Releasing The Curious Goal Of Enlightenment

What if the goal of enlightenment actually takes us off of our true path? Where do these desires for immortality, enlightenment, and sagehood come from? How can we discern between the teachings that bring more joy into our lives and ones that perhaps take us down a curious road that doesn't actually go where we think it does?

Transcript

So today we're talking about releasing the curious goal of enlightenment. This talk is coming out of my own personal experience and a little gift that came my way about two weeks ago when I planned this course. So why do we want to talk about this? What is my goal of this talk? So that we can all exhale, Relax and enjoy life because perhaps this goal of enlightenment might be a distraction from what we're really meant to be doing and that it actually is taking us away from enjoying the life we have. So first of all I want to define what I mean as enlightenment because we all have different definitions of that and I'm not talking about being happy and enjoying life. That's not what I mean. In many circles this sort of comes out of the Buddhist tradition and this isn't against Buddhism it's against how we've interpreted what we've heard about the process and the journey of Buddhism. Some define enlightenment as almost a supernatural state like the state of being more awakened than others. I am beyond duality. I am living in nirvana where there is no suffering. I have no sense of self. I am free of the cycles of karma. I'm different than others. I'm wiser. I am fully divine. I do not engage in the petty emotions of humans and I'm giggling about it but there is that sense that when the goal is this enlightened state and not just moments of enlightenment. We all have aha moments and those aha moments can happen in moments of joy when suddenly we're like I get it oh my god. Then those sort of gently fade into the background again. We're always a little different but those fade into the background and soon we're worrying about money again. We're worried about relationships or worried about whatever and that moment of bliss passed. Those happen. That's part of life. Sometimes we have great moments of enlightenment through crisis. It's someone getting sick or surviving an accident and you're like that's it. I'm never worried about anything ever again. I see the big picture. Those are moments but in many spiritual circles there's almost become this goal of living in a state of enlightenment all the time. Well there's dangers of this. One we're never enough. You're never good enough. You're never enlightened enough. You're never blissful enough. You're not spiritually mature enough. You're not doing enough practice. So now all of a sudden we have this massive personal judgment that well I'm not as enlightened as that person. You know so I'm always striving. I'm always striving to be somewhere I'm not. I'm always striving to be better than I am now. It's like let's say you're a couch potato and I'm a hardcore couch potato. That is my nature. It's the danger of being a philosopher. I travel worlds in my mind and forget to exercise my body. And so then all of a sudden one day you say you know what this isn't really good for me. I'm going to start walking around the block every day. That's a big deal if you're sedentary. That's a big deal. It's not like I really mean that. It's a big deal to start any kind of movement program if we've been sedentary. And then maybe you start doing that and you start feeling well I'm feeling pretty good. You know maybe I'll maybe I'll train and do a 5k or something. Wow that's a huge deal but I'm going to do it. Let's say you do it. But maybe you're sitting well if I could do a 5k then I should do a 10k and if I can do a 10k well I should do a marathon and if I can do a marathon I should do an ultra marathon and if I can do an ultra marathon maybe I should do and it never stops. You never ever get to just enjoy and sometimes that's just a joyful journey. Don't get me wrong. Right. That's that can be really a fun thing. But when do we get to just enjoy life. When do you just get to love where you are right now. And so there can be this sort of perpetual striving and this can happen with this enlightenment question that no matter what your practice is no matter what you're doing you're never enlightened enough because well this is still really getting to me and I'm still really have issues at family Christmases. Wow can my family ever trigger me. You know I'm still not enlightened enough. It's just that this perpetual thing and then you become super enlightened and now you're really stressed out about the environment and you're really stressed out about that like you'll always just keep finding new things that are still not good enough. I'm still getting stressed out. So then the question is is this state of enlightenment that we've created in our minds real. Is it real. Is it even attainable. Or is it some strange carrot that is being held in front of us that you never actually attain because perhaps it isn't real. So let's just play with that. What I'm going to say today isn't necessarily right. It's just a question. I just want us to ponder these ideas for a moment. Let's say it's not real. Just for a moment. If we have this goal of enlightenment why do we have it. What's our what's our reasoning. Why do we want it. Are we wanting it to distract us from our life. Maybe I don't like the life I was given. Maybe I don't like the childhood I have. Maybe I don't like the relationships I've had. Maybe I don't like the fact that I wasn't born to wealth or I wasn't born to whatever. And maybe this is a beautiful distraction. Maybe this is a beautiful way of escaping the life I found myself in. I don't even care if it's real. I'm going to tell myself it's real. I like that self-identity better than this life I was given. What if. Or what if it's a massive ego trip. What if it's just one more way to be better than other people. Oh yes I have transcended the need for money but I am more enlightened than you are. It's just like being richer or having a nicer Porsche or having a nicer whatever. Is it just an ego trip. It's a question. So now I'm going to tell you something that may not be true also. This is a journey into my conscious consciousness. This is this is my experience that allowed me to exhale in a way that's brand new and which is what inspired this talk. So I've been reading a lot of Taoism. I've always loved Taoism. It's the first thing that I ever read in my life even as a teenager that really resonated with my heart. And then you know life happened and I went off in a boat. Now I've returned to my study of Taoism and one of the things that's really interesting to me about Taoism of course the Tao Te Ching is the primary teaching of Taoism which is all about being one with nature flowing with what is flowing with the Tao the energy that cannot be described and yet we swim in it we flow in it all day long. It's a very peaceful accepting philosophy of life. But then you know in my studies of Tantra and intimacy and things like that you run across all these things like the Tao of sex even all of Mantak Chia's work and all these beautiful people who've done all this amazing work about inner alchemy and developing immortality halting the aging process all these kind of things and you're like wow that's really interesting. But I've always asked myself what does it have to do with Taoism? How did these things become related to Taoism? There's nothing like that in the Tao Te Ching. There's nothing like that in Cheng Tzu's writings. Where did they come from? Then I read this really bizarre book all about the sexual practices of the white tigress and the jade dragon and they were talking about how you could do all of these and the subtitle was Practices of Taoist Masters. The Practices of the Female Taoist Masters. Practices of the Male Taoist Masters. So of course I'm really drawn to that. This is interesting like oh this is this is cool. And I'm reading the books and I'm really trying to have an open mind and I'm like what are they talking about? Like I don't even want to get into what they were actually talking about but I just kept reading it thinking what the heck does this have to do with Taoism? Like I just couldn't figure it out. So then I was reading this book The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts and he was talking about Taoism and he was talking he was saying how there are two at least two different streams of Taoism. The first is what he would call contemplative Taoism which is what I've always understood Taoism to be. And then he caught it there was another one called Xian Taoism. And this is the path to immortality. This is the path to developing supernatural powers here on earth. And when you really put this side by side with like the Tao Te Ching they're almost opposites. The one says embrace the nature of water. It lays where the lowly are. It lays where people don't want to go. Flow with nature. Flow with the balance. Flow with life. And this other hand says no we will cheat life. We will become immortal. We will have superpowers. We will be able to command the winds. We will be able to. So I'm really sitting thinking about this going I don't understand. So that's what I've read from here on for the next five minutes is perhaps what I've made up. So just to kind of put this in context don't don't take what I'm saying now as truth. This is just how my brain works. So I'm sitting there thinking where did this second stream of Taoism come from? And the idea came to me that in every belief system we have heroes. We have teachers. It could be Jesus. It could be Mohammed. It could be these prophets that we look up to that we want to be like whatever. And in the Taoist lineages they have stories of the immortals, Of the transcendent ones. And the immortals live here or the transcendent ones are there whatever. Or even we often have stories of so-and-so who lived for 500 years. We have the Taoist master who lived for 700 years. 700 years. And I thought is that what makes it Taoist? Because there are stories of Taoist masters who lived for hundreds of years. Because there are stories of immortal beings in the Taoist stories. Is that where it comes from? So then did this desire to become immortal come from the desire to be like these beings in the stories? That because the Taoist masters lived for hundreds of years, This must be the goal of Taoism. Or because there are beings that they considered immortals or transcendents, Is this the goal of Taoism? Because thousands of years ago when Taoism was really flourishing, It did separate off into many, Many, Many churches which often happens with religions. And I thought to myself what a funny thing. So now here's something else that again is my personal working theory of the universe not necessarily true. We all have a working hypothesis as to what's true in life. I don't understand humanity at all. I don't understand the people that are here and all that kind of thing and why we're all so different. But I truly wonder if we are all beings from galaxies all over the universe. But here on earth we appear human. There's a beautiful movie K-Pax with Kevin Spacey and he was an alien. He was from another planet. One of the other actors says, Well why do you look human though? Why do you look like me? And he says because this is the most efficient organization of the energy here on earth. And so I often wonder about that. I often wonder if many of us are from very different places in the universe, But we all look humanoid. So this is just a bit of an aside, But I do wonder about that. It's something I think about a lot when things happen in the world or when bad things happen or good things happen or whatever. I wonder about that. It's a bigger story, Bigger question. But then I think about these immortals, These transcendent beings of the stories of the ancient Taoist stories or the ancient stories in China. What if they weren't even humans? What if they really were from somewhere else? What if they really were whatever? And now all of us humans are looking at them saying, Oh well I want to be like you. I want to be immortal like you. Okay well we've got to start developing practices to try to become immortal. Well what can we do with this chi within us? What can we do with the jing within us? What can we do to transcend this physical life and become something else? And as I was sitting pondering this, I was like you could waste an entire life doing crazy practices to try to become something that's not even the reason you're here. When you really think about why are we here on earth? Why are we incarnate? Why did we get this curious makeup? Why have we had the lives we've had? Why do we have the current situation we have? Is it to become beyond duality? Is it to become in a state that we live forever? Is it something we even want? Like do you really want to live for 400 years? Can you imagine the philosophy we would have to have in our hearts to live in a way where we actually outlive our partners, Our children, Our grandchildren, Everyone around us, Everything we've ever known? Is it something we even want? Like and it's just a question. Like when we really think about this curiosity, Do I really want to transcend duality? Do I really want that? I just thought about what are we doing with all these practices? And if the goal of doing all, I mean I teach Kundalini Yoga, Meditation, Tantra, Like this is what I do and I sit with it going there is value in the practices but if our goal is enlightenment, Does it actually cause harm? Because then suddenly we start almost spiritually bypassing ourself. All of a sudden, Okay, I'm doing the yoga, I'm meditating, I'm doing all, I'm eating right, I'm doing everything right but I'm not actually paying attention to the issues in my life right here and now. I'm ignoring my own emotions, I'm ignoring my own triggers, I'm ignoring everyone in my life who doesn't line up with my path of enlightenment. No, No, No, No, No. I only want good energy around me. No, No, No, No, No. I don't want to do that because that's not helping me. You know what I mean? Like what if the whole thing actually makes us crazy? And again, I'm not saying that any of these theories I've said are true. I'm not even saying that that's necessarily why these other schools of Taoism appeared. These are just my ponderings over coffee as I think about the history of Taoism. So where do we go from there? Let's just say that's true. As I sat with this, I thought, Wow, Can you imagine the decades you could spend doing things, Hoping for immortality? But whoever achieves it? When you think of the greatest enlightened people, The teachers that you have great respect for, They passed on. Did they reach some great state of enlightenment where they transcended duality? And it's just interesting. So then we ask ourselves, To what end are all of these practices that we do? Why do we do them? Why should we do them? Should we just give them all up and, You know, Take up smoking? And is that what we should do? We should just throw it all out because it's the whole thing is dumb. You know, I don't think so. I think the practices that we do and the way that we're moving in the world is right. I just don't think this goal of enlightenment to live in an enlightened state where I am in constant bliss, That I am always happy. I think that's the problem. And when we can delete that, Suddenly all of our practices make sense and we'll actually do them. So, For example, Why meditate? Why bother? Again, Because we're not meditating to become enlightened or to develop supernatural powers or to be able to be telekinetic or clairvoyant or anything like that. When you practice pranayama, You can heal anxiety. You can heal insomnia. When you meditate, You can undo patterns in your nervous system that you developed in childhood and past relationships. When you meditate, You can practice developing a witness mind so that in difficult conversations, You're able to become the center and actually focus on the truth or to remember what you really want to accomplish in this conversation. To remember that you love this person. I don't want to hurt them. That's why we meditate. So imagine instead, If I said to you, You know what? It's really healthy to meditate 10 minutes a day or to find a pranayama. It doesn't even matter what pranayama it is. You find one that really resonates with you, That you love doing. And you know in your heart, Wow, If I do this meditation every day for 10 minutes, I'll be calmer at work. I'll be calmer when I'm feeling emotionally charged at family events. I will be able to hear my own truth. Like for me, My favorite way to meditate is very remedial. It gets very much when things are going crazy. I sit down and I close my eyes and I breathe until all the spinning stops. This is really important medicine. It's important to have this ability and every one of us can do it. Every one of us can sit down and close our eyes and breathe and like Pavlov's dogs instantly feel calmer. That's a great reason to meditate. And there's another thousand great reasons to meditate. Why do we want to develop this witness mind? Why do we want this center? Why do we want to develop the ability to be meditative in life? Well, It's interesting in the 17th and 18th century, This was actually called the age of enlightenment. Ironically, It had nothing to do with what we're talking about. What we're talking about comes from more of a Buddhist spiritual path. But in that time, It was a time when they said, They also call it the age of reason, That we are more than just people at war with ourselves and humanity and the world. We are capable of thought. We are capable of faith. We are capable of such greater things. We're capable of philosophy. Think about that. Think about developing the witness mind. Think about this amazing ability we have to observe our own life with kindness and objectivity. Think of the difference between sort of living a life where we're being thrown from pillar to post. My friend, Nelda, Once said to me a long time ago, When I was particularly being thrown from pillar to post, She said, You have a choice, Katrina. She said, You can either live like you are in a pinball machine, Only changing directions when you hit a wall, Or you can learn to listen. And she wasn't talking about listening to her. She was talking about listening within. This is developing our witness mind. This is our ability to develop that neutral space inside that no matter what's going on, We take a deep breath and we observe what's going on and saying, And right in the middle of chaos saying, I've done this before. This is a pattern. I am reacting in a way I've done hundreds of times before. Is there a different way to respond right now? This is incredibly valuable in life. In the land of actually holding the reins of our own life. It's a huge deal. Huge deal. What about the ego? Because one of the beautiful things about this goal of enlightenment is you have no ego. Well, Our third chakra is there for a reason. Who we are is why we're here. If we were meant to have no ego, We would all be identical. There would be no distinguishing factors from one person to the next. We would all have exactly the same interests. We would all have exactly the same abilities. We would dress the same. We would look the same. We believe the same things. We would have no sense of differentiation between each other. And yet we have this third chakra that defines us as different. Different. So perhaps there is perfection in that design. Maybe we're meant to be different. Maybe we're each meant to have very unique and different experiences. In some philosophies, They say that each of us are a unique refraction of God. So now all of a sudden we have seven billion different versions of the divine here on Earth. Let's just say. Well, Wouldn't it only make sense to actually live out that unique refraction of the divine? Why would we get rid of that? Why do we each have unique thumbprints? Why do we see the world so differently, If not to embrace it? Obviously we know the dangers of an unhealthy ego. But that has to do with attachment. That has to do with pride. Misplaced pride that I am better than you. That who I came onto Earth as is better than you. That's a problem. But the ego is not the problem. The pride is a problem. The need to dominate others is a problem. The insecurity in oneself is a problem. The ego is not a problem. So imagine the goal of developing a healthy ego. A healthy sense of self. To truly connect with self. I mean, That's what self-love is. We talk about, Oh, The self-love and I struggle with self-love. Because we're not allowed to like ourselves. We're not allowed to say that, Wow, I'm really good at this. Or I really love doing that. Or I, You're not allowed to say that. Because you're supposed to transcend the self. And it's like, Then who am I? Then what am I doing here? Why should we do yoga? Why would we do the practice of yoga? Well, Yoga, When you do, Let's say, I teach kundalini yoga. You have a daily kundalini yoga practice. And you will release trauma out of the body. You will heal old wounds. You will create new psychological patterns in your system. That's awesome, Right? Why practice qigong? Why practice tai chi? Because you can heal the body. And your body can have more mobility. And you can enjoy being here on earth more. Can you imagine how different it is to go and decide to sit down and do a yoga practice every day for an hour or half an hour, Whatever? When my goal is to feel great all day, That's why I'm doing it. That's why I'm doing it. I just want, Not enlightenment. No, No, No, No, No. I don't want to be enlightened. I just want to feel amazing all day. I want to feel centered. I want to feel energized. That's what I want. That's a very tangible, Connected goal. That makes you really want to do it. As opposed to this pie-in-the-sky idea. And it's like, Nah, Maybe not. One of the paths of yoga is the jnani yogi. Jnani yogis have bookshelves like this. Right? Why read the writings of ancients and wise people? Why do that? Why bother? For enlightenment? Or is it simply to expand what's possible in the world? Most of us have had a very limited education. Oftentimes, It's really just what we learn in school. And sometimes, Because we're judged on what we learn in school and what we can regurgitate, We don't even want to read anymore. We don't even want to learn for pleasure anymore. Because learning is connected with tests and judgment and purpose. We have to learn it for a reason, Right? But what if you just learned out of the pure intrigue of being alive? And you could read quantum physics, Or you could read about theories in basketball. It doesn't matter. But whatever it is, It expands the playing field of your mind a little bit. And then as you walk through your life, All kinds of things are possible. Because your mind is expanded. That's a great reason to read. That's a great reason to read. Imagine studying spiritual things, Not for the goal of enlightenment, But to really feel one with life, Feel one with the people around you. Imagine not having judgment. Imagine we get rid of this whole idea that I am awake, But they're not awake. They are the unawakened. They're asleep. I am awake. So I have a thing about leaf blowers. I hate leaf blowers so much. And of course, I could look at it as saying, Well, I hate leaf blowers because I'm awake. I mean, I can't believe that you are wasting fossil fuels to blow leaves. And they're loud, And you're lazy, And you should be just raking them. This is my evil mind talking. And so I'm all being awake because this person's wasting fossil fuels, Just destroying nature or something. And they're looking at me going, What a silly person. There are efficient ways to clear your lawn. And they think they're the awake one. Well, Who's the awake one? Obviously, I think I'm the awake one. And anyone who agrees with me about my philosophy of life is the awake one. And the ones that over there who are spraying Roundup on their dandelions and whatever, They're like, Look at those people. Dandelions all over their lawn. They're idiots. It's like, It's a huge challenge. But what if we just deleted the whole concept? Look, If we just deleted the whole idea that someone can be more awake than someone else. Like, Just get rid of it altogether. Because again, This all comes from this climbing Jacob's ladder, Becoming more enlightened. I am on my journey of enlightenment. I'm almost there. But look at those lowly people. They haven't even started their journey of enlightenment. They don't even know that this is possible. What if this isn't real? What if this is nonsense? What if we're all just living? That person does their thing. And whether I like it or not, I like it or not. I don't like that. I do like that. I don't like spicy food. I love nachos. Make spicy food wrong. What if we just got rid of that? And we just lived. And there is no separation. We don't have to agree with anyone. We don't have to put up with bad behavior. We don't have to do anything. We can live our life navigating as we desire. And no one has to be wrong. We just have to go towards what draws us. No enlightenment. None of it. Just happy. What if the journey, The spiritual journey, And this is what I actually believe a spiritual journey is. I believe that we are incarnate physical beings here in a three-dimensional plane of duality. I believe that because that's what my experience is. But I also believe that we are energy beings. That somehow if we had different eyes, We would see the colors of the chakras. And we would see how expansive we actually are. But these eyes we were given, Unless you're clairvoyant, Which I'm not. With these eyes, These eyes are designed to see matter in this particular dimension. So I see this physical form and I feel this physical form because that's what our touch is designed for. We are designed for this. But I do believe we're also divine beings. Whatever that is, It doesn't mean we're immortal. It doesn't mean we're immortal. It doesn't mean we are transcendent. It doesn't mean all these things. But I believe we are connected to something greater. And when we close our eyes, We can feel it. And we can have experiences of oneness with the universe while being in this physical body. What if that's the journey? But it's still here. It's still in this body. I think that's what draws me so much to Tantra because that's the foundation of Tantra, Is that we're not one or the other. We're not a physical body or a divine being. We're not a spiritual being having a human experience. We're not a human having a spiritual experience. We're none of that. We're all of it all the time. There's no label for it. We are physical and we are divine and we are emotional and we are whatever. Whatever. What if that's the goal? The other thing that really helped me in all of this was there was something about releasing this immortality concept. Because I've been thinking about it for a long time. I've been studying the masters, You know, Probably the first time I ever. . . All the books are way up there. But I have this set of books called The Teachings of the Masters of the Far East. And I read them a long time ago. And they were the stories of these societies that lived up in the Himalayas of people who were immortal. And it really got into me that this is possible. But I don't think the immortality is the point. And I swear there's something about that ever since the first time I read that, It's like, We're not supposed to age. We're not supposed to die. We're not supposed to do this. And it got into my head. And again, I'm not saying I'm right here. We might do a talk six months from now, Where I may just change my mind. But there was something about this idea that allowed my soul to exhale. It allowed me to go, Maybe it's living in a sense of timelessness that I actually seek. Maybe that's the goal. It isn't immortality like living for 400 years. It's enjoying each moment so much that time expands. And my quality of life is so beautiful. Maybe that's what they're here to teach us. I don't know. But all I know is something relaxed. And suddenly the idea of embracing all the stages of our life became very natural. That suddenly, At some point in our life, We're children. Then we go through an adult phase. And then we go into the later parts of our life. And life just goes on. And the energy continues. But there's not this clinging to youth or this clinging to a sense of agelessness. And that brought me a lot of peace. It almost allowed us to simply just live. Wherever we are, Whatever state of life we're in, Wherever we are, We just live. We just enjoy what we love. We enjoy the food. We enjoy the company. We enjoy the sunshine. We enjoy the snow. And we just live. And ironically, That is what many people would call a state of enlightenment. Just living, Sleeping when you're tired, Drinking when you're thirsty, Eating when you're hungry, That this is the ultimate state of enlightenment. It's ironic, Eh? Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

I enjoyed how easy you talk about such a central point of our practice. It is a real danger to miss life while trying to become something better than you are right now. it doesn’t mean not to try to develop yourself in a certain direction. But first you must very deeply, except my first Zen, teacher, said, radical acceptance of life living through us, to start.
as soon as we really surrender to reality this striving for enlightenment, appears ridiculous, as our life, as it is right now is it, nothing more, and nothing less to really see.

Greetings and thank you for this topic. I have been thinking about all of this for the last year or so as I realized that I have been searching for the state of enlightenment what ever that is. It seems like it must be a state of perfection. Well, perfection is in the eye of the beholder so living in the flow of nature seems reasonable to me as I have always found my idea of perfection there.
I also find meditation to be much more useful when using it for the benefits it provides my existence rather than chasing this concept of “enlightenment “.
How can one person’s concept of enlightenment necessarily be right for another?
Namaste 🙏

Thanks for this. I have wondered about this for a while now. We in the west so easily get caught up in checking off boxes on a list of accomplishments that we sometimes forget to just live - to just be. Isn't being (not so much doing) the idea? 🙏❤️🪷😊