Spiritual Autolysis Journal 9/26/07

I've still got more of _Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment_ to complete, so writing this journal entry might be premature, but I wanted to say a few things while I'm thinking about the spiritual autolysis process.

The difficulty I was having is that I simply did not know how to begin. I know, where better to begin than the very beginning?

I wonder, though, how can one become enlightened just by writing things down in a journal? Maybe he just meant that it is only a step towards enlightenment. If so, will he give us the rest of the steps?

I was reading about Richard Rose's realization experience yesterday, as it was recommended to me by J. Some have theorized that Richard Rose is Jed McKenna. I do not think this is possible. Jed's books started to be published in 2003 and 2004. Rose, at that point, already had alzheimer's disease, and had already been in the nursing home since 1997. Also, Jed states in his first book, briefly, that he is 40 years old. In 2003 and 2004, Rose was already 86 or 87. And I don't think Rose would be jumping out of airplanes at that advanced age! In any case, Rose died in 2005, and I have a strange feeling that Jed is out there this very moment, pretending to be Jed.

All this that I have just typed above is my ego struggling. I was meaning to start my spiritual autolysis journal. As you have no doubt noticed, I got distracted by another subject and became side-tracked.

So, what do I know to be true? I can only start by speaking about the things that I once thought true. I am unsure about the truth of many of these things, now. I thought I was a human, disconnected from the rest of the world and alone. Now I believe that my human-ness is really just a hologram, or a shell for my ego. It's like everything that was once held within my skin has disappeared, and now the empty loose skin is laying piled on the floor. Only, there really isn't even any skin. There is nothing. Also, I do not any longer believe that I am disconnected from the rest of the world, nor that I am alone. I've thought about Oneness since I took my religions of the east course in college back in the fall of 2001. It started with Buddhism and Hinduism. From that point, I was hooked. My professor planted the seed, and that seed began to grow like a vine. I went from simply taking a course to fulfill my elective requirements to being consumed by the need to become enlightened or to know truth. When I learned about the Buddhists' beliefs and the Hindus' beliefs, I felt in my heart that everything was really One. I remember sitting in the classroom, and looking at the other students I thought to myself, "Wow, this is awesome. All these people are really parts of myself."

Since that course, I've delved into many philosophical and spiritual topics, going from one phase to the next, trying to find what felt right to me. I went into the New Age, and also started trying to practice mysticism or to have mystical experiences, like astral projection and out-of-body experiences. In other words, I got off-track as usual. Don't get me wrong, I'd really like to experience these and many other mystical things, but I want to bring my focus to enlightenment, first. Once enlightened, I want to play around. Truth be told, I hope that the playing becomes easier once one is enlightened, because it certainly is not easy for me to project astrally.

Argh... there I go again, rambling, trying to avoid the task at hand. Perhaps a good place for me to start would be to state the things that I know are not true? Just to get them out of the way, sweep them under the rug for now, maybe examine further in the future. Well, for one, I am not an insect. Now THAT I know to be true. What else? I am not the clothes that I wear. I am not my mother or father. I am not my job.

And right now, this moment, what seems to be true? I am sitting in a chair; I can feel it beneath my bum, I can feel my feet upon the legs. I am typing this on a computer; I can feel the keyboard beneath my fingertips, and can see the screen in front of me, the cursor moving from left to right as the words appear. I just cleared my throat, and blinked my eyes. I'm breathing air.

What do you think? Is this a good place to start? Is it time to start examining these things? I feel like I already know, intellectually, where all this is going. It's, somehow, going to end up at only "I am." As I said before, the only thing I know 100% for sure, is that I am aware and conscious. I can't prove that this keyboard is real, because I am not aware as the keyboard. I can't prove my sister is real, because I can't be aware as her. She can swear up and down that she exists, but that is not proof. There is nothing besides myself that I can be aware as. In other words, I can not see out their eyes, or think their thoughts, or feel the seat beneath them.

OK, time out for now. I think this is plenty for the first try. I'll wait and see what you all think about this.