Andrew Cohen - N° 6 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec 24 _ Feb 25

How much remorse is enough? Have you murdered anybody? Have you raped anybody? How much is enough? How guilty do you need to feel? And for how long? Huh? The most important thing is forgiving ourselves for being imperfect. That's that's much more tricky to forgive yourself. And also realize that nobody's perfect. The Buddha wasn't perfect. God forbid Ramen wasn't perfect either. There all human beings are fundamentally flawed, fatally flawed and imperfect. Enlightened they may be, but they're still imperfect. So the problem is as spiritual seekers, we need to give up this idea of aspiring for perfection with the realization that perfection is unattainable. Nobody's ever attained perfection. Somebody can look perfect for a little while, but when you get to know them, say, I got to know them and not perfect. Oh my god, they're not perfect. I want my money back. I thought you were perfect. It's funny but it's true especially in the business I'm in. So I think in our aspirations for awakening to enlightenment enlightened awareness goes from the mythic era to the modern era to the postmodern era to the metamodern era we have to give up these ancient ideas when ancient ideas of human perfection. So if the Buddha wasn't perfect, you then that gives you a little wiggle room, right? So if you believe that even the Buddha wasn't perfect because he was a human being and all human beings are inherently flawed. That gives you and me a little wiggle room. You can let her give herself a break for not being perfect. So understanding that means spiritual realization has nothing to do with being perfect. Really? I thought it had perfection. No. The state of enlightenment is the experience of perfection as a state of consciousness. But it doesn't make you as a human being perfect. Follow what I'm saying? The state of enlightenment is the conscious experience of perfection as a state of consciousness. But that state of consciousness doesn't make you as a human being perfect. That's the news. That's the good news. Do you understand? That's very important. So we can experience perfection, but we can never be perfection. Here in India they believe that enlightenment bestows perfection upon the human vehicle but it doesn't. So they believe that moa or enlightenment makes the vehicle perfect and I'm saying it's not true. The vehicle, the body, the mind and the personality are inherently imperfect. So this is very important dharma I'm sharing with you. I've worked on this for a long time. [Music] So once again the state of enlightenment is a state of consciousness. Experience of consciousness is the experience of that which is perfect. Consciousness is inherently perfect and whole. But that doesn't make the experiencer which is your body, mind and personality perfect. Just because you have the experience of perfection doesn't make you as an as a unique individual perfect. Imperfect vehicles can experience perfection. That doesn't make us perfect. And if you know that from the very beginning, it could it could save us a lot of time. So now we can try to be a better human being instead of a perfect human being. Especially if perfect human beings don't exist. Isn't that a relief? So we can know so none of us can can be perfect. None of us can strive to be perfect. It's unattainable. But becoming a better person is realizable and attainable. Right? Doesn't that make more sense? Is it more reasonable? What I'm what I'm saying is making enlightenment reasonable and attainable. A lot of people feel, well, I could never awaken to enlightened awareness because I'm not perfect. You don't have to be perfect. That's not what God wants. You just have to be authentic, honest, and true. That's hard enough. We all have to do the best we can because we're only human. But as long as we're doing the best we can, we're doing good enough. If we're not doing the best we can, we're not doing good enough. So, do you constantly strive to do the best you can or do we constantly compromise and do less than our best? That's pretty straightforward, right? And it's reasonable. What I'm saying is reasonable. What I'm saying is reasonable. So, we need to have a reasonable understanding of how this works. So we can have a reasonable way to judge ourselves and other people and also it's good to it's good to have the courage to see yourself in a developmental context. So let's say I'm 69. I've been at this for since I've been 22. And I'm an evolutionary. So for me, the evolution of consciousness is what this is all about. It's not me, it's not about me attaining a static state, but it's me developing to higher and higher levels of my potential. So do I see that in myself or do I see myself compromising all the time and remaining static? If we wanted to know how we're doing, we should look in the mirror and see, are we evolving? Are we developing? Are we progressing? Are we stuck in a static state because we don't have an infinite amount of time to do this in this lifetime? I just had open heart surgery a month ago and I didn't expect it. I didn't expect it was going to happen. So when I found out I was going to have this surgery, I was totally in shock. But I never thought I'd have that kind of surgery. So I was totally surprised. It wasn't on my expectation list. So my point is that none of us know how much time we have. And we want to look at your whole notion of spiritual progress in relationship to how much time you have had and how much time you have. And you want to try and do well in light of all the obstacles that are in our way. Our own past conditioning, our fears, our confusion, our wrong choices, our bad karma in light of the infinite potential that always exists at the present moment. See how well are we doing? Nobody gets a clean slate. Nobody gets a free ride. Nobody's born with a clean slate, I don't think. So, we want to embrace all this complexity and see how we're doing in the midst of all this complexity. It's a battle. You want to be able to look at your life in the mirror and feel pretty good about yourself. Not that you're God's gift to humanity or that you're perfect, but that you're doing pretty good. And you can say objectively that you're doing pretty good. And you can say why you think you're doing pretty good. Objectively, if you needed to explain to someone else why you think so. If it was if you're talking to a rational person that didn't hate your guts, would you be able to convince them that you were doing pretty good? What are we going to carry with us from one life to the next? I think it's these basic preconcious convictions we have about our own self. So if you if you hate yourself and you haven't liberated yourself from self-hatred and self-doubt, self-loathing, you're still stuck in it. It's not going to disappear when you lose the body. So we need to feel so good about ourselves that when the body drops, that sense of positivity is still present with you even when your body drops because it's about your soul. How you feel about your soul. that take spiritual work. So think about it like this that all the moments of self of emotional self-indulgence of self-hatred, self-loathing, self regret, pain and fear, all the time you indulge in that you create more karma for yourself. You're digging yourself into a bad emotional and mental habit. From an enlightenment perspective, the more you identify with that stuff, the more you dig yourself in, the harder it's the harder it becomes to get out of it, to transcend it. So with the precious time we have left, devote all your time to being free from all of it soon as possible. So when the time for this body is up, you'll have generated some some interest. See what I mean? Because the spiritual practice pays off if you do it right. But you have to have the right the intention to go all the way with it. We can't be morbidly self-indulgent and wonder why we're not happy. It's not what's happened to you. It's what it's your relationship to what's happened to you and the choices you've made in spite of it all. So from an enlightenment perspective, freedom is always there available. Sometimes we got to work on it. Sometimes it happens by itself. You tell that to a lot of other teachers, they'll tell you I'm wrong. Just so you know, what I'm saying is not a spiritual culture is not seen as being correct. So realize my position is radical. doesn't mean I'm wrong, but you have to be prepared for the fact most other people wouldn't agree with