Spiritual Journey
Jed McKenna's Human Adulthood
In Dreamstate: A Conspiracy Theory, Jed McKenna is in top form and he boils things down to their essence with his usual iconoclastic humor, which is a great antidote for taking ourselves too seriously:
"See? Conceptually, it's all very simple. Truthworld is a rather dull affair, but Dreamworld is fantastically rich and wonderful, and all we have to do to stay in this wonderland is not pinch ourselves to see if we're dreaming. What could be simpler? All we have to do is stay asleep, and all we have to do to stay asleep is not wake up."
The thing that threatens our response is thinking. Thinking is something we can do and which we believe we do do, but which we really don´t do. Granted, we might think about trifles like crossword puzzles and nuclear fusion and what’s for dinner, but it’s really best not to think about anything too serious, like the fact that you’re not awake at this very moment and whatnot.
and:
"There are three states in which a self-aware being can be. Sub-lucid and lucid in the dreamstate, and awake from the dreamstate.
The first state, sub-lucid, means eyes-closed or asleep in the dreamstate. That's pretty much everyone. It encompasses a range between not-lucid to almost lucid and equates to pre-pubescence. This is what is meant by born of the flesh. We can also refer to it as Human Childhood or the Segregated State.
The second state, lucid, means eyes-open or awake in the dreamstate. It equates to post-pubescence and very few get this far. This is what is meant by reborn of the spirit or self-born. We can also refer to it as Human Adulthood or the Integrated State.
The third state is awake from the dreamstate, which is a different and unrelated paradigm from the dreamstate. Awake from the dreamstate means awake on a dead rock in the middle of nowhere, which is about as much fun as it sounds. It's the only state that merits the term spiritual enlightenment, all other states being imaginary."
In other words, highly recommended reading. A Course in Miracles looks at it in a very similar way, but it is actually in Gary Renard’s The Disappearance of the Universe, where this is boiled down to simple steps, which he terms 4 basic learning attitudes, which are the stages of our spiritual journey. Gary’s comments could be summarized in a table like this:
The first attitude is pure dualism.
The second is semi-dualism.
The third is non-dualism
The fourth is pure non-dualism.
With pure dualism we could think of our early childhood experiences where we see ourselves as a participant in a world we cannot always control reliably. It seems to be run by a force that can sometimes be helpful, but very threatening at other times. It is less relevant what we call this force, God, or the Universe, or Evolution, or whatever works for you. The key point is that it is a dualistic experience, and we’re not in control. McKenna calls this Human Childhood, or the segregated state. It is innately materialistic, the observer and the observed are separate, but they have objective reality.
With semi-dualism we develop a better relationship with God, and begin to think of him as a loving God, from there we can gradually evolve to a realization that this loving Father only has our best interest at heart and that all crisis are indeed classrooms, learning opportunities, and what we are indeed learning is the way back home to God, but first to simply be more at peace in the world, we shift gradually more into a state that McKenna now calls Human Adulthood, where we evolve a split vision, and are more able to look at ourselves in action rather than feeling a victim of the world.
We shift into non-dualism when we start to suspect that God’s Love is all there is, and that the only thing stopping us from having the peace of God, are our ego-defenses. down this path, we gradually become a happy learner, as the Course would call it. for if indeed all things are lessons God would have me learn (Workbook Lesson 193), and they all help advance me on my journey, my attitude changes. This stage equates to lucid dreaming, i.e. being awake in the dream.
Eventually, we end up in pure non-dualism, what the Course calls the Real World, when we are still walking this earth, but we have now completely shifted to realize that only our spiritual identity is real, and the material stuff, and our mortal persona, is a purely temporary thing, which we will eventually shed like an old coat.
Most or us can bounce around in these layers of awareness for a long time, but if you are in touch with this logic, it should be immediately obvious why we are still a learner, and not even always happy: we can have relapses into out ego-identification, and some forgiveness challenges definitely seem a lot harder than others. One thing that can be helpful is to become aware how those types of experiences are simply reflective of the level of fear we have about letting go of our problems, because they are our justifications for our ego-identity.
Byron Katie always asks: “Who would I be without my problems?” Only gradually do we learn that hanging on to grievances actually hurts us, and we can gradually relinquish more and more of this old stuff, by asking for help that comes form outside the ego’s system, which is indeed pretty fool proof, but not God-proof. Thus with the help from Jesus or the Holy Spirit, we are tapping into this source of Love, which helps us to let go of our resistance to that Love, and like learning swimming, we experience that we are safe, and we can float, if we just stop flailing about in a panic.
About that that purely non-dualistic state, the Course basically says:
Oneness is simply the idea God is. ²And in His Being, He encompasses all things. ³No mind holds anything but Him. ⁴We say “God is,” and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless. ⁵There are no lips to speak them, and no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel that it is now aware of something not itself. ⁶It has united with its Source. ⁷And like its Source Itself, it merely is. (ACIM, W-169.5:1-7)
And Jed McKenna points out that to us the Real World, or what Jed McKenna calls spiritual enlightenment, when we truly experience spirit as our reality, is pretty boring, for there is no longer the fun and games of the ego world - we got off the merry-go-round of Samsara. We still have an ego as long as we are in this world, but now it serves us, instead of us serving it. For in the dream state the ego is the slave driver, in the enlightened state it is merely the crutch we need to get around in the world until one day we lay the ego aside, like an old stage costume.
⁵Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend it, rising to welcome what you really want. ⁶And from His holy temple, look you not back on what you have awakened from. ⁷For no illusions can attract the mind that has transcended them, and left them far behind. (ACIM, T-20.VI.9:5-7)
In the Real World, we are awake from the dream, as opposed to the lucid dreaming of the Happy Learner. The promise of the Course is that once you start, the outcome is certain as God.
Undermining the ego’s thought system must be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true. ²Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or scissors, although they may well harm themselves if you do not. ³In this sense you are still a baby. ⁴You have no sense of real self-preservation, and are likely to decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most. ⁵Yet whether or not you recognize it now, you have agreed to cooperate in the effort to become both harmless and helpful, attributes that must go together. ⁶Your attitudes even toward this are necessarily conflicted, because all attitudes are ego-based. ⁷This will not last. ⁸Be patient a while and remember that the outcome is as certain as God. (ACIM, T-4.II.5:1-8)