Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Mind Guy Podcast.  I am your host Thomas and I am looking forward to talking about a very interesting spiritual concept called enlightenment.  Have you heard this term before? In spiritual communities everyone is talking about this state of enlightenment and if you pay attention to eastern religions like buddhism and hinduism they often talk about this concept.  But what is it and how do you arrive there?

     I remember when I was in high school I had an English teacher who had us read a book named Siddhartha, where it talks about a real figure in history, from thousands of years ago, a man once considered the original Buddha.  His full name was Siddhartha Gautama.  He was around during the 4th and 5th century B.C.E.  Ultimately it’s a book about spirituality and the search for enlightenment.  I am not going to dive deep into the details of the book, but I will talk about what happens when enlightenment is reached in this story.  A state of nirvana happens.  

     Nirvana is a Buddhist principle that talks about the end of suffering, the end of desires, and the end of the cycle of reincarnation.  What an interesting book to be offered for a public high school, but I know a lot of people who read this book in high school.  It seems like it was a popular book to be shared by English teachers across the United States, at least for a period of time. 

     Although I have to say, the word nirvana also refers to a state of being.  I think this is what I want to share about this idea of Enlightenment.  Nirvana also represents a state of bliss, because you are connected to your true nature.  In these eastern religions they don’t necessarily use the word God to represent true nature, although for this audience who was likely raised predominantly christian and or non-religious with the most recent generations.  I think the god state is what best represents this idea of our true nature.  At the core of our being we have this aspect of ourselves that is eternal, unblemished, perfect, whole, complete, there is absolutely no lack with our true nature.  

     When you reach a state of enlightenment you end up feeling blissed out all the time and it’s a bliss you don’t really know.  This is what Eckhart Tolle talked about in his book The Power of Now, where he was super depressed and eventually something magical happened where he realized he wasn’t his thoughts and he asked, well who am I if I am not my thoughts, and then his mind went quiet and he was blissed out for years, sitting on park benches for hours at a time, without a care in the world.  It’s quite remarkable.  

     No street drug could ever touch this nature of nirvanic bliss, even though people try to use drugs to reach elevated states of pleasure.  I oddly experienced enlightenment twice, but only for a short period of time, once in a psilocybin trip and once in an ayahuasca journey.  These are both hallucinogenic drugs or as I like to call them plant type medicines.  And I don’t even know if it was a true state of enlightenment, I was just told in my head that it was.  Not only did I have feelings of bliss, but I also remember for a brief period of time that I knew everything.  I knew how the curtains were made, I knew how the bucket next to me was made from the deepest fragments of matter and energy and I even was shown how everything has a frequency to it, a resonance that is always vibrating, every single object including us have a frequency to it and it’s these musical notes of vibration that allows all life and matter to exist.  

     Then when these psychedelic journeys wore off and I came back to quote on quote reality, most of it became lost from my memory banks, and I cannot recreate that experience in my current waking state.  I will say though, that the closest I’ve ever felt in this life to that feeling, outside of psychedelics even though it was only a fraction of that blissfulness, is after playing a volleyball tournament that completely exhausts my mind and body, but in a really good way.  There is nothing better than when you are too tired to think and your body is pumping endorphins after such an amazing workout.  I completely get ultramarathon runners, who run a hundred miles in one day. I betcha there is something that happens that might resemble a closeness to this feeling of bliss for these individuals.  

     Unfortunately there is something else out there that also somewhat resembles that feeling of blissfulness, but it also ruins people’s lives.  It’s hard drugs, drugs like heroin especially, where people get so blissed out from that first high, that every time they use that drug afterwards, they are often just trying to recreate that first high, but never do.   You see I think what everyone is doing on a deeper unconscious level or even a soul level, is we are all trying to come back home to that feeling of enlightenment, because once again that is our true nature.  

     If you watch near death experiences, nearly everyone talks about how peaceful and pleasant it is being out of their bodies.  In a weird way we are in a school and the school is very challenging, because it’s filled with suffering, and our souls don’t like it.  So we try to escape in different ways, and drugs are examples of this escapism.  This is the best definition I can come up with, people who become addicted to drugs and alcohol are trying to escape something, they are trying to escape life, or an aspect of their lives.  Who would have thought that the creator of this scholastic game would throw in a teaser like heroin that gives you a false sense of blissfulness, knowing it’s the worst synthetic version of that nirvana that only creates more problems in your life if you continue to seek it.  For me drug addiction is a karmic happening that results when we don’t handle our shit.  Often it happens when we bury things in our unconscious minds and try to continually over and over again suppress our emotions.  Once again this school is really hard.  

     Let’s circle back to enlightenment.  I’m talking about reaching a state of bliss and that’s something most people are not striving for consciously, even though I think it’s what every soul is seeking.  Most people aren’t talking about it nor have any clue on how to get there.  I will also say I have an idea of how to get there and will also state for the record I am currently not there.  But I do know suffering, because I’ve had a lot of it in my life and I know the source of suffering.  Suffering comes from the ego and the ego is responsible for all the stories we tell ourselves.  I used to have stories of being a good for nothing loser, who didn’t deserve anything in life.  I also for a period of time thought I was the best thing since sliced bread and felt like I was better than others.  It doesn’t matter if your ego makes you feel like you are near the bottom or the top, all those stories are bologna and create an identity that you become attached to.  

     The ego creates your identity and the 10,000 to 60,000 thoughts you have a day, a majority come from the ego and the more you think you are your thoughts, the further away from enlightenment you will become.  This is why the process of reaching enlightenment is a letting go process.  And this is what I do on a daily basis.  If a negative emotion pops up out of nowhere, I sit with it and I find the root cause of that emotion.  It’s always an event from the past that wasn’t processed correctly. If you think about it, negative emotions are an alarm signal of incorrect thinking.  If you feel sad, then you might have a decision attached to it, something like, I’m not good enough.  Your true nature is perfect, whole and complete.  You can’t be not good enough, but your ego can tell you are, because it wants you to become better so you can move up the social hierarchy.  

     You don’t have to achieve anything, or do anything, or accomplish anything in order to be good enough.  That is who you are at the core of your being.  So the ego creates illusions, distortions and the path towards enlightenment is removing those distortions one by one, a very tedious process that could take decades or even lifetimes.  I’ve already cleared out thousands of negative emotions and decisions from my past and I feel like there is a lot still there stored in my unconscious mind. I just keep getting better at finding and clearing them out.  

     I think it’s important to understand that in the bible it states that the kingdom of god is already here.  It’s in our presence, although 99.9% of us can’t see it, including me.  Why?  Because of the stories our ego’s create, we become attached to those stories, thinking they are true.  Right now, or today, you said something really judgmental about yourself or another person, none of it was true, in fact it was so completely false that it created a negative feeling inside of you, and if you think it made you feel better, that too was an illusion because pride and superiority are not pleasant feelings, although it feels better than guilt so we think it’s an upgrade.  While unconditional love for everything and everyone, that’s the ultimate upgrade, one of the the most pleasant of feelings, along with that feeling of nirvana; a blissful peace.   

     The key is to let go of those stories, so that we become nothing and I say nothing when it comes to identity.  Because at the end of the day, these meat suits are just avatars, in a simulated world created by what I think is a creator or god and we are not the characters in the simulation.  We are here to discover that we are not the person we identify with.  It can be really hard to do that and that’s why we don’t constantly see people reaching those states of enlightenment on the regular.  Everything is One and you and me are the same thing, but in disguise.  That’s what makes this school so hard, is our eyes deceive us, our emotions deceive us, our thoughts deceive us.  

     I think what I want to teach the world is ultimately, you are not your thoughts and the more you stop feeding the stories of your ego, and allow yourself to just be in the moment, all your problems will go away.  Because we create problems by thinking and feeling negatively, attracting things we don’t really want into our lives.  If you are constantly in a positive state, more and more beautiful things will enter into your life.  If you have chronic anxiety, be careful, because you think it’s protecting you, but according to the law of attraction, that energy combined with your thoughts is bringing unwanted things into your life.  There is not one single negative emotion that will bring you a step closer to enlightenment.  Any fear, any feelings of lack, any anger, those are survival emotions created by the ego, and they are all rooted in distorted ideas and stories.  Realize that they are just stories and stop feeding into them.  

     Individuals who reach a state of enlightenment, they surrender to the present moment and have egos’ that are so quiet that thoughts rarely pass through their minds.  Yet how many thoughts do you engage with on a daily basis, how much energy do you give to them.  You think you are your identity, but you are not.  You are an aspect of the Creator of All that this, a part of the Oneness that is deserving of the kingdom and already lives in the kingdom.  I say kingdom, but more accurately I want to say the kingdom of heaven and until you realize that, suffering will continue in your life.  And the reason I say that it’s about removing layers and layers of stories, that become our identities, because the more stories I remove the more suffering I cease to experience.  

     If you are unaware of what is going on in your internal world, the challenge is that you will continue to create more stories and illusions, you will feel more and more separate and will hold dearly onto the ones who are closest to you, and when your loved ones perish due to inevitable fate, where all our avatars will perish in this scholastic game, how will you handle this loss?  So many unnecessarily suffer, because of ignorance, they are too afraid to seek and discover who they truly are.  Yet, all souls will eventually graduate from this school, it may just take many many lifetimes.  There will be a point in time when you too realize that you are merely a spirit, that was playing a scholastic game, here to learn lessons for spiritual growth, and when you level up in the game and reach the highest levels, you too will experience enlightenment, a state of bliss and see everything for what is truly is.  A perfect world, filled with unconditional love and everything that once appeared as separate is actually just One consciousness.  Thank you for listening, until next time.