Idiot's Guide to Awakening (For Dummies)

awakening for dummies i mean the idiot's got to awakening you know back in the day back in 1991 they came up with the first dummies do you know what it was well i'm not gonna tell you but it might be important later also i gotta say there's something that really struck me as funny someone actually wrote a book called the complete idiot's guide for dummies which is like a combination of both book series i don't know if it's funny i've never actually read it but anyway i thought it was a clever idea so when i was in the shower this morning it came to me the idiot's guide to awakening so i'm gonna break it down into stupidly easy steps but hopefully there's some insight to be gained from this simplicity so here's the whole awakening process as simple as i can possibly make it so first awakening spirituality enlightenment buddhism hinduism christian mysticism whatever it's just blah blah blah blah blah right it seems like some way to make ourselves feel better some way to learn to get to our higher self or relax etc but it all kind of remains in the conceptual mind it remains more stuff that the conceptual self does or can do to make itself feel better so ultimately it's unsatisfying like everything's unsatisfying in life so first all this stuff is just talk it might make you feel good for a little while thinking you can manifest things and improve yourself and become a higher self and there's some value to that there's some value to focusing your attention more on empowering thoughts and less on disempowering thoughts and learning to put effort in working towards your goals etc but when it comes to this this awakening process it still feels when we first learn about it like something of the mind something conceptual so from here the process hasn't started yet and then all of a sudden something happens and it can come from anywhere it can come from listening to a lecture about buddhism it could come from youtube serving you a video of a message you've never heard or in a way you've never heard it and suddenly something clicks sometimes it comes from tragedy something unfortunate unexpected happens in life and it kind of disrupts that illusion we have that we know who we are what we are cetera et cetera but regardless of how this occurs the first movement really or the first step in this process is something gets broken open you get a taste of something all together outside of the usual ways you think about yourself about life it's a feel it's an instinctual knowing but it's not a feeling and it's not an emotion and it's not a conclusion and it's not another way of seeing things it's not a new paradigm it's beyond all of that it's kind of like you were playing the game of you as if it was a board game someone came up with and you know the pieces and you know the other players on the board and you know the kind of rules of the game and what you're supposed to do and for whatever reason you've forgotten that you're playing the game the game feels like everything that's real to you the board the pieces the rules the movements but something starts to feel restricted like wait a minute it's gotta be more than this and then all of a sudden you realize oh that's a game i'm the player of the game i'm far beyond the dimensions of this board and you realize oh i have a body you remember i have a body i'm a self i'm out here i have will this is just one game i could play i could play a different game i could play no game then you start to look around and see the actual world and you realize the world is far bigger more mysterious more marvelous than anything in the confines of that game so of course this is kind of a goofy analogy you have to suspend your doubt that you can actually forget that you're playing the game and get stuck in the game but guess what this is exactly what happens in the mind so what is it like to be suddenly freed from or at least get a taste of what it is to be completely freed from the game of your life the way you think about things the way you think about yourself even the way you think about distance space time physicality all of that can be completely blown up and you experience something completely beyond that not just beyond because it's bigger but beyond it in subtlety in freedom in the variety of conditions and experiences that can arise it's just a completely different scale in fact it's not even on a scale so that's the first taste how it comes about who knows sometimes life just taps you on the shoulder other times you're just generally interested in eastern thought or buddhism or hinduism or the more mystical aspects of christianity so you start reading you start learning and you still think it's informational and then one moment it happens you read one line one word and then it might be called a turning word or you bump into somebody who's gone through this and can transmit it either through words or just through their actions sometimes you don't even know you bumped into that person but something does get transmitted so the transmission of this is quite mysterious in some traditions they purposely make a thing out of this transmission which is fine if somebody can actually transmit it but i think it can be kind of misleading when it sounds too secretive like it's some special secret only certain people have it's not true it's a secret that you have but you've hidden it from yourself which is so strange but it's true so that's what this first shift is this first step so step one is going beyond conceptuality getting a taste of something beyond you or a realness that's far beyond what you've been taking to be real so i don't know how many people will watch this video but it's going to be the case that a handful of people just by watching this are going to feel that that's how this goes it's also the case that many people watching this video have already had that taste and it's also the case that many people have not only had that taste but they've completed the next step which is awakening so step two is don't mistake that first taste that instinctual knowing of something beyond this beyond you more real than real for awakening it's not yet awakening it's an experience but it's an experience of something very real it gets your attention in a way that nothing else ever has it shows you that there's a falseness in the way we talk about ourselves and think about ourselves and yet there's a magical mystical amazing beyond beyond the description possibility you feel it you know it so step three is orienting toward that taste that knowingness that something that came through however it came through by orienting to it i mean making decision that you're going to live that you're going to find a way to break through to break open as jim morrison said to break on through to the other side that's what this is about to wake up from the matrix and it feels like waking up from the matrix this is what i call awakening and it's a big deal it's a big deal to you it's not a big deal in some social context but when it happens to you when that shift occurs it's huge it changes everything it's revolutionary but it's only the beginning really of the true awakening process so how do you orient to that well again i'm trying to dumb everything down as much as possible in this video so the key is you orient to it just as it is don't think about it don't learn about it give yourself to it inquire into it or into i what am i so find a simple focus of inquiry that's the next step what are we on for the next step is find a focus of inquiry or a way to do this what's the tuning fork it can be a question who am i i have tons of videos on this i also wrote a book about it but there are a lot of ways to do it you can just sit in it sit in the living truth that's beyond all words and concepts if that hits and you know what that means just do it but stay there stay with it maybe you take up formal practice with a zen tradition or zo chen from experience i can only speak about zen but in zen it would be a koan what is mu very simple something your mind can't even begin to intellectualize but there's an answer and the answer is can show awakening so you pour your whole heart mind and soul and all your effort into what is moo or again who am i ramen amari she has some good pointers around this as well in his book who am i this step this i guess fourth step simplicity is key don't over complicate this don't read too much really it's not going to do you any good here you really got to let go you got to dig in you got to go through the emotional barriers you got to go through the fear barriers you have to see what a thought is and let go of it narrative thoughts belief thoughts practice based thoughts indecision thoughts doubt thoughts and even thoughts of perception oh this is what's happening that's what's happening thoughts thoughts thoughts you gotta go past those follow that instinct all the way in it was your freebie so now you gotta do some work so tune into that and don't let go keep going when things get quiet keep going when the volume of thoughts turns way down and there's just a vivid presence of pure consciousness pure sense of i keep going stay right there going and staying become the same thing here going means don't go back to thought don't look for the island of thought stay in the ocean of consciousness just stay here that's the fourth step and ultimately it will culminate in a shift in identity but don't anticipate it that would be a thought you can't know how this is going to go okay the next step i think we're at step five step five is you have a honeymoon period you feel enlightened everything is flow there's nothing to say about this you may or may not even perceive that you had an awakening but you don't care you don't care to define your experience anymore to think about it describe it talk about it there's just fluidity flow for the first time in your life you feel reality you feel this freedom that you are seamless with reality that reality is not divided up that you don't have to try to be someone there's just i there's just purity being flow it's a wonderful time the last weeks can last months for some people it lasts a year or even more it's uncommon but it does and then step six that's emotion work shadow work it always comes you go from feeling enlightened to feeling more unenlightened than you ever did in one sense in one sense the truth of identity that you glimpsed and more than just glimpsed you've started to live it's not gone anywhere it's there the acute pain numbness and constant sense of separation from life isn't there all the time it might be there sometimes but for the most part it's dissipating that's what awakening did for you so here you are and you start feeling things very intensely emotion jealousy sadness guilt grief joy happiness exuberance everything becomes very direct very much right here you also feel like you're on a roller coaster you're starting to sense that you don't have control in the way you thought you did you just feel what you feel there's times when there's a sense of contraction and it's just happening there's times when there's a sense of expansion and it's just happening so this is kind of a muddy time it can be a confusing and disorienting time but my advice really is do the emotion work look for your triggers feel into them do inquiry i have a lot of information in the book on this in the belief chapter thoughts chapter and emotion chapter so this is like the gritty down and dirty part of awakening and realization some of the pitfalls here are trying to regain the clarity of awakening so we remember it and we try to like bring it back into the present you can't really do that it's a memory all you can really do is navigate what's in the present accept it feel it acknowledge it know what it is through inquiry learn to come into fidelity with what is by not resisting it now through emotion work shadow work equanimity work at some point things become simple whatever's happening it's just what's happening we don't feel a need to push on it pull on it meditate it away it's just here sensations are here interactions with people are here sounds are here thoughts are here we're able to remain in the present once there's equanimity because when we stop reacting to things externally we don't have to react to things internally and run off into the mind because it's the only place you can go and you can't even really go there and you already sense this but the selfing mechanism is still there for a while so then we start investigating the nature of perception itself the senses physical world which seem like different things but they're not so we investigate distance location we investigate whether there's a subject and an object or there's just pure non-dual experience whether there's a hearer and a sound or there's just sound whether sound exists in one place whether sound exists in all places whether sound exists at all so now we're doing deep work at the identity level we're really investigating is there anything that hears the sound at all we're also investigating is there anywhere the sound does not exist is there anywhere that sensations do not exist is there anywhere that the forms and colors and patterns do not exist we're looking to see if there are actually boundaries whether there's actually separation whether space and time are actually something in which phenomena occur or whether the perception of space and time is just an interpretation of phenomenon by the mind so this is deep inquiry and unlike the inquiry that we usually do for first awakening which we often just do during meditation but we can carry it throughout the day as well this is something that we investigate in the moment to moment reality we're experiencing did the foot touch the ground or did the ground touch the foot is there a foot in the ground or is there just ground foot is there movement in stillness or is there just stillness in motion is there something perceiving from one side or is there just perception is the perception apart from that which is perceived is the hearing apart from the herd so we investigate all this stuff very directly and with a commitment to see it how it actually is regardless of our fundamental beliefs about how it is so we're dissolving deep perceptual filters now and the deepest one of all is the sense of being a separate self or a self it's interesting with no self because it doesn't seem like self is tied into everything in the way it is it's just so assumed even in our viewpoint in the way we see the world out from a place or a perspective that we never really look at you can't look at the perspective because you're taking yourself to be the perspective so it's a little tricky to get behind this but once you've dissolved the other perceptual filters it tends to fall on its own the self residue or the perfume of a self a center a body experiencing an external world or even a free floating consciousness experiencing the world still has self-residue and it's hard to see this so once these other perceptual filters of time space dimension solidity are dissolved the subtle self-sense the remaining self-sense the frame of reference that feels like self this can almost be overlooked here because because even if we've learned about no self you can't imagine no self it's not imaginable it's also not really desirable or wantable in any way we could desire or want anything because desire and want arise from this very subtle but very deeply rooted fundamental perception of separation or that we can make things the way we want or need them to be which is the most fundamental sense of agency so from here at some point or just through very subtle inquiry the self sense falls away and this is a whole other ball game it's completely indescribable but it's also completely ordinary but it's not ordinary the way the mind thinks about ordinary it's ordinary because it's ordinary because it's clear that this is just how it is and it's not some certain way either there's no frame of reference there's no paradigm that can describe this or even really exist in this so it's so fluid so free of any holding any position any solidity that there's nowhere for herself to be adeshanti has said it's as if your whole internal world completely disappears that's a good way of saying it but it's not perfect because there's no perfect way of saying this and from here things do continue to clarify the conventional or relative self the body mind doesn't have to be negated or denied you don't have to walk around saying oh there's no one here i'm not anyone no one does anything you don't need to continue to deny it it's like if you find out santa claus isn't real you don't spend the next 20 years of your life telling everyone santa claus isn't real you just know it and so then the conventional self you could say the relative self will spontaneously come into more and more fidelity with the truth of no self that will happen and how that plays out you can't plan it you're not gonna decide it you don't have to decide to have a commitment to truth or to the dharma or the realization of no self the fascination with reality with the complete absence of self of other of solidity is intrinsically fascinating so in one sense the inquiry becomes all-encompassing everything is fascinating there's curiosity everywhere there's also love everywhere because there's no other no apartments it's a thoroughly enjoyable way of being but i hesitate to say these things because it's not a way of being a no being but it is your true nature it's your birthright hopefully that summary was helpful also i get to do in this video what my favorite thing to do is with this channel and thank you for watching and clicking on any ads you've clicked on because that's where the revenue comes from don't do it unless you want to of course but youtube basically monetizes the channel and whatever ads you click on or see there somehow give money to the channel and then it's given to me at the end of the month so in march this channel and its wonderful viewers earned 500 i think it was 589 but i'll show it on the screen and this month i decided to donate it to team seas which is another mr beast organization he made the goal in 2021 to raise 30 million dollars for team c's and every dollar removes one pound of trash from the ocean it's a very cool organization he did it with team trees and it was very successful and in team trees he partnered with the arbor day foundation team c's is partnered with two other organizations i can't remember their name but they are experts in this field so they're cleaning up natural waters oceans rivers etc i'll put the link here and it has the ability to donate for our team which is simply always awake i created a team there and if you want to donate a dollar or five dollars you'll remove one pound or five pounds of trash from the ocean again thanks for watching and your support and i'll continue to find cool charities to donate money to every month

Channel: Simply Always Awake

Views: 17,529

Keywords: advaita, advaita vedanta, awake it's your turn, awakening, awakening you, awakenings 2021, buddhism, enlightenment, kensho, non duality, non duality buddhism, non duality consciousness, non duality explained, nonduality, nonduality actualized, nonduality teachers, self inquiry, simply always awake, simply awake, zen

Id: pnkfWrt1QVk

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2022