Freedom From the Conditioned Mind

a long time ago i discovered that enlightenment was more about at least from my vantage point than a few other people's from my vantage point it was about creativity more than being and [Music] i also discovered that um the human experience that the highest human experience of fulfillment i believe for most of us is found when our creative potential is liberated so that's the idea how can we liberate our creative potential what does that have to do with enlightenment so usually what happens is when is the is it the spiritual experience the awakening experience the enlightenment experience spiritual revelation is the discovery of eternity of infinity discovery of transcendence discovery of joy peace happiness ecstasy liberation and unimaginable freedom but what i want to say is that uh too often i think this this most wonderful experience is seen as an end in itself it's rather than a means to an end so i've always seen the experience of enlightenment the awakening to enlightened awareness that's really a means to an end it's almost as if the energy and intelligence that created the universe the divine intelligence through this kind of awakening was not just implicitly but if we have the eyes to recognize it explicitly giving us all an opportunity to participate in a much more profound way in the life we've been given too often we haven't found any freedom yet the human experience feels like it's something that's happening to us and more often than not we feel victimized by that position we might they were taken consciously or unconsciously but when we discover the creative potential inherent in life itself we see that to be to to be to be alive and to be conscious of the fact that we're alive and to be conscious and aware of the evolutionary context in which we're alive we recognize it as a great opportunity a great opportunity to participate with the creator the energy energy and intelligence the creative universe in this grand and mysterious event called life consciousness creativity and evolution even in these unprecedented unprecedented times more often than not too many of us tend to see the spiritual experience as an adaptive methodology that's an adaptive minute as an adaptive methodology or a way we can somehow contact contact our deeper self realize our deeper self and find a way to feel better about the challenges of being human we want to use the potential inherent in awakening to enlightened awareness as a way to make us feel better as a source of healing and existential relief from insecurity which is all very reasonable and understandable but i i've always felt that there's more to all this than that i'm not sure that the point of life is only to be happy i think maybe the point of life the point of this experience or having is as i said before is to find ultimate meaning and ultimate purpose and value highest meaning highest purpose highest value through finding and absolute reason to commit ourselves to fully being here so we can in our own small but not completely insignificant way to make a difference in the ultimate truth of vedanta the ultimate truth of vedanta is that there's only one image you ask the question what's the ultimate truth about the nature of reality the answer is it's the ultimate truth is that the only there is only one and not two and you are and i am and we all are that one without a second from the most outrageous unimaginable metaphysical vantage point so this is getting very far out there on a metaphysical ledge but that's what enlightenment is all about from a very far out metaphysical vantage point from the ultimate most outrageous vantage point possible if there's only one the ultimate truth about the nature of reality the nature of life and death is that there's only one and not two that means you and i as i said as i just said you and i are that one without a second which means in an evolutionary context that you are the only one that could have been that who could have made the choice to create this you know evolving universe from a from a metaphysical vantage point from the perspective of the ultimate truth that there's only one and not true that has to be the truth of course i'm not talking about your ego or my ego i'm not talking about your separate self with a small eye but i'm talking about the big eye because the big guy the only one that exists is the only one that could have decided to create this universe and that's who you really are and that's who i really am so what i'm speaking about really is the profound metaphysical breakthrough to the evolutionary context of enlightenment which means that i'm the creator of the universe and if i am the creator of the universe and the creation of the universe is much bigger than my personal life god forbid it means that um it means that ultimate meaning and ultimate purpose and ultimate value will be found through the discovery and recognition of that fact we exist in fact for the biggest reasons imaginable and while i'm doing my best to explain this with words intellectually this can be cognized as a direct realization it's a metaphysical cognition as a metaphysical recognition that oh my god my goodness i am that means in an evolutionary context i am the energy and intelligence that created the universe this is my process when that happens we awaken to us to a spiritual feeling of care of caring not just caring about our our personal self and our personal feelings and emotions and our personal story but we get to care about the whole the the the progress of the entire evolutionary process in a way that transcends our ability to understand understand with the mind so when i say that spiritual awakening is out is introduces us to counter cultural implications it gets very exciting so one of the things that happens when we wake up in a profound way is that we begin to recognize in ways that's usually quite shocking and overwhelming that most of us are more or less have been and are most of the time very similar to conditioned robots and what that and i don't mean in an unkind way i'm just trying to be brutally honest which means that we discover when we wake up that we are deeply conditioned we're psychologically profoundly conditioned of course if we begin to do psychological work we begin to see oh my god i have been and have been acting like i've been psychologically programmed as long as we're psychologically programmed it means fundamentally we're not acting we're not acting from a place of freedom in ourselves because we're acting in ways that are deeply conditioned in this condition in this way there's no freedom an enlightenment is about the experience of inner freedom radical sovereignty over body mind and soul so we realized it was psychologically conditioned we recognize we are emotionally conditioned slaves in many ways slaves to our feelings unfree we begin to recognize how biologically we're self-conditioned by biological impulses so unfree in relationship to all right relationship to food sex sleep and so many other things but but as glorious as the experience of awakening is it's often it's glorious in many in many in so many ways but it's also a rude awakening because oh my goodness for most of my life i've been a biological robot which means i've been so asleep and unaware of how blindly conditioned i've been emotionally psychologically biologically and also culturally culture tells us the story of who we are where we are why we exist and how life should be lived and how many people do you know that really question the infinite and myriad ways in which culture has taught us who we are why we exist and how life is supposed to exist this psychological and cultural conditioning process is so deep and profound most human beings go through a whole life cycle without ever even glimpsing the fact that they are not they don't have don't have freedom of any freedom of choice we're simply playing out the program that we find ourselves in the midst of so the countercultural implications of spiritual awakening and the awakening to enlightened awareness become apparent to us is because when we when we wake up in a profound way we discover a part of ourselves the deepest part of ourselves that is utterly free from conditioning that's the good news the deepest part of ourselves is utterly free from conditioning and is inherently liberated already we don't have to do anything to liberate the deepest part of ourselves because its unnatural state is freedom itself so when we wake up we discover this deepest part of the self that's inherently liberated already most of us didn't know about until we stumbled upon it and that discovery is the greatest discovery that there is in human life the discovery of primordial inherent freedom the level of the self so the discovery of the freedom inherent in enlightened awareness its greatest value is it gives us an opportunity to become a liberated human being and a liberated human being is someone who has a measure a much greater measure of freedom to make conscious choices because a liberated human being is fully aware of how conditioned they are or very aware i would not necessarily even further but quite aware fully very aware of how condition we are emotionally psychologically biologically and culturally so this awareness of being of our conscious awareness being trapped in a matrix of layer upon there upon layer upon layer of conditioning makes it possible for us to begin to see with a measure of clarity and a measurement of freedom and [Music] the greatest discovery the greatest discovery of this kind of awakening is in this context is the recognition that i i actually can choose to use mythic language we could say that god has actually given me and you and all of us the opportunity to choose the kind of person i want to be and the kind of relationship to the human experience that i want to have that nothing is inherently given there aren't no shoulds our cultural background and our cultural inheritance is full of shoulds and moral imperatives of all kinds gross and subtle that are deep in our souls but the awakening to enlightened awareness the profound awakening to enlightened awareness in that profound awakening we should we realized usually with a shock oh my goodness i'm not inherently necessarily the person i thought i was nor do i have to be the person i thought i was people that other people believe believe me to be or even want me to be i don't really have to if i don't want to because in light of this awakening to enlightened awareness in light of the inherent freedom inherent in the awakening to enlightened awareness i can choose to be who i want to be now this is very profound very radical very outrageous very big deal because for most of us to be brutally honest it's easier to remain ignorant than just two give in and allow ourself lazily to be the conditioned robot we've always been because consciously embracing the freedom to make profound choices that enlightened awareness ourselves upon us it's a challenge even if the freedom inherited enlightened awareness is free and spontaneous and natural and effortless we're still all sensitive feeling human beings so if you truly want to be free emotionally psychologically biologically and culturally in a world where most people are so blind to their own conditioning not just personally but culturally you can find yourself very alone because if you want to be that free means you don't want to just go along with to go along with the pack go along with the crowd you're really going to want to walk the beat of a different drum and that takes guts because it means you have to be willing to question everything courageously what does it mean to be a liberated human being in this crazy environment that we're all in the midst of in this time between worlds after the beginning of the 21st century what does it really mean to be a liberated human being now in [Music] america to be in american culture in eastern culture so it's very funny but you know i've been living in india for a couple of years and i've had this experience countless countless times when i'm teaching speaking with middle class indians and upper middle class indians when they start to awaken they express so much excitement so much gratitude but in each and every case without exception they explain how they don't really have much freedom to make liberated choices because the family pressures them to live in accordance with culturally conditioned expectations that they find absolutely overwhelming in every case i've never met anybody who's different over here and i found this so amusing because mother india is the glorious country that has in the words of ken wilbur he's given mankind according to ken not less than 95 percent of our understanding of human interiority it discovered the brahman consciousness and even 2 500 years after lord budo of the earth the majority of people in this extraordinary country are afraid of the profound freedom that enlightenment offers them in the land of enlightenment and sovereign land that gave humanity discovery of enlightenment so i have found the same truth to be true ever since i started teaching over 35 years ago that the awakening process the the spiritual experience of awakening the consciousness of consciousness and the extraordinary ecstasy of unconditional freedom and the infinite expanse inherent there that we find there is so absolutely uplifting liberating joyful such a source of unimaginable happiness but then the question always comes sooner or later after that event what am i going to do about this revelation how am i going to respond to this revelation that's when the road that's when the rubber meets the road because that's when we realize how embedded we are in other people's thoughts and other people's ideas and other people's beliefs and other people's shoulds and shouldn'ts and other people's moral imperatives and we still find that awakened or not we're still human and frail and insecure do we find ourselves getting frightened about the implications of the unconditional freedom realized in the awakening experience what shall i do how shall i respond now the greatest realizers throughout history most of the time have been cultural revolutionaries and they became cultural revolutionaries because of the power of their awakening the power of the freedom that they realized and they created you some willingness to enact that freedom in different ways so the cultural countercultural implications of enlightenment are profound because the awakening experience itself if we don't resist its full implications will compel us to be exemplars of what's possible for humanity i don't personally believe that enlightenment is a private event it might be an internal revelation but the power of enlightenment only means something if it can be seen recognized and understood by others and if that's going to happen we have to be willing to demonstrate it and embody it in bold fearless and profound ways if you have the courage to do that as i was saying i don't i've never thought that enlightenment was just about feeling better feeling good or even feeling feeling great it's about being free and freedom we realize now is occurring within the context of an evolutionary unfolding freedom is an inner experience but evolution is a participatory event the universe is evolving it means it's not a static process it means nothing is stuck in place the evolutionary context means that we're all moving we're we're moving and are part of a process that's moving it's part of a part of an evolutionary ocean of creativity that is moving and becoming more complex more of what it can be and are we consciously participating that creative emerging emergence and creative context the creative becoming consciously participating in it as a free agent or are we unconsciously being dragged along through the process which most people are so the challenge of enlightenment in an evolutionary context is to awaken to enlightened awareness and the freedom of enlightened awareness to awaken to the evolutionary context in which the awakening is occurring and if we can do it to ultimately be able to participate as consciously as possible in the creative process as the creative process as the eyes and ears heart and mind of the greater process itself if we can manage it if we can wake up that much if we become that conscious we can become that enlightened to evolutionary enlightenment and if we can do that then our relationship to life will be inherently creative which because it's going to mean that because now that we have awakened in the deep in many deeply profound ways so so to so many so many dimensions of our own conditioning and our own blindness because we're now awake into the evolutionary impulse in the evolutionary context for human consciousness we'll be always looking for ways to be more free we'll always be looking for ways to be more free and not just to feel more free but to enact more freedom more consciousness more creative potential and to liberate that would become our natural awakening evolutionarily inspired inspiration so evolutionary inspired aspiration so in an evolutionary context being awake just doesn't just mean seeing clearly that's a big part of it but it means seeing clearly all the big and small ways in which we can participate in the creative process in such a way as to catalyze evolution itself because it seems that it seems that feels like when we wake up that the universe is yearning to grow so when you awaken to it when you awaken to evolution to evolution as a spiritual event there's a spiritual feeling as a spiritual knowing you feel how much the universe is trying to become more conscious how much it wants to grow how much more potential there is in this creative unfolding and then there is this profound yearning which you'll feel like you shall awaken to in yourself this profound yearning do whatever you can to facilitate that process so the countercultural implications of spiritual awakening are profound because it means that um we're no longer here to fit into anybody else's plan we're no longer here to fit into anybody else's plan to anybody else's project to anybody else's theorems we want to be we want to consciously co-create the universe with the energy and intelligence that gave rise to it in the first place fearlessly courageously ecstatically so we want to learn to be we want to learn to see the this the words this word freedom as i was saying earlier not just as an inner experience which it is but ideally as a fundamental relationship to existence i don't want to just experience freedom i want to enact freedom i want to generate it i want you in my own small but not insignificant way liberate the interior of the universe and also the exterior of the universe if i can with all of my heart and when we begin to feel this way we we know unequivocally why we're here what the ultimate purpose of being a conscious human being is all about in light of this revelation the story of the small self of our ego's journey our ego's personal journey we begin to see it as being secondary no longer primary no longer so important it's almost as if there are two trains in the station one is personal one is personal and the other is cosmic one is merely the journey of our individual small self another is the germany of the evolution of the interior of the whole universe which train would you get on you can't really do both not on the way that i see it when i say you can't really do both it's because what is it that what what inspiration is it what inspiration what values are driving and inspiring the fundamental choices you're making in relation to your own life relation to money sex power material things time space if the journey is fundamentally well well and it's personal and you ego bound your relationship to fundamental choices will be expressing that personal bias if you if your choices are more to use sorry if your choices are more cosmically inspired the life you live in the way that you live it will be a demonstration of that fact and that's yours it will be clear that you're no longer fundamentally living a personal life doesn't mean you don't have a personal life we all do even though i'm not sure what it means but um [Music] it means you're living for a higher purpose and i'm convinced beyond any doubt that it's only through living through for the highest purpose that there is that we can realize existential liberation existential relief and the burden of of the why of existence because as the buddha said in life there is so much suffering and a big part of the human experience is emotional psychological suffering and biological suffering so he was right i have found that the biggest source of relief existential relief from the truth and the first noble truth is the discovery of ultimate meaning ultimate purpose and ultimate value when you're when you do when you discover the source of ultimate meaning through awakening to an evolutionary imperative you're no longer tormented about the why of existence a lot of very smart sensitive thoughtful intelligent people wonder in light of how much suffering there is inherent in the life experience in human life there's often an existential philosophical spiritual struggle with the question of why is this happening is this worth it i'm not so sure what they think when we discover this absolute source of meaning and purpose and purposefulness and value we no longer doubt the fact of existence no longer fact without the fact of your own existence you'll begin to see all of your experience through the eye of a process perspective and you'll begin to find yourself liberated from this kind of existential doubts which is very important for us post-modern souls striving to reach beyond post majority to the next cultural stage of evolutionary development a big gift of the awakening experience is liberation from the why of existence i know who i am and i know why i'm here really yes sounds arrogant but it doesn't but if you but if it's true it's not arrogant you're just telling the truth and this being troubled by the y of existence first set for sensitive smart thoughtful considerative people becomes can become a source of enormous psychological and interest in psychological and intellectual pain because if we're struggling with the why of existence as i've been saying underneath underneath the question of the why of existence is usually unexamined existential doubt and doubt about ultimate reality is is the source of ignorance when it comes to enlightenment the great ramana maharshi the guru of my guru apparently said only difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment is doubt and for a smart sophisticated educated post-modern and even integrally informed human being transcending doubt about the why of existence it's a big deal a lot of people feel like i have to give up my doubt about the why of existence you're asking me to give up my discriminating wisdom and i'm saying no i'm not discriminating wisdom is essential to live the same life but doubt is like metaphysical cancer and if we want to be free we wanted if we wanted access to the source of enlightened awareness within our souls this fundamental existential doubt this metaphysical doubt has to be relinquished unconditionally radically absolutely and completely sooner or later one day hopefully soon that's the only way there is no other way it doesn't matter who you are doubt about absolute reality is metaphysical cancer when we're liberated from existential doubt ultimate existential doubt about about the meaning of the fact of existence it liberates us at a soul level now we're fully here and we're fully committed to being here we're not just suffering through the process of being human until the day that we die but we are fully committed to being here to doing the best we can not for our own sake for the sake of the whole process because we know the answer to the why of existence and if we if we can explain and if through the way we live our own lives that we can express express the answer to the way of existence with intelligence clarity sensitivity compassion love inspiration philosophical clarity and spiritual conviction other people are going to feel it they're going to feel the source of our inspiration vibrating through us and we will become like attractors with people who feel the source of their own sanity vibrating through us being reflected through us and everybody wants to be saying everybody wants to be happy everybody wants to be free everybody wants to be liberated everybody wants to know the truth even if they don't really know it yet mic attracts like itself is attracted to itself so the counter cultural implications of spiritual awakening and enlightened awareness to repeat come from the realization that oh my goodness i had no idea i was a conditioned robot i had no idea i thought i was a free autonomous sovereign soul making my own choices then i woke up and i found out that nothing could have been farther from the truth i'm not free i'm not sovereign i'm not autonomous and i'm not thinking freely or independently or even compassionately or big-heartedly i'm trapped in my unconditioned mind trapped in my own conditioned emotions trapped in my fears up to my doubts so when you wake up from that mind praising the ego prison salt person and you're experiencing the inherent freedom of your own true self like i said a few minutes ago you will realize that you can you can choose the kind of person you want to be in the kind of life you want to live it's all within your own hands you can you can be the author of your own your own life isn't that good news i think it's great news what could be better it's tragic that so few of us really feel that we even have a choice but we do that's the good news and to repeat what i said earlier it's easier not to choose to be free more freedom you choose to embrace the more freedom you choose to embody the more for you choose to enact in many ways the more alone you're going to find yourself i've always wanted my life to make sense i can't i can't say i've always made the right choices i'm an imperfect human just like everyone else's but i've always wanted my life to make profound sense i wanted my life to make sense i wanted my life to be in alignment with my deepest convictions because for me life divorced from deep existential spiritual philosophical metaphysical convictions doesn't make any sense so i've always done my best to live in alignment with those convictions and i feel every day awake to that context and scrutinize the relationship between my life choices and my deepest convictions it's a big part of what living a conscious life is all about i believe the older i get which means the more i actually grow up becomes apparent to me that even the smartest people that i know are just doing their best to figure it out just like i am nobody has all the answers so when you as you embrace your own emerging maturity and you face the fact that there is no big daddy not only not only is there no big daddy in the sky but there's no big daddy here on earth or mommy sorry there's no big daddy mommy in the sky there's no big daddy mommy here on earth either which means nobody no matter how brilliant or spiritually enlightened they be they may be indeed maybe as it all figured out everybody's doing the best they can some people of course are doing a lot better than others let's be honest but it's important to understand in light of what i've been sharing with you that nobody has it all figured out the human experience is complex and challenging and as we embrace the evolutionary context of the human experience it becomes even more challenging to figure it all out so as we learn to embrace the evolutionary context of our own existence here on earth so then the question is do we have the courage to lean into the leading edges of our own intelligence of our own judgments our own understanding and and try to reach beyond them so we can be our best selves today and tomorrow knowing there's no perfect solution there's no perfect answer and then nobody's got it all figured out if we can do that i think we'll be doing pretty good you