Those of us on the spiritual journey may want to latch on to labels for what we’re looking for to guide us, such as a ‘union with God’ or ‘nirvana’, but we must not forget that any label will always miss the mark. Remember: the Dao that can be spoken is not the true Dao. There’s nothing to latch onto, so there’s no path to follow and no peak to aim towards. The only thread you have is that deep knowledge in the back of your mind that the ultimate answer to life is right there, just beyond your perception.
The reason our minds latch on to these labels is because in the journey towards spiritual enlightenment we are confronted with a profound paradox: a firsthand experience of ultimate truth that implies liberation but also demands the annihilation of the self that wants that liberation. So you must ask yourself this fundamental question before you proceed: Is this something you truly desire? If so, why? Do you really want to die? Can you envision life continuing without the comforting and familiar idea of an individual self but instead through a hollow husk of a body and mind with Consciousness simply flowing through it?
As David Carse elucidates in his book Perfect Brilliant Stillness: the only reason to do this is because you can’t stand not to; if it doesn’t appeal to you, then it’s okay to not do it. There are plenty of spiritual circles you can join to have peak experiences with and you can all create a beautiful dream together, your very own heaven on earth. You will have those experiences throughout your journey and they will be wonderful and potentially life-changing, but enlightenment is something else entirely. This is a transformative shift in perception, a seeing from an entirely different vantage point. There’s no peak experiences required for that, the only requirement is that the current you must be annihilated for this shift to occur. And once it does there is no going back.
In a lot of ways working on bringing up your vibration or seeking a spiritual group you resonate with is an easier path because not only do you have a lifetime of your own personal history working against you, but you have the collective weight of society pushing you to stay in the dream. You’re against the experiences, thoughts, memories, common wisdom, and reassurance of billions of people, all exerting a tremendous amount of pressure to conform: to do what they do and think the way they think. The path to enlightenment asks you to challenge these inherited patterns, to question the validity of the stories we tell ourselves, and to recognize them as mere projections of the mind in Consciousness.
If you don’t feel in the deepest recesses of your being that this whole thing is just a façade, that it’s nothing but shadows on the wall of a cave, then why bother trying to see what’s beyond? You can live a perfectly happy and comfortable life within the dream.
But if you do feel the compelling need to proceed, be warned: this contemplation is not for the faint of heart; it literally requires you to confront your own death while your body is very much alive. The process demands stepping beyond all the accepted parameters of the dream, which understandably may cause some psychological disturbance. You will feel like you’re going insane or losing your mind because in essence…you are. Your ego, your sense of being an individual self, will not want to go where it doesn’t exist. That’s why no ‘one’ would choose this. The ego can’t choose its own annihilation.
Fortunately, whether you do this or not is not up to you. You don’t have a mind to lose, you’ll just lose the mistaken idea that you have one. The question remains: Is this journey, with its promise of an ultimate understanding of truth, worth the cost? Are you okay with never seeing your parents, your siblings, or anyone you’ve known and loved through ‘your’ eyes again? Are you okay to fully exit the comfort of the dream and instead become just a vessel through which consciousness flows?
The decision is deeply personal and one that you must arrive at yourself. As you navigate the dark waters of introspection and confront the idea of your own death, it may help to remind yourself that this is all a dream and ultimately none of it matters. Remind yourself that whether you die tomorrow or in 50 years, the one inevitability you can count on is that the day you die is the day you will wake up.
The JJ Experiment 