[10] Transcending Illusion: A Journey into the Nature of Reality

1:45AM Jan 5, 2024

Speakers:

Andrew Holecek

Keywords:

samsara

enlightenment

causality

light

dark

retreat

principles

emptiness

dream

qualities

carl jung

talk

world

process

luminosity

weeks

grasping

attain

happiness

practice

Many ideas that's why ego, right? You can't ever attain enlightenment like from from God says, You can't attend your own funeral. You just can't attend your own funeral. So first of all, you can't attain enlightenment because you already are enlightened. You will simply cease to be deluded, you can't attain it. Striving actually keeps you away. Let me say this again you cannot attain enlightenment you and enlightenment are mutually exclusive. By definition, you slash ego was anti enlightenment. So you can never attain enlightenment. It's impossible. Plus you can't attain it no matter what. You can't attain it you simply it's not a process of addition, attainment it's a process of negation cessation you're not attain enlightenment, you cease to be deluded processes on is that the apathetic way right the negativa neti neti negating the gating to gaming. Until we realize that enlightenment demands egolessness emptiness we will have one foot on the spiritual path leading to enlightenment and the other foots safely on the worldly path leading the other way. So this is what takes place in before we attain real renunciation. So the word for our renunciation and Tibetan uj is definite emergence. You're definitely emerged from samsara you finally given up hope for samsara. Oh, you know right now it's like oh, the next lover will make me happy. You know, the holiday lead turns out the next job will make me happy and the next house will make me happy. I thought my truck was going to make me happy it did for just a moment. I had to get rid of it now have an electric car. I got ionic five. Those are really cool. Electric cars are the way to go. So where was I digress? Yes, it's the process of cessation. Negation not addition, Meister Eckhart the soul grows by not by addition, but by subtraction. What happens when you die? What happens when you're aging? Look in the mirror, have you noticed? Subtraction, subtraction, subtraction, subtraction, I can move as fast as I could before. Right loss, loss loss, memory loss, sensory loss, cognitive loss, physical loss. This is This is nature's new Andrew nature's preliminary practice preparing you for the big letting go. Why not let go on your own terms. So definite renunciation is literally means definite emergence. You finally given up hope for samsara. I think it was too good. No, no, no, sorry. No, no, this was checking him. Rinpoche says if you really really get me Nazi ation in your heart 50% You're halfway there. 50% of the path to enlightenment is complete when you finally have true renunciation. Why? Because you finally definitively turned your mind and heart in the right direction within until that happens, it's just like, oh, the next thing you'll get let's just try one more time. Oh, one more time, please. I know it's gonna work. It's like my dog. Right? Right. Oh, if I go to this perfect spot over here, it's gonna be a little bit better than than a perfect spot over there and then I can do my business. Like I look at my dog, my dogs a little teacher, or dogs looking for the perfect place to do his business. And I realized oh my goodness is just like us looking in samsara. Right? Oh, that spot here is gonna be just a little bit better, right? Oh, maybe that one over there. It's like, you know, moving deck chairs around on the Titanic. All going down. Doesn't matter. You know what view you have on the deck. Nobody's getting out of this alive. It's just hysterical. Right? This whole thing is just hysterical. Sorry. No one's getting out of this alive oh my god cracking myself up today we decisively. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, so why not? So you shouldn't finally realize the futility of the worldly path. We decide to pay both placed both feet heading in the same direction on the spiritual path. Until then, it's an inner tug of war. One day we sustain hope that samsara will make us happy and the next day we realize that only the spiritual path leads to happiness. Okay, so here's another one. Jesus, this is gonna be a record. I'm gonna get through one page today, but that's okay. So, happiness is just basically we're longing for enlightenment, non recognized. When we come into form, there's this tension that takes place. It's like It's like extending it's like this protrusion, this extension. It's like a rubber band. Protect projector projecting into form into body. And so this tension is created when that is kind of radiated, projected, stressed, and then that tension basically sits unresolved in the center of our being. Everybody, everybody feels it. They don't know what it is. They don't know what to do with it. When it's unconscious unrecognized, this manifests as the search for happiness. You feel the tension, something's missing. So what do you do you consume you eat? You're doing the absolute opposite thing you want to purge so why plant medicines make you purge. So this is what's also killing a planet. So if you if you don't think this has traction and the world is on fire, you're coming to the fundamental basis of all the world the meta crisis comes down to this. This is not a patronizing statement. The meta crisis comes down to these principles because everything is an epigenetic iterative fractal application, using principles of self similarity, universality, everything is reducible to these fundamental principles. So you take these teachings that can seem like Oh, whatever, you know, this is kind of interesting philosophy. Heck, no, man. This has more explanatory power than anything you'll ever come down to promise you. So you take things down to this heart essence. You fundamentally solve everything because what are you doing? You're coming down you're healing fracture after fracture after fracture after fracture. Distraction after distraction. After distraction. You're healing all of that to the fundamental primordial distraction, which is the self sense and duality. You heal that everything is healed. My friend David Lloyd says in his marvelous book non duality, basically, philosophy arose to solve the problems of duality. You put you solve the problem of duality you solve every problem in samsara and so that's why this stuff is so dense, so condensed because this is the ninja jig, the singularity, the heart essence of the whole bloody shebang. no small thing. Oh, yes. So when that force is unrecognized, that's the relative conventional pursuit of happiness. I'm going to resolve this tension by acquiring well you don't you don't resolve the tension by acquiring if you take a very close look at the moment of happiness. You're not happy when you get what you want. You're happy when you stop wanting. Think about that. We confuse the satisfaction of want with this temporary desire. You don't think this has power. You don't think this is going to crash the samsaric economy? It's a process happiness is a phenomenology of subtraction, you've just gotten rid of desire. Think about that. You're never happy when you get what you want. You're simply happy because you've temporarily stopped wanting. You haven't acquired anything. It's the phenomenology of cessation, negation, letting go. So well that drive is percolating underneath. It's unrecognized. That's the conventional pursuit of happiness, which is killing the planet average American consumes 200 times the world's average of natural resources. Driven by this misunderstanding you don't think this has power? When this process becomes conscious now it's no longer the unconscious desire for happiness. Now it's this conscious desire for enlightenment. Enlightenment is the same process now it's happening consciously instead of unconsciously because you know, WTF what you're doing. save yourself a ton of time and trouble and heartache. Because now you know what you're really doing. One day we sustain hope that samsara will make us happy the next day, we realize only the spiritual path leads to happiness. You want to get to this sooner rather than later. Because otherwise you're just going to continue to torture yourself in the hamster cage. That is samsara literally. So samsara means the cyclers the recyclers wandering in a hamster cage, spinning around samsara, thinking that the next cycle the next moment, the next day, the next life is going to make me happy. Yet the formless meditations prepare for liberation at the level of the Dharmakaya they give birth to the child luminosity and nurture or recognition so that the child grows up to recognize this moment mother at death, the Maha Mudra the great teachings of the cargo tradition trip from Nima, tradition, luminosity yoga, the completion phase of deity yoga, the emptiness of the proximal paramita, suitors, and majolica are some of the ways we become familiar with the Dharmakaya during life. Well, this is a record I got through one page at this point. We're not going to get through this before I died, but anyway, that's okay. All right. I'm done flapping my lips. Any questions or comments?

Sorry about the slightly manic presentation but I've been on this kind of semi roll for the last six weeks and I just can't control it. And which is okay, I'm just going for the ride. I'm not I'm not even going to try. It's just kind of cool. So anyway, questions, comments. You can put something in the chat column. I'll take a look here. You can raise your hand you know how this works. Okay, yes, blinded by the light. Being in the womb. Yes, Mary. I write a woman with a view. But actually, it's a woman with no view. Yes, being in the womb with the best view of women with no view not seeing is the best thing. So it's a one with no view. That's the best view. If we were the dark masked for an hour, is it considered a dark retreat or we need to be in an actual dark room? Well, you know, it depends on how you define Emory. On one level, sure, you can say closing your eyes for four seconds is a temporary retreat right? Retreat is just a matter of degree. So this is one of the really cool things about dark practice on like psychedelics, you know, psychedelics and other things. You have this whole issue of integration. Well, how you can integrate this practice every time you close your eyes. You enter a mini dark retreat every night when you go to sleep. So really, if you're talking about retreat is a phenomena across scales and grades 100% Moment to moment. You know, leggins ocean, short sessions repeated often. Were otherwise where would you define a retreat one day, two days a week. To me, it's doesn't matter. So retreat principles, word counts here. So technically, yeah. Maybe the periods to say you haven't for a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I don't really care about that sort of thing. If you're going to retreat away from the display, you can kind of withdraw like deepest possible inner work. You can do that every time you blink your eyes. So this is another reason I really liked the dark retreat principle. Because you can integrate it sustain it constantly. Every time you close your eyes, you can recapture that space that that scent so to speak, and stabilize it that way. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. Yes, blinded by the light or homies you have no idea how far this goes my friend. How much right I think I keep mispronouncing your wonderful name. I apologize. Yes, this goes this goes down to such a deep level you have no idea. You know, perhaps if you haven't read my book, dreams of light, I talked the entire second. Part two of this book is all about this that fundamentally, in the most ironic paradoxical, painful way. We're blinded by the light we're blinded by the light of the mind. And check this out. Remember earlier check this out. Earlier I said that in Buddhist tradition, emptiness darkness is feminine. Well guess what light is lights masculine patriarchal guess what's happening in this world today. Have you noticed too much patriarchal energy, too much runaway male energy. This is a this is a patriarchal problem when you is basically the world is made of frozen light. The physicists will tell you this, but they won't tell you David Boehm kind of got close but not quite no cigar. It's the reified light of the mind itself. That's what that's what this phenomenal world is. Light is appearance. We reify the principles we reified the light, that's what you'll meet on the other side. By the way, when you die, and you go to the other side, everything's flipped. Instead of seeing the sun you see the qualities of warmth and love. Instead of seeing the earth you feel the quality of stability. You again is in quotation marks. So all the elements that constitute the fundamental five Buddha families, this is what happens on the other side, when you die. All the reified light melts back into the fundamental symbolic principles of which they are reified expressions of and therefore you see the fully de reified, symbolic nature of reality, just like in a dream. I mean, how beautiful is that? So honey, again, I apologize and keep mispronouncing your name. Second part of my book, dreams of light is all about this and also the very last section in my first book, power in the pain. I have two or three chapters on this principle. Were fundamentally as you say, 100% Spot on were blinded by the light of our own mind, which is a runaway schism a genesis of reified light. When the young deities Samantabhadra some of the boundary represent luminosity and emptiness when they go to divorce court. And they enter this primordial divorce. Right. So monta Badri jumps off the lap of some of the Bhadra or vice versa. What happens is, light goes into runaway, the light becomes frozen too much patriarchal energy, that energy dominates the world. You don't think that's happening? Right? Like, look who's running this world? Right down the effing toilet, too. Much male energy, runaway patriarchal energy. It has a deep epistemological and ontological basis using these principles of reified frozen light. This stuff is beyond profound. So this is why you go into depth or into the dark to reify I'm sorry to de reify the light to melt the light, okay, for Mariana from Zen koan, when in the dark, darkened further, yes, that's beautiful. That's Yes, I know what you call on you're talking about. Yes. Beautiful. Thank you. Okay, what else we got here? Some of these are quite cute. Thank you, especially for the info biotech retreats. Oh, you're welcome. What is the best approach to see through the illusion of causality? Oh, my gosh, from das What a great question, my friend. Read. I'm reading it. Literally before I came down here. It's why it was two minutes late. Read Carl Jung's work on synchronicity which is an a causal connecting principle. You do not have to you can have horizontal and vertical axes of so called causality. You can have a non causal causality. It's called synchronicity and the extraordinary genius of Carl Jung, and in conjunction with a Nobel Laureate, physicist Wolfgang Pauli saw this is what this is. Another way to talk about phenomena arising is a causal principles of synchronicity. So what is the best way to see through the illusion of causality well, on a conventional level read, I can't remember. I have it upstairs. I literally was reading it before I came down here. Carl Jung short 150 to 115 page book on synchronicity. I recommend you start with that. But if you really want to cut through causality, why not? Why not cut through the unholy trinity of space time and causality? They're all constructs. They're all basically, they're not the scaffolding of reality. They're constructs of reality. And so you can pull away the scaffolding. You can deconstruct these axioms, axioms, they're not axioms, they're constructs. By doing really deep spiritual practice, than you see for yourself that causality is non existent. There is no now. Actually, no, I take that back, not my bed. provisionally there is there isn't that now but there's no past there's no future we think provisionally there's this thing called the present moment, but that doesn't even exist. You can say quote unquote, that there is only the now there's no time. So if there's no time, there's no future. And if death is something that's coming in the future death can't come in the future because there was no future and so therefore death doesn't exist. This is this. Is this true? I mean, like I'm telling you, man death doesn't exist. Space doesn't exist. Time doesn't exist. Causality doesn't exist relatively for sure. Relativity. You exist. Absolutely. No. In fact, if you want to know if you're in samsara, you want to have the dream sign that you're still asleep in samsara, you experience a world of space time, causality, you're dreaming. You experience a world of inside and outside self another. You're dreaming. So Deep Dream Yoga will get you here around us. You know, the work of Carl Jung will help for sure his work with Wolfgang Pauli. Really, really super interesting things about vertical axes of causality. But basically, deep deep meditation will help you deconstruct all these and see that they are in fact all constructs they arise, recall emerge, with a self sense. Heidegger I think Heidegger talked about this as being time being comes into existence, time comes into existence with it, but time is not the scaffolding. Space is not the scaffolding to construct. How does life review financial the borrower experience? Yes, it'll come into play and the fourth stage of the outer dissolution. So it does come in they don't talk a lot about it. But you can extrapolate that it takes place in the fourth of the five stages of the outer dissolution. Often Christian is interesting to think about the dark in the womb. Hey, how might that be connected with the darker deck? Yeah, it's a womb right? That the tomb turns into a warm so you go, you go into the dark to die. You can't have death without birth, they call emerge, that you can't define one without the other.

So how might that connect with the darkness of death? Well, super similar. They're all you know, when you're talking about death. I'm sorry. When you talk about darkness, which I guess includes death. You're talking about origins. You're talking about origins. Everything germinates in the dark even in the book of Genesis. You know, darkness precedes light. Star numbers conjecture, they don't know for sure that the universe was dark before it became light, who knows. But a number of traditions talk about the you know, the genesis of reality is nocturnal in that sense. So it definitely connects to the darkness of death and that this is such a big topic, Kristen, if you have something else to say about it. Please come on. Is there a problem with wanting too much to become enlightened? Yes, there is. Like grasping trying too hard, where you get in your own way. 100% Trungpa Rinpoche said at the highest level striving itself is the obstacle. So yes, we need to or at least that helps to make aspirations. But otherwise, exactly. Yours. You're saying if you're grasping, it's just a golden chain. Now you're grasping after enlightenment. This is why you have to self liberate even all the antidotes. You can't even grasp after this. That's why they talk about the emptiness of emptiness, right? So everybody says, Oh, I haven't been necessary. I gotta get the emptiness. You know, let's say everything's emptiness. Well, then what happens is the reifying tendencies that you refer to even emptiness. So that's why they talk about the ultimate antidote is the emptiness of emptiness. I mean, like, screw you like, what, what, like, what do I do now? Well, nothing. That's the whole point. You can't hang your non hat your non head on to nothing. So we have the aspiration is helpful cultivate it. But if you start grasping for it, it backfires. Because if you grasp after anything, you're still grasping, and that by definition is samsara. So for sure, we make other and this is the difference between the causal and the fruition of vehicle so the causal vehicles are about creating enough merit the first two paths on the five paths, path of accumulation and a path of juncture. cumulating gathering and conventional ways you could say I wouldn't say grasping but you get the idea accumulating, accumulating. Well, eventually you bring that merit to the to the cosmic cashier counter, you cash it in. The marathon has cashed in into wisdom, Mara transforms into wisdom. And then at that point, you realize, hey, wait a second, that's no longer a causal vehicle. Now it's the fruition vehicle. Now the issue becomes one of more and more what relaxation, more and more openness more and more release. So this is where it's helpful to understand the two vectors of the spiritual path the relative vector of acquiring accumulating acquisition paths one and two, but eventually paths three the third path path the saying says no, not even that. Then everything after that is release letting go letting go letting go. So yes, wanting to become enlightened can definitely become a problem. Oh my gosh, can you say more about everything being symbols qualities? Yes. This is a big one. This is so cool. You know, this is also the work of Carl Jung. Robert moss to certain extent Bernardo kastrup. Little bit is that this is a dream. This is a dream. There are no reified objects anywhere. Everything is just the symbolic play Mahamudra great symbol and this language. This is all basically reified, symbolic. Expression, principles, qualities, that's all there exists. I mean, what is the principle Can you can you hang your head on it? No. Can you hang your head on a quality or characteristic? No, that's all the wrist. Even those are basically reified expressions of the life of the mind, but fundamentally Milarepa and that Milarepa Mikio Dorji phenomena are all the books one needs if you knew if you learn how to read the sign language of reality, though the Cairo Mansi, interpreting this as a dream, you realize the principles of symbolic guru. This is a dream, always communicating with you not in some like Charles Manson. Let's play let you know the Beatles backwards kind of thing. But the world is always teaching. The world is always symbolically representing Earth is a symbol of the qualities of mind water is a symbol of the qualities of mind space fire the five fundamental elements are all elemental qualities. They then become the five Buddha families, then the entire manifest world becomes an expression of symbolic iteration and expression of these fundamental principles. And so therefore, if you develop a very sensitive reading of your world, your world you don't need a teacher man. This is the third of the four Gore's Your world is your guru. Your world will tell you through Hey, guess what? Synchronicity, through coincidence, through dreams through visions, your world is always communicating with you. It's alive, vibrant teaching you don't want to get you anthropomorphic and saying, oh, it's all about teaching me. No, it couldn't care less about you on that level. So don't think it's just all it's all about me again, the Charles Manson thing? No. It's just fundamentally everything. That's all there is. Are these qualities. These are our ancestors. This is who we really are. This is what the phenomenal world is. And so when you open your world to this way, Robert moss speaks about it beautifully and Carl Jung exquisitely read your world as if it was a dream. Read your life right now. Look back over your life. Wake up right now and say boy, this has been a hell of a dream. I've been in this dream for 60 years or whatever. I wonder what this dream means. This world is full and saturated with meaning. It's constantly alive breathing, communicating full of meaning and symbol. This is the great symbol and if you learn how to read it, you don't need a teacher. Your world is your teacher. Right? So read the work of Carl Jung read the world the work of Robert moss. He has several books on this topic really quite lovely. And there are ways you can actually cultivate this are exercises you can do informed by this view where you start to read and interpret this world as a dream. It becomes really quite magical. But one really interesting thing you have to centrifuge out you have to find the middle way. Right because what is the extreme of interpretation and meaning paranoia, paranoia, what is paranoia? Excessive meaning? So you have to be careful, it's Oh, geez, you know, that means this ah, this is where you have to really understand how to read the sign language. First thought best thought you have to get that first hit and let it go because otherwise what happens is the ego doctors come in and they start to edit it. Oh, this is what it means in relation to me. No, no. So this is a really wonderful, big topic, Susan. I think really, Robert moss writes about it quite beautifully in a number of his books. I think you have an entire book on cartomancy. This is not Cairo says in terms of hand palm reading this is Kairos with a que is in the Greek messenger of God. But this is a this is a big deal thing. I mean, reading your reality as if it was a dream it's a beautiful thing. Okay, a couple more and then it's time for me to go eat a greatly enjoying Bruce's book already. It's a little masterpiece. I love it too. It's also beneficial to work with psychological issues. 100% alongside Bartow yoga, I could not agree with you more James. Bruce is a really good friend of mine. I checked out I did a podcast with him on Azure mind. You could look at it he used to live half hour for me we hang out together. He was my therapist until he realized I was unworkable. And then he fired me as a client. I'm kidding. He didn't fire me but he actually was my therapist. I loved him. Because he was so cutting. This guy was like Manjushri I mean you work with him. And he'd sit there and his blade would come down and just flop. And a lot of people didn't like it I stopped actually stopped referring to him. Because they come back to me and say this guy's a butcher. Well, he butchers your neurosis. He butches your projections and I loved him for that. I would go in there and he would shred me. And I just loved it because I'm a masochist. But I'm a huge fan of Bruce Tufte. He's really really, really bright guy and a wonderful man wonderful friend. Would you recommend incorporating closing your eyes as dark practice during shamatha? A? Will yes or no. I mean, this is again, I'm just about I'm just saying a few dilettante comments about a practice that I'm writing a massive book on right now. Like what is dark practice? What's the difference between Sutra and Tantra? How do you do it? What do you not do? One thing you have to be a little bit careful of is starting to kind of like do the salad bar thing. So this is a really great question. I'm not quite sure where to run with it because there's just so much to say. I would recommend at this point if you're doing your shamatha just do your shamatha don't don't mess it up. Part of the strength of these practices is being pure and true to the practice. However, I will say this, when you do dark practice, you will find all these practices coming to bear and they all have deep applicability. That's why I refer to it as a meta meditation. Right? My little thing, whatever you can do, I can do meta. Or whatever

you can do, I can do meta. So this is a meta meditation meta meaning beyond or after. It's an after hours meditation. It's beyond the normal meditation. It really, really is a type of metta meditation, but we have to be a little careful about metta and in these other kind of pejorative senses, but for now, Beth I would just keep it super simple. If you're doing your Shama to just do your shamatha. If you find you're starting to be interested in playing with some of this dark stuff, and again, I'm trying to write some stuff to help people with that. Then there are kinds of sets of, I wouldn't say criteria, but guidelines for what to do and when and so I realized it's a bit disingenuous for me to throw this out without completely unpacking it. But I think you can tell pretty big topic up and there's only so much I can say for now. Okay, last one, I realized that nothing is set in the Bardo. Correct. But truth The only thing that's set in the Bardo is truth. Reality. That's what the Dharmakaya is literally body of truth. That's the only thing that said. But in general, do you have to have reached the path of seeing or direct realization to be able to recognize the ground luminosity and have the Bardo Adama TA? Yes. Yeah. You will experience it. That's called phenomenal consciousness. Everybody's going to experience it. But there's a difference between phenomenal consciousness and Access Consciousness. We experienced it every night. Deep dreamless sleep. We, we but we don't access it. We can't recall it. It's everybody will experience it, but few will recognize it. Why? Because they're not familiar with it. How do you expect to find let alone recognize something of the darkness of death that you haven't ever met and recognize in the full light of day, it's not going to happen? That's what they say. So this is where you put the fear of karma into good, healthy, wholesome fear. To get to the point where you can make this recognition you can gain this level of familiarity. And then once it's pointed out and you gain that stability, you're going to say, God, is it really this easy? The trick is it's not hard. That's the kicker. You think it's so hard No. It's the easiest thing in the world. That's what makes it so hard. Because there's nothing but the Dharmakaya there's nothing but the Dharma talk. We don't believe it. is hiding in plain sight. So more about that later. Guess again, more about all this later. There's only so much time and we are running out of time even though it doesn't exist. Okay, me the dark be with you. Yes. I love it. May the dark be with you? Yes. So yeah, come back next next offering in my dark Trek series. Oh my gosh, where I do my dark retreats. They offer nitrous over lunch. And so what happens is, you know, it's not just merely the effect of all my dark retreat practice. It's the nitrous oxide that lasts for weeks and months afterwards. Just kidding. Hey, much love to you. Remember, if what we're doing here is not a benefit to the world. It's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. You want to accelerate your path. Don't do it for yourself. Practice for the benefit of others. It's the way to put the metal to the pedal, pedal to the metal. So to whatever extent dedication or merit means something to you gather it. Send it all out. Oh, Stephanie, I wanted to say hi. Hi, Steph. I hope things are okay. I noticed a nice note from you. I'll be back in two weeks. Otherwise we have the usual events I think we have right we have the dream sharing group right Marianne, put your thumb up. Yes. So I'm on Saturday with Marianne who's wonderful. The drain Sangha. Come hang with her. She's just the best. We have. You know, next week. I think it's Jeffrey on Monday nights. I'm pretty sure. And then I'm actually going next week. I'll be back in two weeks to continue this adventure and maybe we'll get past one more page or not. Who knows? I'd rather not rush I'd rather take my time to have a more a little bit more fun and get into the guts of this stuff because this is really where the juices so thank you everybody. See you in a couple of weeks. Touch out