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

So what if I told you as I was saying to this gentleman here that freedom is not a feeling. So freedom is not a feeling then how you how you happen to be feeling good or bad doesn't necessarily from the perspective of an enlightened awareness or your true self doesn't have any significance. What if you were doubtless about your inner freedom regardless of how you happen to be feeling, how your ego happened to be feeling one day. What if your relationship to liberation had nothing to do with how your ego happened to feel from one day to another? From the enlightenment perspective of enlightenment philosophy is what the ego thinks mean anything from the perspective of enlightened consciousness. Is the ego's opinion relevant? None. So why are we listening to it if we want to be enlightened? My ego doesn't feel very good about what you're saying here. I'm sorry. So if you awaken the experience of enlightened awareness is not a feeling. Then we have to go deeper into this esoteric dimension of consciousness itself that transcends mundane human feelings and thoughts. And if we transcend mundane mundane human feelings and thoughts, we have to transcend the whole samsaric package. So as my guru said to me, he said, "Andrew, remember as as Nirvana has no beginning and no end, Samsara has no beginning and no end." So the minute we say yes to the ego's worldview, it's not just we're not just trapped in the ego, but we're trapped in the ego's, it's like trapped in a self-existing dimension which there's no way out. So it's not that just we have to get over this egoic thought or that egoic thought or this particular memory or that particular memory. We've got to get out of the whole train car which includes all the memories and all the preferences and all the feelings and all the thoughts that make up that world. It's like getting out of a whole world space and embracing another another world space that's nirvanaic that embraces nirvana as the bottom line is the absolute truth and all the most realized all the most powerfully realized being will all say the same thing. This neuronic world spaces its own self-existing independently self-existing reality that transcends samsara absolutely unconditionally totally and completely. So if you know that if we if we know that if we learn that then we stop taking our egoic feelings our egoic thoughts our egoic preferences our egoic memory so seriously we just see it's all samsara blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah incredibly boring and it's tedious the same story you meet people 10 years later they're still in the same bad movie so there it's this it's the story of their own ego and say wake up man let the whole thing go you have to take responsibility for these kinds of distinctions in your own experience you have to remember what the Buddha said and this made a big impression on me I always I always thought that being with someone as power as powerfully and enlightened as the Buddha must have been would be enough to enlighten everybody around him because he was so powerfully enlightened but he said to his monks work about your own salvation with diligence. So that means it must be harder than just sitting around an enlightened person and basking in their transmission. It means we all have to take that personal work seriously. If the enlightened one with all of the power of his radiance radiant enlightenment wasn't enough to instantaneously liberate all his monks that means there's a there's a there's a powerful degree of valition and intentional choice making involved in practices of self liberation. But the ego doesn't want to be free. It's trying to convince you, whoever you are, that it wants to be free. Because if you believe it, then you won't kick it out of the house. But if you know who it is, you can say, "Get out and never come back." The ego will start crying and feel very hurt and make you feel guilty. [laughter] You know what means? The renunciation is just a letting go of whatever the issue is. Not thinking about it, not working with it, not trying to understand it or make a friend out of it. Just letting it go. Renunciation is no relationship. So, we want to renounce all these relationships that are making us unhappy. My relationship with this thoughts making me unhappy. My relationship with that memory is making me unhappy. My relationship with that desire is making me unhappy. My relationship with that this and that's all making me so unhappy. I don't know what to do. Let go of the whole thing because you want to be free, don't you? Yes. Free means what? Having nothing, knowing nothing, being no one. No relationship, no attachment, no preference, no future, no past. So, we just let go of whatever's in the way. Cutting the story off at the head right right at the beginning. Otherwise, we're going to be lost in the story of our ego. Well, volumes and volumes of stories about my ego. I've written a whole series of my ego and it's adventurous. [laughter] I'm writing. I'm halfway through my sixth volume right now. I'm joking because we find it's very in my ego story is very interesting. But to the true self, it's all it's the same story. Your story is my story is his story is her story. It's all the same story. blah blah blah blah all about me blah blah blah blah so it feels important to the ego feels very important this is very important can refer to this as the sensitive self the sensitive self the wounded self if you listen to your if you listen if you or I listen to the voice of your or my sensitive self will be trapped in hell forever because the sensitive self is very convincing you have to say no I I don't believe you. I don't trust you. I want to have nothing to do with you. My door is closed to you. That's how we attain liberation. It has to be unconditional. That's how it works. So remember, as Nirvana has no beginning and end, I'm sorry has no beginning and no end. So we have to see our ego trapped in a loop and if we're not careful, that loop will take us into our next birth. I believe that the karmic repercussions of being hypnotized by the fears and desires of the small self will carry us forward beyond this life into our next birth. I believe it's my I'm not sure of that, but I believe that that we'll be stuck stuck with this again for another lifetime which is what happens to a lot of us. This is the reason we want to cut it off at the root. You have to be very stoic. And so renunciation means being very stoic, not very compassionate with the small self. It's still it because remember these body, mind and personality is like a vehicle, right? For consciousness. So if the body, the mind and the personality is the vehicle for consciousness, the question is who's in the driver's seat? Who's driving your car? Is it your ego or is it your true self, your authentic self? So the idea with the idea with enlightenment is you want to kick the ego out of the front seat and have the true self get into the front seat and take the driver roll the driver said ego back seat baby I'm the driver true self is the driver then your life will change it'll start becoming beautiful but you're not listening to the ego anymore you're not arguing with it you're just just not listening and when the true self gets into the driver's seat your life changes That's when enlightenment starts speaking through you as you because enlightenment is not a static state of consciousness. It's it's kind of the intelligence of center of the universe. Whatever that means, I don't even know what it means. Comes from somewhere magnificent and eternal. It's the awakened intelligence of the God principle. So when the awakened intelligence of the God principle wakes up in us, that's when we that's when we appear to be enlightened. Because there's another the force of this transcendental consciousness is awakening to itself in through the vehicle of our body, mind and personality. That's very shocking to see. It's very powerful. That's what enlightenment is. But as long as we're listening to this the ego story for the 20th year, 30th year, 40th year, 50th year, 10th lifetime, 20th lifetime, whatever it is, we'll never awaken to that deeper dimension of reality. Will this be trapped in this old story? For lifetimes, man, right? So, it's really very simple. It's very simple. If you want the the makra, the liberation more than anything else, you build up the spiritual will to become one-pointed and then you can do it. And the Buddha said under the bodhic tree, he said, "I'm not going to get up until I'm enlightened." That that was his spiritual will. He was resolute. His mojo bust, right? They weren't pointed. I'm just teaching you what I do, what I how what I practice. It really does work. No matter what my mind says, no matter what my mind and ego say. My mind and ego are very active also. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So if I can do it, anybody can do. I'm as crazy as the next person is. Other people say, "Nah, that's not really true." It is. I just don't show it. I don't display it for other people to see. except maybe my wife on a bad day. [laughter] But uh this can be done. But we want to take enlightenment out out of the realm of magical thinking. It's not ma it's not magic. It's your own true nature. It's my true nature. It's our true nature. It's not far away, which you've all heard before. It's not far away. It's not distant. But you've got to believe it. So this is why the Dallas is so important because we don't believe it. are very lost in the pain and drama by ego story and it makes us feel bad all the time. So we don't have time to think about enlightenment and even to believe in it. I it's my conviction that in order to retain liberation you have to believe that enlightenment exists. Number one. Number two, you have to believe in your own worthiness. You have to believe you're worthy of awakening to enlightened awareness. And the first thing is you have to believe that it exists as an objective ontological truth. You have to leave in your own capacity to to see that then it's going to happen. When I was a when I was a young man, I I uh didn't have faith in myself that I could do anything well. I didn't believe I could do anything well. But I had this enlightenment experience when I was 16. It was very, very powerful. And When I was 22, I said that I'm going to devote myself to to reawaken to this marvelous state of consciousness. And it's the only thing I put my mind on that had no doubt I could succeed at it. Don't ask me why, but I knew I could do it. I didn't know how long it was going to take. I didn't know what I was going to have to do to get there, but I knew I was going to succeed sooner or later. That I was doubtless about. So, we have to believe in the thing itself that it exists. And that we have to believe in our own capacity to embody it. You have to have no doubt about yourself. My guru once scream in my face. Don't ever doubt yourself. So this this cultivating this powerful degree of spiritual self-confidence is an important foundation for your own liberation liberation. These are absolute truths. The ego doesn't want it. This is why when people start getting close then they start their ego starts getting scared of being kicked out of the house of being abandoned [laughter] unloved forgotten. People get very scared of the enormity of the infinite space the vast space of of eternal being. They get scared of how infinite it is. They want to live in the little house that the ego creates to protect them. So we have to be very stark about saying no to all of that and be strong. Nobody can be strong for us. So I can't be strong for you. You can't be strong for me. Other people can help us. But we have to stand on our own two feet. Which means believing in oursel and believing in the thing itself. That's all it takes.