What Are The Benefits To Awakening?

What could be the benefits of awakening? Why would someone want to awaken and see through the delusions and illusions of life and through the human society that they were told was are real? Is there any benefit to "you" in going through the awakening process? And who is it that awakens? These are the questions explored here.

Transcript

Are there benefits to this awakening?

Well this is paradoxical because it's a paradoxical nature that while there is no you here there is a life force that is moving through you clearly so even after the awakening happens there is indeed a life force that keeps on being lived through you and this life force has seen through the delusions and the illusions of self and now it is greater scope to be here there is more energy throughput available there is greater life force that is able to access through the body-mind structure it is no longer caught up with identification with dramas with many of the problems that people find themselves in it is greater scope for compassion and love and creativity and lightness and harmony and joy because it is not stuck in the web of lies keeping itself propped up there is less fear all of these things are more available now the concerns around death a lot of them are fallen around because that has actually been experienced the death of the ego in a way is the main death here that is why they say to die before you die and so now that that has been experienced so much more of life is available because if you aren't afraid to die you aren't afraid to live either and now you can fully show up the being that wants to move through you the life force that wants to be lived the expression that is unique coming through this mind and body structure can fully be here and this is a beautiful thing this may take some time to integrate it can be so much of a different reality at first after the awakening happens but it is remarkably beautiful there is so much more power accessible because things are not as they seemed before and the ability to be with paradox life no longer needs to make sense because once you've been through this process of transformation nothing makes sense as it did before and so then everything makes sense in this new very different way there is more magic the magic of paradox is alive and well because now you know deeply the experience is there that what everybody else has thought and told you what you are and who you are that is that has been seen through and so now through this awakening yes there is a lot more available than what was previously there through the limited myopic human consciousness of the egoic structure what are the benefits of awakening this is a very curious concept because when you're talking about benefits you're talking about receiving something and when you're talking about receiving something it sounds well there's only really ever somebody who's going to receive that so the whole idea here would be that there is a an identity a personality that's going to get something out of the awakening perhaps even as though that they are going to be the one who awakens this is hilarious because that's nothing to do with the awakening process there is no benefit to the individual because there is no individual so enlightenment or awakening you don't become enlightened you don't become awakened because there is no you there is no you to be enlightened and so all these people with all of this massive amount of effort all the time meditating trying to focus trying to dedicate themselves to some practice to awaken and enlighten themselves are deluded nothing's gonna happen to them and as long as they're coming from that perspective it will always be elusive the very thing that they're chasing it'll be a perpetual chase because they are fooling themselves or rather they have been fooled into thinking that there is something for them to get in this process so that's that's nothing to do with how this works there is nowhere to get and no one who's going to get anything and for all those people who are like like the group that I was with the end of going cut cult where we were all chasing enlightenment aspirants we were aspiring for this enlightenment experience well you see they were wanting that for themselves each person working diligently doing retreat after retreat they were trying to awaken they were trying to enlighten themselves and they were never achieving that because they were coming from the completely erroneous perspective and with they were actually able to be straight with themselves what they were really doing was they were seeking to be more peaceful and more than that they were just seeking to be happier they were looking for happiness and peace and happiness those concepts are all in the domain of the first four steps that we talked about in that process we could call those first four steps the pathway of joyous living so that path of joyous living that we covered in the first four steps in the previous episodes which were about grounding yourself and integrating into your body and the world is the first one and the second one realizing that this is a tour that you're on this temporary situation of being alive on earth the third awakening to being joyous and pursuing everything in the world that will lead you towards a joyous experience and forth once you've experienced that joy sharing that with others like a loving sharing experience so that those first four steps are all about being happy about being joyous about experiencing the wonders of life it's a very adventurous enjoyable fruitful experience of being alive and I would say that most humans are not experiencing that and they're aspiring to that and so people who are looking for happiness or joy or peacefulness even in their spiritual pursuit they are still very much caught up in those first four steps they are deluding themselves if they're thinking that they're going to awaken themselves to the truth because they're still trying to get something there is so there is something to claim something to receive so in the awakening process it's all about letting go it's about surrender it's about there's nobody there to receive anything it's all about loss it's the loss of the weight of existence it's about a complete surrender where there's nobody who's going to receive anything so in this experience what's happening is that you've actually abdicated your drive the drive the push to awaken yourself you see so that's it's completely you've let go of that and now there is just the listening there is just the unfolding there is just the feedback you've completely surrendered because in the other modality where you're trying to get somewhere where you're trying to get enlightened trying to wake up it's usually with a particular method usually there is a series of steps that the person is doing a series of activities a series of practices and usually they're very attached to these practices that was certainly the case in that go in for organization where everybody was diligently working on meditating a dozen 12 hours 15 hours a day and they were very much attached to that in that particular system they weren't even allowed to practice any other forms of meditation so in that kind of system you don't even have any freedom in your own mind because in your own mind you have to follow a prescription anytime you have aligned yourself to a prescription where you are expecting a certain result from a certain series of activities there is zero surrender in that no surrendering you have committed yourself you've hooked yourself to a methodology that you have become very attached to even if you can't see it even if you can't see the attachment because it's hidden from your view you are now aligned and attached expecting a certain result and if you are and in that particular experience and those with those meditators and most people in the world who are meditating they're expecting the result of peace and happiness and tranquility nothing wrong with that is that those are wonderful things to to aspire to and if that's what somebody is seeking then basically they're probably going to get that but that is completely the opposite direction of what the awakening process is in the awakening process you have surrendered and life itself is coming at you and awakening you through any means you've surrendered to allow any way any avenue opens that will take you and open you up smash your beliefs and then you let go and something miraculous happen so if you're pushing yourself and trying to get there trying to awaken don't kid yourself don't pretend what you're doing it's much better to be straight with yourself and just say hey you know what I just want some peace in my life I just want some happiness and some joy from this this meditation this yoga whatever practices I'm doing and so half the time people are actually just wanting to have that peaceful experience and the other half they're wanting to be part of a group where they can share about that with some others where they can all say together yeah you know isn't this great we're all in the right club we're doing the right thing so they're looking for affirmation they're looking for a sense of belonging belonging is that is one of the most important things for humans to feel I'm not saying it's actually like a good thing to feel I'm not judging it either way I'm just saying that nearly all humans the vast majority of them are completely driven to belong and that's what has them grouped together cluster together I mean this spiritual domain they do the same thing because it's the nature of humans to want to gather together and prop each other up with their belief systems so they gather and they tell each other hey you know we all agree with this model and now they feel more confident because you see because humans are lacking in so much confidence they need each other typically to to feel a sense of confidence but what they're what they're lacking at that moment usually is critical thinking because they're now that they're aligned with a group with a model they they can't afford to start criticizing that because what and the main criticism that they probably bring to it well there's a couple of them one of them would be well where is this is teaching really coming from like are we sure that this is actually does it have our best interests at heart does it actually really want us to be free what's it's what's its deeper purpose here but because everybody's just busily going along with it and they're not willing to ask those sort of questions they want to just keep on going and then of course the other one is like well is anybody else here in the group fully enlightened is anybody else here awakened and typically not I mean maybe the charismatic leader of the group maybe but often they've died and so it's hard to go and verify and check that and usually they don't really and even if they did say that they were how are you going to prove it I mean how many fully awakened enlightened beings have you ever met what we typically do is we project onto others our imaginary fantasy of what an enlightened an awakened person would be like we typically think things like well they'll be perpetually peaceful they'll never raise their voice they'll walk with a steady step every movement of their body will be you know transcendence they will be they'll have an air of you know of being above everything or whatever they will disappear to be highly unusual and you know what maybe it's like that I don't have you ever met anybody like that well guess what I have I've actually met one person in my life when I was a monk I took some time out as a monk a Buddhist monk in Myanmar Burma and the person I did that with was the most it was in 2003 he was the most highly unusual person I've ever met absolutely this monk I was with for a couple of weeks and he was he there's a little group of us and he struck us so deeply that some of my friends one of them in particular went and spent six months with him after that just to be close but you know there's a quote from the Buddha well he says you know this is 2,

600 years ago where he says you can be sitting right beside me you're completely in the presence of apparently the most enlightened being ever and you can be you can completely miss the point you can profoundly miss every single thing I'm sharing and you can be a million miles away from me and you can tune in to this message and fully awaken and it's that's the message one of the messages from the Buddha from Gautama Siddhartha Buddha so there's nothing there's nothing to do with osmosis you can't just sit there and soak up enlightenment if you just if you think that you're part of some group and they are awakening and you think if I just keep on going there if I just keep on hanging out with the group if I keep on meditating at the temple at the ashram if I just keep soaking up these vibes then I'm gonna enlighten myself I'm gonna become awakened no all that's gonna happen is you're gonna probably hopefully feel more and more peaceful more and more happy maybe more and more focused now is it possible that those experiences of greater depths to peace happiness focus could they lead to an awakened mind and enlightened experience well quite possibly but it depends because while that is a very fruitful experience and I'm not putting it down obviously I spent decades doing that because I was very attached to the view that if I kept on doing more of these retreats and getting myself more and more peaceful more and more focused with greater Samadhi that type of concentration then I would have a greater shot a greater chance at becoming enlightened and and it didn't I didn't do any of that I mean well not while I was doing those activities it you see where the Buddha speaks of the three characteristics of the universe of there being perpetual change which is a nature of there being constant Dukkha the suffering the unsatisfactoriness of them of the nature of the universe and Anatta where there is no self now that third one is the most elusive I could not understand what he was talking about for 25 years about that long so so just by doing all of those things and most of my friends I've known many people who've done this for many decades you know from their 20s to their 60s like seriously like imagine being that dedicated and they did not have that awakening process they did not touch upon a nota why is this because part of the the experience of being so aligned with that sort of practice is that you you restrict your ability to review everything and so because you've restricted your viewpoints this means that you are basically tethered you're attached to one angle on life essentially even though it might be quite complex that perspective it's coming from one perspective so whereas the whereas it's quite likely that it's the it's the breaking down of this attachment that it's the multiple viewpoints from radically different perspectives I'm talking about radically different perspectives so you've already been grown in a society where you have the social the mega social viewpoint of what reality is and this is probably the depths of your perspective very hard to break that it's very hard to break these paradigms so you're in that paradigm of this is what reality is because everybody all my teachers family parents you name it friends everybody told me that's how it is and maybe now you've gone and read some books or gone to some retreats or something else and now you're and maybe you've even aligned yourself with a religion the cult and now you're hearing this other perspective and and so now you're aligned with that maybe you even want to sample several of them but you see this is all still even if well one thing is to be attached to one of those viewpoints the other is even if you're open to multiple ones it's still all in the domain of the intellect it's still very much in the domain of your mind just working and so that's why having access to completely different modalities completely different paradigms is what can enable this kind of breakthrough but at the heart of it is also a view if you have this view that I want to be awakened I want to be enlightened this like I want to get the benefit then again you're completely off on the wrong track in the eightfold noble path of the Buddha his number one step is right understanding and right view so that's what there's eight of those steps we'll go through these in other videos in other episodes so how are you going to get this right view this right understanding from exploring life fully and from giving up the perspective that it's going to be you who's going to get yourself there and it's going to be you who's even going to get anywhere because there we have the perspective in the enlightening in the awakening process that they that there isn't a self there is not an identity in the way that you think there is that it is fictitious and this is your number one attachment of all attachments in the world so you break them all down you've got an attachment to your body that's the number two attachment so they break it down on this number one attachment is to your identity to yourself the second is to your body the third would be to your family or your friends or society just goes on and on like that and so this process that we're speaking of here is in contradiction to every single fiber of your being it's that deep it runs at odds with the very core of who you think you are because you've been hypnotized into believing that you are something when in fact you are not that you are something different and this can only be experienced and so coming back to the concept here the the general point of why do this what why why should I go ahead and and attach myself to this this this awakening process what I'm not telling you to I'm not even saying that there is there's a authority said there's no benefit to you in doing this however if you feel something that there is something wrong here something wrong is in the world something is off something doesn't click then this is a sense that this is something that could be of interest to your unfolding you see it's not really the drive to awaken to the truth that will get you there it's not being able to stomach the lies anymore it's only when you've become so fed up with the lies of life the lies of the human realm and what has been spun to you by all these groups and organizations and people and and you realize that these lies are basically what has even built who you are when you realize that perhaps the very foundation of my being the very viewpoint that I'm coming from is nothing but a series of intertwined lies embedded within me and groans I'm grown from a bed of lies if that becomes your experience if you start to tap into that then it won't be the seeking of the truth that will drive you it will be I can't stomach beings a lie that's certainly how it became for me and then it becomes a very slippery slope and that is why this is a very intense topic and not to be trifled with because it's like playing with fire if you are that curious about the nature of reality if you start to become that fascinated and curious about what's going on here and what I am and what is a lie and what is the truth then it is indeed possible to go all the way and all of this around you is actually very flammable the whole experience here of being in this realm of reality itself and of what you are is exceptionally flammable and once you start playing with these concepts and once you start sliding in this direction well you're kind of playing with sparks and so then it can become very freaky because once you start sliding in this direction well you might end up just going all the way and I'm not recommending that you do that in fact I celebrate who you are and your aspirations in the world I think it's fantastic that you are a unique expression in this world like a unique snowflake as they say and that is a wondrous experience to be had and I certainly wanted to fully experience what it was to be me in his other comments and I wanted to be sure that I had a fantastic joyous ride I wanted to know what it was like to be completely in love I want to know what it was like to travel the world and to see amazing things so I'd committed myself to that and I did all of that and it was like it had run its course it's like wow okay so I've done pretty much everything I wanted to do on this tour well what's next you see only imagine that what if you just thought I want to do everything on my list I want to fulfill everything I want to do on this tour and maybe after that maybe then I'll be curious about what is beyond all this is there something that is profoundly different is it possible to pull back the veil on reality itself and step through to the other side and awaken and potentially even become magical is all of this really possible oh yes and as I've shared there are some very strange keys that you can use very strange access points indeed in the world there are locations that are access points that are portals that you can go to and they will help activate you in this process and as I've already shared there are substances there are these magical sacred medicines particularly the five MEO DMT from the toad which is very very strange that something can tear apart the fabric of reality and transport you like interdimensionally well I don't even know how to describe it but certainly the nature of identity is radically different after such experiences and and then along with that there is questioning that you can do as I've spoken about with the liberation unleashed dot-com group where they assist people in deeply questioning the nature of what they think that they are until they can unstack that deconstruct it and then of course there are the books by Jeff McKenna the scariest books in the world all of these things if one was so interested it's like there is this is like a powder cake and you've got all these little instruments over here that you can play with and set it on fire but why would you want to do that if you are loving your life if you if you're interested in actually going all the way and having a joyous loving life go for that why not why not just do that and have a fantastic time why why bother with all this other stuff only if you feel that you can't stomach the lies anymore and you know if that's you you will know in your heart of hearts if this is a path for you and there is one other aspect to it and that is of course that the egoic structure the false identity the fictitious self it is there is something off in that and there is something that is completely consumed with craving and the seeking of more inside that and that seems to be what is ruining the world this is craving this thirst would refer to as Tanah the second noble truth this unending thirst for more of everything is consuming the world and at its base is the identity that believes in itself and believes it needs more and so if there was one reason I would say somebody said to me why why all time do this why what is the benefit it's not a benefit to you there is no benefit to you in this but there is a benefit to the world there is a benefit to reality because once you've cleansed yourself of the toxicity of identity and that's what it is it is a toxicity a virus that has spread throughout the human world and every baby that gets born they very quickly figure out how to put this virus of identity they train this new being into being a self they do this selfing thing to them and then everybody continues with the selfing process until they have grown and they believe in themselves and now they are a new economic unit as part of the social order that seeks to gain more and more to consume more and more and so the whole world becomes like this huge feast that's how the humans relate to it like I just want to eat the world everybody is busily consuming eating eating eating and it's eating up the whole world and through them is moving this form of consciousness that has infiltrated and created a false identity in each person that makes them believe that they are somebody with the right to pollute and the right to consume and the right to get and the unending thirst and quench to quench an unending of inability to quench their thirst for more that is what is at the very seat of each human and can you root out and cleanse yourself of this toxic virus that believes that it is its birthright to consume the world yes you can should you is there anything wrong with having to with being having an identity of being a self to believing that there is a self there you know there's nothing wrong with that there is nothing wrong here this is a domain of play this earth this world is a playground for all of us to explore and experience however we wish it is a domain of power of seeking power that's what the whole game is about and most people are profoundly disempowered and because of their disempowerment it's likely that they won't even want to touch upon what we're talking about here so that's why I listed those seven steps in that particular order if you haven't gathered empowerment if you are positive if you aren't completely integrated in your body your emotions your spirit all of that if you aren't aligned with being super positive you don't wake up every day with a bounce in your step and jump out of bed and feeling happy focus on that that's the first step absolutely don't worry about all this other stuff we've been speaking about it's those first four steps that need to be completely grounded in your reality of empowerment of being living lightly of joyous living of being loving with everybody that ought to be your focus and if that's your focus for many years or even the whole of your life fantastic it's only beyond that and only for those who are thinking wow I just can't stomach the way this world works and that everything feels like it's a defeat then you can start to step beyond it and I've shared with you the tools that will open and part the veil you you you