“The fundamental conflict in the spiritual quest is that ego desires spiritual enlightenment, but ego can never achieve spiritual enlightenment. Self cannot achieve no-self. That’s why anyone who wants to sell enlightenment must first reduce it to more manageable proportions;… — Jed McKenna Copy Share Image
“The American dream of freedom and abundance is just a child’s rendering of true freedom and abundance, and serves only to convince people who… — Jed McKenna Copy Share Image
“I don’t see it as my role to save or rescue anybody any more than regular people feel the need to rescue each other… — Jed McKenna Copy Share Image
“Before enlightenment I believed my ego was me, then enlightenment comes along and no more ego, only the underlying reality. Now it’s after enlightenment and this ego might be slightly uncomfortable or ill-fitting at times, but it’s all I’ve got. The idea that your ego is destroyed in the process of becoming enlightened is roughly correct, but it’s not complete.… — Jed McKenna Copy Share
“No disrespect to the Buddha is intended. If there was a Buddha and he was enlightened, then it’s Buddhism that insults his memory, not healthy skepticism. Blame the naked emperor’s retinue of lackeys and lickspittles, not the unbeguiled lad who merely states the obvious. Buddhism is arguably the most elevated of man’s great belief systems. If you want to enjoy… — Jed McKenna Copy Share
“Suffering just means you’re having a bad dream. Happiness means you’re having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether.” — Jed McKenna Copy Share Image
“There’s nothing left to contend against and nothing left that must be done, and there will never be anything that must be done ever… — Jed McKenna Copy Share Image
“How many years have I spent lighting incense and candles? Meditating? Chasing after gurus and teachers, reading all that crap, following every stupid new fad, reading every stupid new book? But now I see clearly, perfectly clearly, that all I was ever doing, all it was all about, was avoiding this. Avoiding me. I see it now, there’s only this.… — Jed McKenna Copy Share
“Once you start seeing this place for the madhouse it is, you can’t stop seeing it that way. It’s everywhere, everyone. It doesn’t make… — Jed McKenna Copy Share Image
“Further Whoever was responsible for the idea of dividing self into lower and higher parts committed a serious crime against humanity. This division has given rise to the notion that the lower (ego and immature) self must be overcome while the higher (unitive and whole) self must be sought as the goal of human realization. Out of ignorance, I… — Jed McKenna Copy Share
“The emperor has no clothes, and sooner or later everyone is going to see what’s staring them right in the face. When that happens, perhaps, there will be a major shift; a mass exodus away from the complexity and futility of all spiritual teachings. An exodus not outward toward Japan or India or Tibet, but inward, toward the self; toward… — Jed McKenna Copy Share
“The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the… — Jed McKenna Copy Share Image
