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Spiritual Enlightenment, the Damnedest Thing: Book One of The Enlightenment Trilogy Paperback – October 2, 2011
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From a spiritual master unlike any,
a spiritual masterpiece like no other.
AUTHOR, TEACHER AND SPIRITUAL MASTER Jed McKenna tells it like it's never been told before. A true American original, Jed succeeds where countless others have failed by reducing this highest of attainments — Spiritual Enlightenment — to the simplest of terms.
Effectively demystifying the mystical, Jed astonishes the reader not by adding to the world's collected spiritual wisdom, but by taking the spirituality out of spiritual enlightenment. Never before has this elusive topic been treated in so engaging and accessible a manner.
A masterpiece of illuminative writing, Spiritual Enlightenment is mandatory reading for anyone following a spiritual path. Part exposé and part how-to manual, this is the first book to explain why failure seems to be the rule in the search for enlightenment — and how the rule can be broken.
_________________________________
Comments about Jed McKenna's Enlightenment Trilogy.
“Jed McKenna is an American original.” -Lama Surya Das
“Absolutely marvelous, splendid, perfect books!” -Shri Acharya
“These books have profoundly changed my life.” -C. Jensen
“These three books are precious gifts to humanity.” -E. De Vries
“Thank you for the books. I’ve been waiting all my life for them.” -C. Vankeith
“I can think of no other author I’d recommend more highly.” -M.R. Fleming
"I say an eternal thank you for the Trilogy. The books continue to challenge my mind and life. I ordered my 4th complete set. Nothing compares to this writing." -J.H.
"If you are ready, step into Jed's world. It is intelligent and powerful." -J. Katz
Visit Wisefool Press to learn more about Jed McKenna's Enlightenment Trilogy and Dreamstate Trilogy.
_________________________________
- Print length324 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 2, 2011
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.81 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100980184843
- ISBN-13978-0980184846
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Editorial Reviews
Review
- "Jed McKenna is an American original." -Lama Surya Das
- "Absolutely marvelous, splendid, perfect books!" -Shri Acharya
- "These books have profoundly changed my life." -C. Jensen
- "These three books are precious gifts to humanity." -E. De Vries
- "Thank you for the books. I've been waiting all my life for them." -C. Vankeith
- "I say an eternal thank you for the Trilogy. The books continue to challenge my mind and life. I ordered my 4th complete set. Nothing compares to this writing." -J.H.
Product details
- Publisher : Wisefool Press (October 2, 2011)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 324 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0980184843
- ISBN-13 : 978-0980184846
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.81 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #204,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #422 in New Age Mysticism (Books)
- #781 in Devotionals
- #821 in New Thought
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Impersonating Jed McKenna
(from Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing)
But with the clear certitude of the self’s disappearance, there automatically arose the question of what had fallen away—what was the self? What, exactly, had it been? Then too, there was the all-important question: what remained in its absence? -Bernadette Roberts
NO MAN IS A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY. That line keeps running through my mind as I sit over lunch with my sister who I haven’t seen in several years. These days I’m the enlightened guy, but to her I’m just the bratty kid who couldn’t make eye contact when she wore a bikini.
It’s summer ‘01 and we’re having lunch in lower Manhattan. She read a preview copy of Damnedest and has had a few months to digest it. It was very nice of her to read it because it’s really not her kind of thing. She’s a good citizen; a successful executive, wife, mother, Republican, tennis nut, Christian-ish, and all-round productive member of society. (She once told me she was raising her children to be productive members of society and I winced so hard I almost chipped a tooth.) She’s a wonderful person, but not a member of the demographic the book speaks to.
There’s a plate of chilled pasta in front of me and a salad in front of her. We’re both drinking iced tea. She runs the creative side of a medium-sized ad agency and, I have no doubt, she’s very good at it. She’s taking time out of her very hectic schedule to have lunch with me. After this, I’m going to the park to lay in the grass and watch people play with their dogs.
Visiting your sister and having lunch shouldn’t be a confusing ordeal, but it is. Is she really my sister? What does that mean? We share some history and acquaintances, such as childhood and parents. Are my parents really my parents? Genetically they are related to my body, but the person who lived my childhood is no longer here. The past I share with this person is about as real and important to me as if I’d read it in a brochure.
The problem is that these people, my family, are all related to my shell, and I’m not. They’re looking at the outer Jed McKenna and assuming an inner Jed McKenna. I’m inside Jed McKenna looking out and I can’t really remember what he’s supposed to do or say. It’s all fakery. I’m an actor playing a role for which I feel no connection and have no motivation. There cannot be anything genuine in my dealings with people who are dealing with my outer garment. (The whole thing is further entangled by the fact that there’s no “I” inhabiting my shell, just a fading echo, but let’s not go down that road just now.)
Actually, it’s not really confusing. I possess not the least shred of doubt about who and what I am. The tricky thing is that who and what I am is not related to this pretty, professional, salad-eating woman across from me. By coming to this lunch I have inserted myself into a situation where I do not belong. I am an impostor. I have some residual fondness for my sister and if she died I’d be saddened to think that she was no longer in the world, but the simple fact is that our former relationship no longer exists.
Okay, so why am I telling you this?
Because that’s what I do. I try to hold this enlightenment thing up for display and this seems like an interesting aspect of the whole deal. How do you relate to the people who were most important to you before awakening from the dream of the segregated self?
She asks why I’m in town.
“My astrologers told me it was a good time to get away and not try to accomplish anything. They said that ketu and rahu wouldn’t be letting me get anything done for awhile anyway—”
I look up and see that she has stopped chewing in mid-mouthful and is staring at me incredulously.
“What?”
“My astrologers—”
“You’re not serious. You have astrologers?”
Oh yeah, I guess that sounds weird. I was vaguely aware that I was trying to be funny by starting a sentence with “My astrologers told me—” but what’s a little amusing to me is otherworldly to her. Might as well have fun with it.
“I have dozens of astrologers. I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who’s doing my chart or explaining how my future will unfold; advising me on pretty much everything.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “You have astrologers?”
“Lots. Gotta beat ‘em off with a stick.”
“And they tell you… they tell you what the future holds? What you should do? When you should do it? What you should avoid? Is that what we’re talking about?”
“I suppose.”
She resumes chewing but the wide-eyed gaze remains. There’s a chasm in this conversation across which there’s no point trying to communicate. She knows I’m into some serious weirdness, but not how much or what kind. I don’t really have astrologers, of course, but in those days it did seem like I was surrounded by students of Eastern and Western astrology who were always very eager to share their readings.
“What do you do with all that information?”
“Me? Nothing. I mean, I don’t ask for it. It’s not like I wake up and summon the court astrologers to plan my day.”
“It sounds like you do.”
“I was speaking lightly.”
I’m trying to skip playfully along the surface of this conversation. I don’t want to sink down into the kind of answer I’d give a serious student. The truth is that I don’t possess any mechanism that would allow me to be curious or concerned about the future, but saying that doesn’t make for breezy conversation.
“Jesus,” she says, shaking her head. “My little brother has his own astrologers.”
“Well, they’re not really mine. They’re just in attendance, so to speak.”
I’m used to conversing with people who aren’t awake and aren’t happy about it. Everything else is chit-chat; talking for the sake of talking, reinforcing the illusion of self. I’m not against it, I just don’t care to participate in it.
“So, you obviously have a great deal of influence over your students,” she says as she sips her iced tea. I mull her statement over and decide that I don’t have a response. I take another bite of pasta, wishing I’d ordered something with meat.
“I mean,” she says, “they obviously hold you in very high regard. That’s quite a responsibility.”
She thinks, quite understandably, that she’s my big sister and we’re having a nice little catch-up lunch. She’s been thrown a curve with this little-brother/spiritual-master thing and she’s trying to handle it. Does she think I’m a fraud? Does she think I’m running a game? Does she think that underneath it all I’m still really her little brother? I don’t know and I don’t much care. The fact that she’s read Damnedest doesn’t mean that she and I can speak; it means she should know we can’t. She doesn’t seem to be clear on that. Maybe she thinks the enlightenment thing is just my day job and that I can step out of that role to be with someone who knows the real me.
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s a responsibility.”
“You don’t know? Obviously these people are strongly influenced by you. You don’t think that’s a big responsibility?”
I shrug. The first thing she said to me when we got together was that I wasn’t dressed well enough for the restaurant. Such a statement is so alien to me that I could only shrug. Now it seems that every statement she makes is so alien to me that I can only shrug.
In accepting this lunch engagement, my hope was that I could slip back into my old persona enough to manage a civil meal. That was too hopeful. I can no longer impersonate myself and I am simply unable to formulate a reply to anything she has to say; I’ve forgotten my lines. We don’t share a common tongue and there’s no way I can make her see that. From her point of view she’s saying perfectly normal, conversational things. “Yes, I suppose it’s a big responsibility,” I say, trying to say something that sounds like I’m saying something.
She lowers her voice. “You hear a lot about people in your position taking advantage of that responsibility for,” she lowers her voice, “unsavory purposes. I hope you would never do something like that.”
I could simply tell her what the preview copy of the book was meant to tell her, that we are no longer related because what I am now doesn’t relate. But why say it? To satisfy myself? It wouldn’t. To inform her? It wouldn’t.
“You mean sex stuff? That sort of thing?”
“Whatever. Power corrupts. I just hope you’ll be careful.”
Sweet. Big sister giving little brother some advice on how to shoulder the burden of power. Being in advertising, perhaps she thinks we have something in common; wielding the power to influence people’s thoughts. Maybe she thinks we’re in the same business, I don’t know.
I set down my fork and sit back. “Well, when I walk through the house, I always have someone precede me with a boom-box playing Darth Vader theme music to lend a weighty and ominous air to my approach. And I certainly don’t dress like this. I have, you know, the robes, the beads, and I always carry fresh flowers. Just trappings, all very tiresome, really, but the underlings expect it. There was a little resistance at first to having them call me Shri Shri Shri Shri Jed, but they got the hang of it. And remembering to speak in the first person plural there and singular here can take a little getting used to, but we are—I mean, uh, I am—happy to make the effort. Noblesse oblige and all.”
She stares at me for a long moment, then bursts into laughter. I guess some ice has broken because we are able to continue in a lighter and friendlier manner, and eventually say goodbye with genuine fondness.
I doubt I’ll ever see her again, but I’m happy knowing she’s still in the world.
_____________________
Jed McKenna is the author of The Enlightenment Trilogy (Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing, Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment, Spiritual Warfare) and The Dreamstate Trilogy (Jed McKenna’s Theory of Everything: The Enlightened Perspective, Play: A Play by Jed McKenna, Dreamstate: A Conspiracy Theory).
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If I am serious about the "spiritual journey", this is the heavy lifting.
It's clear, challenging, ruthless and uninterested in my excuses, weaknesses and games. The picture he paints is serious, well researched (his main point is based on his experience, but he's also read a lot of the usual suspects before he had that experience), frightening and makes perfect sense . . . damn it.
His "method" is simple, challenging, tough and brutal. It's not based on building anything or finding anything, but simply destroying (his words) delusions I hold most dear. Not just the "bad" stuff like greed, lust, hatred and ego, but the "good" stuff like bliss, ecstasy, and divine love. It's all Matrix.
What's true is behind layers and layers and veils and veils of illusion, that I've built, live by and hold dear.
I've got shelves and shelves of books on the spiritual work and am tempted to just set fire to them all, but I'll probably just put them up on Amazon.
I will, though, buy all his other books since I want constant reminder of exactly what the work is and to help with cutting the new veils I'll be constantly trying to re-establish.
I thought I was doing the work, but I was engaging in spiritual masturbation (feels good, but no birth will result). This is the work. I may undertake the challenge . . . or I may (as he says many sensible people do) just turn away and admit I prefer my dream world. If I do that I may continue other methods which will make my dream world more comfortable, more liveable.
But I won't be able to tell myself I'm really working for enlightenment.
I've been a "spiritual seeker" since I was about 14 or so, when I asked my Presbyterian Reverend what happened to all the Native Americans that lived here for eons before Christianity came to the Americas. He told me they all went to hell because they never knew Jesus. I couldn't accept that and basically began my break from organized religion. Like many, I've floated around over the years, trying on many spiritual hats and learning many interesting ways of interpreting the universe. I've made my way from New Age fluff to Chi to Physics books purporting that the universe is a hologram and/or pure consciousness that creates what we interpret as the universe.
After reading this book, I look at my very full bookcase and want to light a match.
I've been a voracious reader most of my life; and since starting on my seeking path, have amassed a fairly large library containing all manner of "spiritual" books. All these years later, after one book, I know now that, while this seeking was likely necessary to get ready for being here (wherever that is), almost none of it will serve me any longer.
The power is not in this one book, but in the message it contains. The book is just the finger pointing at the moon. But finally, for once, has a book described the moon in language a normal person can understand.
I recommend this book highly, but with reservations. Some will hate it and call it heresy, for they cannot understand it's message. Others will worship it and/or it's author and miss the point entirely. But for those few, those few ready to have their world burned down around their ears, This might just be the match you've been looking for.
EDIT: I posted this as a comment to a negative review of this book here on Amazon.
If I may,
I respect your opinion about the book, and (I believe) understand your points and reasoning. But it begs the question, who am I to state what it is like to live from the enlightened perspective? I have not personally undergone an enlightenment experience. Although I have been seeking for some time, I cannot claim to have experienced a state of pure awareness that did not include my ego-self. I cannot claim that I have come to the realization that that everything I seem to be, is hearsay.
So, the simple question is... Can you? Have you made that transition? Have you dropped your grip on the idea that "you" exists?
Because if you haven't, then unfortunately friend, you and I are the same. And you have just as much grasp of what it is like to live from the enlightened perspective as I do, which is to say none. Reading this book and taking McKenna at his word is just as folly prone as reading Hillig, Norquist, Ralston, Adyashanti, Maharshi, Krishnamurti or anyone else. All are pointing fingers, none of them the moon.
Now I understand completely that your ego would be bruised by reading this book. Mine was. Just the idea that what we think we are, and everything we think we know could be illusion, was enough to send my ego screaming into the other room. I admit, I put this book down without the intention of picking up again quite a few times. So if that is where you are coming from, I get it.
However, If you are trying to come at this book from the perspective of knowing, actually knowing, what it is to be enlightened, then that is where you and I must part ways dear friend. For example:
If one has had an enlightenment experience, why not say so? To avoid others making judgments about their "selves"? Selves that may not exist?
How does he know he reached a point where his experience no longer included a self and not "satori" or "nirvana" or what have you? I don't know. I have never reached a similar point. Have you ever experienced no "you"? If you haven't, then you really don't know either. Almost like a caterpillar who has never flown does not understand flight... Hmm...
Referring to philosophies of past masters and traditions, that line up with what Mr. McKenna was/is experiencing is a negative thing how exactly? Ones who have gone before might have something relevant to add to the discussion I would think.
Does life have a meaning? You hit upon a very salient point I think. "Life can have absolutely all the meaning you choose to ascribe to it. No less. And no more either." Notice here who is doing the ascribing. "You." Have we yet determined that a "you" exists? "I" haven't.
As to getting other people to say his work is very good, have you ever considered that this "show" may be exactly what Mr. McKenna is trying to point at? What better way to demonstrate the inane, ego-bound, dreamstate striving of the common spiritual marketplace than to have them write it in their own words, right in the front of the book? Almost like McKenna is saying "look here at all this crap, then turn the page and see what this journey is without it."
As to the meat eating thing, who says? Who places "spiritual value" on not eating meat? If the universe is all one, or a dream, or whatever, then eating anything at all is like eating anything at all. Nothing has value that we don't place upon it. That we don't place upon it. We, who may or may not exist. I still don't know about that. Do you?
Self control is interesting. "Self" control. When we are still unsure if there is a "self".
Please understand, this is in no way meant to be an attack on you. You and I likely have some similarities. I don't agree or disagree with you. These are just questions people should have the opportunity to ponder and come up with answers for themselves. Above all, I believe McKenna is trying to poke you/me/us a bit with this book. And it has worked. Different people respond differently to being poked...
Top reviews from other countries
Es ist für Leute, die an der Schwelle sind, nur einen Schritt entfernt von ...
Es bleibt kein Stein auf dem anderen!
Zusammengefasst:
Alles muss „sterben“!
Die before you die!
Absolutes Muss für Alle, die den Weg ernsthaft zu Ende gehen wollen!
What we are seeing through these eyes now is an illusion, a complete fallacy. They say it's just like the dream you had last night that you may have thought was real at the time, but then woke up to realize it wasn't. What a crazy hypothesis!
Does everybody see how incomprehensible this stuff is?
It is totally beyond all capabilities of this thing we supposedly know of as the mind to understand. These books are trying to describe the non-describable.
So let’s say You happened to become non-dual/enlightened, then what the hell happens to me?
How can we both exist in your non dual vision?
But books like this talk about other people, what they are going through and how they're evolving. This is in total conflict with the non-duality concept of there not being a multitude of individual identities running around everywhere seeking enlightenment! There is only one!
These books are just entertainment. They put nice ideas in our heads and probably make us see things differently, but they cannot give us the final truth. It's beyond words.
But still, they are a great buzz to read and I highly recommend this one.