Youâre already Enlightened. If you donât trust me, thatâs okay.
If you donât trust the wisdom lineages Iâve studied inâBuddhist and non-Buddhistâthatâs okay.
If you donât trust my 30,000 hours of practice, thatâs okay.
Because in the end, you must test and verify what Iâm about to say for yourself. Every teacher listening to makes this recommendation.
But if youâre already Enlightened, why do you still suffer sometimes? How can these statements both be true? Donât they contradict one another?
Why do you still want things to be different sometimes? Why do you still get into disagreements with people sometimes? Why are you still impatient sometimes? Why do you still worry about the future sometimes? Why do you still wallow in the past sometimes? Why do you still get stressed sometimes? Why do you still get caught up in egotistical desires sometimes?
Well, we need to get clear on what Enlightenment is, exactly.
But if you want to find out right now where youâre at in your spiritual journey, take my 1-minute quiz. Iâll tell you your âmindfulness levelâ and how to get to the next one, then Iâll email you personally to see if I can help.
A Realistic Definition of Enlightenment
Now, hereâs a big problem: everyoneâs confused about what Enlightenment is. And honestly, this is unavoidable with the way the thinking mind works and how freaking attached to it everyone is.
Even the Buddha, arguably the greatest teacher who ever livedâthe greatest teacher of anything, everâwas reluctant to teach what he realized when he sat under that famous bodhi tree on the night of his Awakening. Because he thought it would tire him out when people inevitably struggled to hear it. Thatâs the one guy everyone agrees was fully enlightened saying he didnât have the energy for this task.
But if youâre here, you just might be ready to hear it. You just might be one of the few with âlittle dirt in their eyesâ that the Buddha decided to try to reach. Most people have clicked off this teaching already. Hell, social media algorithms donât show this stuff to 99.9999% of people on the platform to begin with. So if what Iâm saying here is speaking to you, stay with me.
An Analogy For Enlightenment
Now, imagine youâre looking out of your bedroom window, but the world outside is blurry. So you decide you need to clean the window. You grab your detergent and your microfibre cloth, you spray and you get to scrubbing. But no matter how much detergent you use; no matter how hard you scrub, the window doesnât get any cleaner. Everything you see through the window is still murky and distorted.
So you scrub harder.
âI must be doing it wrong,â you think, so you try a different detergent; a different cloth; a different way of scrubbing. But none of that works either.
Then, suddenly, you realize the dirt and smudges that are distorting your view arenât on the window but on your glasses. So you simply take them off. Finally, you see everything with perfect clarity, just as it is. And you realize all your scrubbing was ultimately a waste of time.
The window, in this analogy, represents your ego; your psychology; your personality.
The detergent and cloth represent relativistic spiritual practices: âantidotesâ you can apply to your ego, psychology, personality in attempts to clear them up or make them better.
The glasses represent views, beliefs, opinions, interpretations, judgments, labels, descriptionsâ*all* of which, whether theyâre about ordinary stuff or spiritual practiceâare distorting.
The removal of the glasses represents the subtractive process that finally brings about Awakening: the cessation of the mental fabrications that create stress and dissatisfaction, and the recognition that your vision was always perfectly clear behind your distortions.
And, of course, the clear vision represents Enlightenment itself: the pristine, uncontrived, unblemished aware pure space that is your fundamental nature.
Enlightenment is not a state you âget intoâ by applying effort. Enlightenment is not a state at all. States have a beginning and end: how could they be what is fundamental; natural; true?
Effortful Practices Are, Ultimately, Just More âStuffâ
Effortful practices can lead to improvements at the level of psychology, but this is not guaranteed. Regardless, these kinds of practices can only, at best, prepare you for Awakening by loosening your attachments and cleaning up your behaviour, but they do not bring about Awakening itself. How could they bring about Awakening when they, themselves, are just more âstuffâ?
If it comes and goes, it is not Enlightenment.
Enlightenment is simply thorough, gut-level recognition of your true nature as awareness. Not intellectual recognition. Not even felt recognition. But recognition thatâs so deep that it is absurd to consider yourself to be anything but pure, aware spaceâwhich is not a âthingâ but, rather, the inseparable common essence of all experience.
So, to bring this full circle, I restate the original question: if youâre already Enlightened, why do you still suffer?
To return to our analogy, that perfect, unobscured vision is always occurring behind the dirty glasses. The glasses may be smudged with interpretations, judgments, biases leading to anxiety, doubt, desire, etc. But hereâs the thing: your view of those things is always perfectly clear!
Awareness does not discriminate like the thinking mind does! It doesnât see good things clearly and bad things poorly. Itâs you who rejects the bad things and insists that you must not be Enlightened because of what appears within awareness. But if you would just stop clinging to your remaining interpretations, judgments, labels, descriptions of things then everything would be left aloneâjust as it isâand would cease to matter to you. Then your worries, fears, character flaws would simply run out of gas and vanish, leaving no trace.
This recognition often takes time to deepen. You might understand what Iâm saying intellectually, and thatâs wonderfulâtruly wonderful. All you need do then is keep coming back here, letting this teaching âsoak inâ, andâmost importantlyâmaking your recognition for just a brief moment, whenever you remember. What recognition? The recognition of always-clear awareness: the ultimate vantage point that naturally perceives everything without bias; that accepts everything, just as it is; that is your fundamental nature as the space in which all experience comes and goesânever affected by it; never harmed by it and, thus, the natural mode of effortless wellbeing.
Friend, if you made it to the end of this teachingâand certainly if it resonated with youâyou are in excellent company. This teaching is profound, subtle, only for those of highly unusual capacity.
As such, it is not for the masses. But this presents a challengeâand an opportunity for you to make a real difference. Social platforms are not designed to spread this kind of contentâtheyâd rather serve people cheap pleasure than lasting happiness. But I suspect you agree that people need this message. And so we must take matters into our own hands. If you know someone who might benefit from what Iâve said here, please send them a link via email or your messaging app or a DM on social media. Tell them why you found it valuable. This is how we bring more people into effortless wellbeing, one at a time.
With love from my sofa,
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