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#2877 -
The Nondual
Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
One: Essential Writings
on Nonduality: http://nonduality.com/one.htm
Jed McKenna
has a new book out, Spiritual Warfare. It
is more extreme and demanding than his previous books. Jed
creates a world of concepts through which the theme of death
plays out in zero tolerance fashion. Everyone from your
favorite legendary guru to your local nonduality guru and
author, is Jed's target. YOU are his target. Target for what? For
his declaration that you are unawake. How to awaken? Through
death, metaphorically, and possibly literally.
Here's an excerpt that
shows the kind of considerations in this book and how he views
the place his readers are coming from. He assumes that you the
reader are afraid of death, so Jed is going to take you by the
hand like your father and show you that from his adult point of
view death is not what you think it may be. The following is
about suicide, and as Jed says below, "We're not talking
about the commission of the act, but only the honest
contemplation of it." Please read the
preceding quotation ten times before continuing.
---------------------
It's clear that for most
or all of them, this is a distinctly taboo subject, a roped-off
area into which their thoughts seldom wander. They equate suicide
with misery and failure and cowardice; the act of moody teenagers
and the weak and the ill. They view self-termination as an
absolutely, positively last resort, and maybe not even then,
whereas I, an eyes-open being, might view it as a third or fourth
resort. I don't think I'd stick my head in the oven to get out of
a speeding ticket, but I might do it to get out of a wheelchair
or a year in jail or a bad case of the hiccups. It wouldn't,
however, be based on a decision so much as an observation. Things
come into a certain alignment, patterns emerge, rightness is
perceived, and the clearly indicated course is followed. I've
never not done something once I saw that it was the
thing to do, and that includes much harder things than suicide.
Despite not being a bushido warrior kinda guy, I do have a clear
and abiding awareness that today is a perfectly good day to die.
"Only that day
dawns to which we are awake."
If this seems like
a light treatment of a heavy subject, it's because from the
integrated perspective, it's not so dark and dreary. There's no
evil stink to death when it's out in the open where we can see it
and hold it steadily in our sight. This is what it means to
befriend death, to embrace it; that we acknowledge its importance
in our lives, not that we get to like it or look forward to it or
develop some creepy resonance with it. The primary benefit of
this honest relationship is the way in which it throws life open
to us, but also important is the way it de-horrifies the spectre
of death.
We're not talking about
the commission of the act, but only the honest contemplation of
it. The question of suicide -- to be, or not to be -- is at the
very heart of philosophical inquiry, but Maya has rendered it
virtually unthinkable with a logjam of highly charged
counter-beliefs; we have no right to terminate our own lives
because life is sacred, it's an unpardonable sin and an
abomination against God, it's a cowardly act and a cheat,
whatever life lessons we escape now we'll just have to experience
in the next life, and so on.
Rather than being unthinkable,
however, suicide should be supremely thinkable. It is the thing
that most needs thinking about. At the very least, we would want
to break the logjam and make some decisions about it for
ourselves. If you want to have some fun with Spiritual Autolysis,
begin with the question: Why shouldn't I kill myself right now?
-----------
Spiritual Warfare,
by Jed McKenna