The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment

We cannot be true as long as we are expecting or wanting others to agree with us. That will cause us to contract—maybe they won’t like what I say; maybe they won’t agree; maybe they won’t like me. When we are protecting ourselves, we are also withholding freedom from everybody else. When we realize that we are the one and only Spirit that manifests

These emotions that come from divisiveness are like little red flags, reminding us that we are not perceiving the true nature of things. Emotional turmoil tells us that we have an unconscious belief that isn’t true.

One of the great poems of the Zen tradition ends with this description of the awakened state: “To be without anxiety about imperfection.” So, to be undivided does not mean to be perfect. Being undivided does not conform to images we might have in our mind about holiness or perfection.

Anything you avoid in life will come back, over and over again, until you’re willing to face it—to look deeply into its true nature. Again, the only way to know that we’ve seen into the true nature of something is that the story we’re telling ourselves releases. It is not only seen to be illusion; it is felt to be illusion. I often tell students to

Once they are able to find the thoughts that are generating their emotions, they can start the inquiry into what the thought is, exactly, and whether it’s true. Because, of course, no thought that causes division is true.

It is important that we know what awakening is not, so that we no longer chase the by-products of awakening. We must give up the pursuit of positive emotional states through spiritual practice. The path of awakening is not about positive emotions.

The only thing we can do as human beings is to see that all holding on is futile; all holding on is a veiled form of rejecting who and what we really are.

We need to be clear that each of us has our own responsibility; that it is not necessary for you to feel everything somebody else feels. What somebody else feels is theirs to feel. You may have access to it, but that doesn’t mean it is yours to experience. There is sometimes an underlying infatuation with one’s empathic ability, which can itself be

From our new view of reality, we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego’s desire to find meaning in life is actually a substitute for the perception of being life itself. The search for meaning in life is a surrogate for the knowledge that we are life.

Ultimately, no tradition, no teacher, no teaching is going to save me from myself. I realized I can’t abdicate that authority.