"People are willing to give up anything to get
enlightened.
You and I both know people who've given up wealth, given up jobs,
families, their
health,
give up talking, give up sex, give up you name it, they will give it
up. There's only one thing people will not give up to get
enlightened.
They will do everything they know to hold on to this thing that they
will not give up no matter what. The one thing people will not give up
to get
enlightened
is the idea that they're not
enlightened."
I am indebted to JeanneLauree Olsen who contributed material for this
conversation.
Werner
Erhard
is best known
worldwide
by millions and millions and millions of people for the more than fifty
years of
his breakthrough work
teasing out the abstracts of transformation. And while
the work of
transformation
may be related to the disciplines of
Self-discovery
(that's
Self
with a capital "S"), indeed while there's certainly some Venn
diagram overlap between them, the focus of
the work of
transformation
is only interimly on
Self-discovery.
Ultimately its focus is on
possibility.
The classic paths to
Self-discovery
are predicated on two notions. The first is: go within, and you'll find
out who you really are. The second is: go within often enough and deep
enough, and you'll get
enlightened.
I've contemplated a few of the foundational notions of
Self-discovery.
They piqued my interest enough to make me want to immerse myself in
their classic paths.
I became a devotee, a brahmachari. Then later, as a
retrospectively not-so-surprising direct result of being in some epic,
eyebrow-raising
conversations with Werner,
I began seeing all those same classic paths in an entirely new light, a
light I didn't know that I didn't know about, so much so
that I began re-assessing all of their underlying notions and
assumptions, and therefore my entire regard of and relationship and
involvement and participation with them.
Their first notion is predicated (without much questioning, without
much
rigorous
scrutiny) on the idea that who we are, is to be found within ourselves.
Practically speaking, this implies that who we are, is to be found
within our bodies (once that's distinguished, only then can saying that
"who we are, is to be found within ourselves" be
good enough for
jazz).
Yet the now unavoidable truth, at this stage of my inquiry, is that's
looking less and less likely to be the case. What I'm seeing rather, is
this: all that's there for us to ever find within our bodies, is
machinery embedded in
hamburger.
And hiding in plain sight
out-here,
is who we really are.
We're not to be found within ourselves. The injunction to go within, to
which proponents of the classic paths adhere (amongst whose numbers I
have included myself) in order to discover who we really are, is
revealed (in one of those double-take, epiphanous "A-Ha!"
moments of sudden, great insight) to be literally 180° misdirected.
Their second notion is predicated (without much questioning, without
much
rigorous
scrutiny) on the conviction that with devoted practice over time,
enlightenment
will come. It's one of our most tightly held, most cherished
convictions. I cherished it. And I stand back from it now, with
respect. The holding out for
enlightenment
coming
someday
(or even soon) obfuscates a fundamental if not inconvenient truth: that
we're already
enlightened.
There's nothing else to get. This is it!
It's not giving up
worldly ways
and taking up the path of the ascetic monk (brahmacharya) that brings
enlightenment.
It's giving up something else, something more intimate, something much
more immediate, something way more difficult to give up. What brings
enlightenment
is giving up the conviction that we're not
enlightened.
When we give up the conviction that we're not
enlightened,
we see who we really are, is
out-here.
It's not within ourselves. Who we really are, is not all the internal
machinery embedded in
hamburger.
Who we really are, is not our
"I / me"
("I / me"
is just something that shows up for us). Who we really are, is a
context ie a space in which our lives (including our
"I / me")
show up. Who we really are, is a space in which the wind blows. This is
enlightenment.
It's what we are / always have been.
