The most important thing in my life, in anyone's life, is the state of our mind. But sometimes people can easily spend as much as half their waking hours in a vaguely mind-wandering, daydreaming, out-of it, zoned out, zombie state of mind.For thousands of years people have been finding ways to enlighten their minds in their lives.
This book shows you how to enlighten your mind by using any of a few simple mental gestures, and most important: YOU DON'T HAVE TO MEDITATE. There is no need for long and tedious 'practice,' where you sit silently trying to jerk your mind into an unnatural contorted position, and then keep dragging it back into that position when it quite naturally revolts against it.
You don't need a teacher or a guru or to carve out a special time or go to a special place or do any repetitive activity or spiritual 'exercise' or engage in any intentional discriminating reflection or apply any rule of moral conduct or take the least trouble to do 'good.'
This book not only explains what enlightenment means but most importantly it describes exactly how to do any of 7 simple mental gestures, any one of which brings you awake at once and any one of which you can test out for yourself. I want to be clear: you can test them out right away right now and see that they work immediately.
Enlightenment is the same thing as full awakeness, full consciousness, high consciousness.
What it feels like: State of immediate presence; Simple feeling of being, Sparkling awareness.
Who is doing this: There is an intensified feeling that You Are There; You are seeing things from Inside Your Perspective, which you carry around with you always; I-am-ness.
The 7 mental gestures are from the 21st century (1) , 20th century (3), 7th century (1), 6th century (1) CE, and 5th century (1) BCE, with supporting material from all the centuries between. They were created in France (1), China (1), Tibet (1), India (1), and the US (3), with supporting material from all over.
All that is in Section 1 - GETTING THERE RIGHT-AWAY NOW. Section 2 - THE BABY ON THE BATTLEFIELD - explains how to easily prevent the hostile army of your own negative thoughts from kidnapping you and carrying you away; Section 3 - BEING HERE RIGHT-AWAY NOW- enumerates the rewards and benefits, and Section 4 - YOU CAN GO WHEREVER YOU WANT! - points you towards deciding for yourself what you want to do next in your life, taking along your always-available enlightened mind.
You might well ask: Why weren't we told about this before? The reason is that although this has been well known since the beginning, the idea of enlightenment has been taken over by institutions, which become encrusted with not only property and buildings and treasure but also hordes of personnel, who write vast libraries of scriptures, and those employees have to keep their customers occupied and get them to commit themselves and their resources, so they create an immense body of rituals. Meditations are such rituals.
There are already hundreds of meditation rituals, and more are being created all the time, as you can find on the internet. You can well ask yourself: If any of these were effective, why would we have to keep creating hundreds of new ones? Suppose a doctor said, "Oh yes, we can treat this disease; in fact, we have hundreds of treatments for it." Wouldn't you wonder why so many treatments would be needed if any of them were effective?
This book cuts through the mumbo-jumbo and gives it to you straight. A quote from Buddha: "Enlightened on their own...In this whole world, there is no one except myself equal to those enlightened on their own...These attain insight alone...fully and perfectly enlightened all by themselves! ..illuminators of the world, shining like pure solid gold, undoubtedly worthy of any gifts in this world."
Bruce K. Britton, an award winning professor of Cognitive Psychology, sat for 2500 hours of formal silent meditation, and concluded that the experience of enlightenment is best found not in formal meditation but instead on your own. Seven self enlightenment methods are detailed in this lucid and lively book.
