Just JUMP!

Listen!

Here’s all you need to know to become enlightened:

Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know.

That’s it. That’s the whole deal; a complete teaching of enlightenment, a complete practice. If you ever have any questions or problems—no matter what the question or problem is—the answer is always exactly the same:

Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what’s true until you know.

In other words, go jump off a cliff.

Don’t go near the cliff and contemplate jumping off. Don’t read a book about jumping off. Don’t study the art and science of jumping off. Don’t join a support group for jumping off. Don’t write poems about jumping off. Don’t kiss the ass of someone else who jumped off.

Just jump.

~ Jed Mckenna

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I said Oh no! Help me!

And that Oh no! became a rope let down in my well.

I’ve climbed out to stand here in the sun.

One moment I was at the bottom of a dank, fearful narrowness, and the next, I am not contained by the universe.

If every tip of every hair on me could speak,
I still couldn’t say my gratitude.

In the middle of these streets and gardens, I stand and say and say again, and it’s all I say, I wish everyone could know what I know.

~ Rumi

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First, the question itself is the obstacle to progress, not lack of an answer. The question is the key. Once we truly understand the question, we’ll have the desired answer. The desired answer is always the removal of the obstruction a correct question represents. The question, understood correctly, is the obstruction. If it’s not, see the second point.

Second, come up with the right question. There’s always only one. Wherever you are right now is where you’re stuck, and the only question that ever matters is the one that gets you unstuck, that takes you one step further. All other questions are fear-based ego-sparing time-killers. Forget concepts and ideas, forget past and future, forget mankind and society, forget God and love, forget truth and spirituality. Find that one question; the exact question that ego doesn’t want you to ask. Put your full attention on it. That’s how progress is made. Everything else is a stall tactic.

To move forward, you must figure out exactly what is obstructing you. Whatever it is, it isn’t really there; it has no reality, no substance. It’s your own creation, a phantom lurking in the shadows of your mind, a shadow demon. Your obstructions are your demons, and your demons are shadow dwellers. They live and thrive in the half-light of ignorance, so the way to slay a demon is by illuminating it with the full force and power of your focused attention; by looking at it, hard. Banish shadow with light and see for yourself that no obstruction exists, nor ever did. We create our demons and we feed them. To awaken we must slay them. That’s really the whole process: Slay one demon, take one step.

Repeat.

~ Jed McKenna