1. Searching for the truth is unlike searching for anything else. You can use the mind for any other kind of search, but not the search for truth. It usually takes a while to fully realize and/or accept this fact. The only reason people search for the truth is that they THINK that the truth is something separate that can be grasped in some way. It isn’t, and it can’t be.
2. Thinking about the world is not the same as directly interacting with it via the body through direct perception or non-conceptual awareness.
3. You can see through an illusion, but you can never grasp the truth. You can only BE the truth of what you are.
4. You asked why some of us write about this subject. We do it because we have to. We do it because we enjoy it. We do it for no reason at all. We do it because it's our primary job.
5. If you were in control, and you really didn’t want to think about this stuff, then you'd quit thinking about it, but you're obviously not in control, so you have to keep thinking just like some of us have to keep writing about it.
6. Life is not fair. The idea that life should be fair is a good idea to get rid of. Some people are born with deformities or disease. Some children get cancer. Tornadoes kill hundreds, and tsunamis kill thousands. In a car crash one person survives and the other dies. Some people see through the illusion of selfhood and some don’t. This is the nature of reality. If you think it should be otherwise, that thought will make you unhappy.
7. Nobody promises enlightenment to anybody because nobody knows how the search for enlightenment will play out in someone else's life.
8. Nobody made you come to this website, but you came here and you can't stay away. Why? It’s a mystery. You can accept it or resist it. If you resist it, you’ll probably be unhappy.
9. Why does one person have no interest in the truth and another person become totally consumed by the search? This is the nature of reality. Isn’t it obvious?
10. Getting enlightened is neither a lottery nor not a lottery. It is what it is. The search for enlightenment is based upon a misconception, but the misconception is not perceived until after it is seen through.
11. People are strongly conditioned to imagine that they are separate entities, and they spend years reinforcing that idea with their thinking, so it's amazing that anyone ever breaks free of that conditioning and sees through the illusion.
12. From a motivational standpoint people who have confirmatory experiences or a kensho experience may have an advantage over people who do not, but so what? Lots of people reportedly see through the illusion of selfhood without ever having any unusual experiences at all.
13. Many people whose spiritual search has ended try to help other people find what they found. They offer suggestions based on their own experiences and what they think might help. Why wouldn’t they want to help? Why wouldn’t they want to offer suggestions?
At one time I could have used the screen name “questions,” because I was consumed with hundreds of questions. I wanted to understand the nature of reality. I wanted to understand what’s going on. I wanted to know who I am, where I came from, and where I’m going. I wanted to know how life appeared in a lifeless universe. I wanted to know answers to dozens of other similar existential questions.
I never found the answer to a single question until I stopped thinking for a while and began spending time looking at the world non-conceptually. I eventually discovered that all of my questions were misconceptions. As I shifted attention away from thoughts to what could be seen or heard, questions began to collapse. This is what I discovered:
a. What we call “the universe” or “reality” is a unified living whole.
b. There is nothing (no thing) separate from that wholeness.
c. All separateness is an illusion because there are no boundaries anywhere except in the mind.
d. The mind is a useful tool, but it dominates most people’s lives. Becoming free of the mind is freeing.
e. If someone spends all of their time naming, cognizing, thinking, fantasizing, reflecting, judging, etc, it is unlikely that illusions will be seen through.
f. If someone continually reinforces the idea (through repetitive thinking habits) that s/he is a separate entity “in here” looking at a world “out there,” it is unlikely that the illusion of selfhood will collapse.
g. After people see that who they are is “what is,” they are no longer motivated to act from a self-centered perspective. They simply do whatever they know they have to do, and then they do the next thing that they know they have to do. Life becomes very simple. It is as if a huge amount of their past thinking just drops away. They become like little children who are happy without thinking about being happy.
h. People who see through the illusion of selfhood no longer worry about where they were before they were born or where they’ll be after the body dies. They know that they are the entire process of reality, and that reality is alive and infinite.
i. There is no time, space, causality, thingness, qualities, etc. except mind makes it so.
j. THIS is a dynamic mystery that manifests “just like this”—fingers typing on a keyboard, eyes reading words on a computer screen, refrigerator and fluorescent lights humming in the background. Any thoughts about THIS are abstractions. There’s nothing wrong with abstractions as long as they don’t become big psychological investments that keep the truth securely hidden.
