedom, but are really still about changing yourself.
They say—or at least imply—things like:
- ‘Purify your subconscious; work through your buried emotions; release stored trauma’
- ‘Train yourself to access states of deep concentration and “perfect your awareness”’
- ‘Apply effort now to realize enlightenment in the future’
- ‘Cultivate wholesome qualities’
- ‘Follow this process of gradual spiritual attainment’
- ‘Go on intensive meditation retreats if you want to make real progress’
- ‘Abandon your family and ordain as a monk if you want to make really real progress’
Oh look, it’s that unconscious bias again: you’re not good enough as you are; something has to change.
I would discover later that all of that directly contradicts the core tenets of any genuine wisdom teaching. Ingredients like—
- In your direct experience, the past and future are imaginary
- There’s no independent, permanent ‘self’ who can attain anything—spiritual or otherwise
- All perceivable phenomena, including states of consciousness, come and go and therefore can’t be relied upon
- Clarity, wisdom and compassion occur naturally—they cannot be contrived
- If your freedom depends upon anything it is, by definition, not freedom
What I’m talking about here is the biggest bait and switch in history.
First, the world tells you to fix yourself. Second, spiritual teachings promise freedom. Third, spiritual teachings tell you to fix yourself!
Now, to be fair, the kind of ‘fixing’ that mainstream spiritual teachings recommend is, relatively speaking, healthier than workaholism or cosmetic surgery. But it is still based on that same unconscious collective belief that we must, somehow, change ourselves in order to be okay.
When I saw this, I felt betrayed. I’d spent 3 years dedicating every waking moment (and even some sleeping moments) to the pursuit of changing my thoughts and feelings from bad to good. But I realized that, in my gut, I was still operating on that same belief that had been drilled into me as a little boy. I was still locked in the trap.
I could not deny that the practices I’d been doing had been beneficial, but they were not the final solution I was seeking. So I started looking, frantically, for teachings that could reconcile what I’d realized.
I’m pleased to tell you this story has a very happy ending.
I discovered 3 wisdom teachings that have the rare and tremendous power to bring us all out of that nasty trap:
- Advaita Vedanta (from India)
- Zen (from Japan)
- Dzogchen (from Tibet)
These teachings, each in their own way, encouraged me to explore a new hypothesis: what if I was not born broken and in need of fixing but, rather, I was not ‘born’ at all? What if, instead, all that I take to be ‘me’ is merely a fleeting appearance within a single, indivisible whole, which transcends judgment and is, therefore, inherently perfect just as it is? What if the assumption that anyone needs to fix themselves is just that—an assumption—with no meaning beyond that which we invest into it? And what if it is the simple dropping of that assumption—and, further, all assumptions—that facilitates the releasing of anything that is to be released, thus revealing the Enlightenment I’ve been struggling and striving for?
I decided I had to find out. Now having an alternative, it became clear that I couldn’t possibly test every spiritual practice that was about changing oneself. Hell, even if I landed on the best of the lot I could still wonder about the others! But I could test the great hypothesis of those 3 nondual teachings: I could test what happened if I did as they each recommended, in their own way, and dedicated every moment to the practice of natural rest…
‘Nonduality’ means ‘without boundaries’. To be without boundaries is to realize the innate perfection of everything just as it is—because it is only in separating things out that we can label them as ‘good’ or ’bad’. But realizing nonduality doesn’t mean denying the relative appearance of things as separate: you can still cheer for your favourite team! Rather, it means knowing—experientially, deeply, conclusively—that the apparent separations between things are ultimately illusory; mentally fabricated. Practically, it’s the difference between throwing your beer at an away fan’s head when you lose the game, and appreciating the interdependence of victory and defeat. In this realization, though you may still enjoy healthy competition, there is no sting in defeat. And this extrapolates out across your whole life, until you experience even life itself as a game; no longer the high-stakes drama it once was. But this does not make you apathetic or uncaring! Quite the opposite, in fact…
Good news: the drawing of any boundary is a mental process that you can simply not do. Interpretations, judgments, labels, descriptions are also mental processes that you can simply not do. And since interpretations can be wrong, well—if you’re interested in truth, doesn’t it make sense to drop them?
Drop the belief that you must meditate for decades if you want to ‘get Enlightened’.
Drop the belief that anyone ever can ‘get Enlightened’.
Drop the belief that you will end up a degenerate if you let go.
Drop the belief that you are broken by default.
You are not.
Millions of practitioners who simply got quiet enough to see their true nature realized that they manifest love, compassion and wisdom as naturally as they sneeze or breathe or blink. You are the same. You only believe otherwise precisely because of that deep, dark trap that you were shut in before you could tie your shoelaces. And it’s that belief itself, plus a host of others, that are the whole problem.
Of course, understanding all this intellectually isn’t enough. That deep feeling of brokenness may well continue to arise for a while—even if you get everything I’ve said here. When it does, contemplate the following questions:
- Who or what is aware of the feeling of brokenness or inadequacy?
- Is that someone or something, itself, broken or inadequate?
- Is the feeling permanent, or does it come and go?
- If and when it goes, does the someone or something that was aware of it go, too? Or does that someone or something remain, ready to perceive the next thing that comes?
- When you recognize that the feeling is just a feeling, just a belief, with no objective basis—does it stay the same or does it change?
As I worked with those questions, I realized not only the emptiness of my belief in my own brokenness, but the emptiness of all beliefs; of all fabricated mental processes.
One by one, each was examined freshly as it arose. And instead of buying in; instead of tumbling down familiar rabbit holes of thought; instead of retelling the stories I’d told myself for 30 years, I simply rested as the awareness that is the essence, the ground, the underlying basis of those mental processes. The more I did this, the less they seemed like solid, meaningful things with the power to make me think more thoughts; feel more feelings in reaction—and more like smoke in the breeze or ripples in water. Vividly apparent, as the Tibetans say! But fleeting, transient, impermanent. And even I, myself, and everything I’d ever taken myself to be was seen to belong to this same category.
Finally, even the notion of awareness as some ‘thing’ itself dissolved. The idea of subject/object relativity became absurd. Everything became easy; playful; spontaneous; delightful. And I found the relief, the freedom I’d been seeking for 30 years. I’d returned to that ‘zoomed out’ perspective I’d spontaneously glimpsed as a 4-year-old boy—only now with the benefit of wisdom. Wisdom that would prevent anyone or anything from limiting or trapping me ever again.
Practically, this realization had profound benefit. The activity of my life stopped being about protecting, improving or furthering myself and started being about allowing natural, spontaneous mutual benefit to unfold. I met my wife and entered into a blissful and supportive marriage; I started teaching what I’d realized publicly and collaborating with students to create enormous positive change in their own lives. These changes are usually intangible, but occasionally someone turns these changes toward great worldly success—one of my students, Eric, just persevered through months of slow business only to then make $100,000 of sales in a single month.
If what I’ve said here makes even the slightest sense to you, friend, it has the power to reveal for you what it revealed for me and my students. But don’t take my word for it! Investigate! Experiment! See for yourself! And be sure to tell me what you find in a comment.
With love from my sofa,
Dan💙
P.S. If you want to find out where you're at in this whole picture, take my 1-minute quiz. I'll tell you your current 'mindfulness level', and how to get to the next one. And, if you like, I'll reach out to you via email to continue the conversation.
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