The Map to Awakening (Part 1 of 4)

Part 1: First, You Need the Map! In this full talk, the "Map to Awakening" metaphor is a journey from west to east—in this case Kyoto to Tokyo—with the arrival point being the awakened state.  --- "The awakened consciousness is THE evolutionary step for humanity in total. The destination for the human species is awakening." -- Doug Duncan Sensei "You're going to be seeing more people awaken more speedily and more easily than ever before in history." "The absolute bottom-line fear, the main issue, for every human being throughout their life is the fear of disappearing, which is equated to mental illness. After all, mental illness is a real possibility. You see people fracturing and falling apart regularly and you're going to see more and more of it. Being "in control" is a way of managing the fear, of keeping you from mental illness. The idea of giving up control triggers the fear of losing a sense of who you are. It's a fear of disappearing, of being absorbed. The closest understanding we have of that is the fear of mental illness, where you're no longer compos mentis; you're no longer sane." "Will meditation drive you crazy? No, life drives you crazy. Meditation shows you that life is crazy. If you don't meditate you can assume that life is normal, but the minute you start meditating, life looks pretty crazy." "In terms of the awakening experience, you have to meet these fears of being out of control, of being crazy, of losing your identity. Because that's how the ego has projected the awakening experience back onto itself as the reason for not doing it. Don't think you can't do it (awaken), because the depth of your being knows you can. The depth of your being is prepared for it. The organism knows that this is part of the potential program. Your brain, your body, your organism as a human being knows it has the capability and the possibility for awakening." "In most conventional ways when we say I love somebody, it means 'I can control them' or 'I can manipulate them' or 'I'm with her/him because I like being controlled by her/him'; 'I like the way she/he controls me, I like way she/he manipulates me'. And this is what we call love. Because love is usually a deal--a deal about your ego and their ego being able to dance to similar music. And it's not a bad thing. I'm not putting this down at any level. But that deal doesn't lead to awakening. Having said that, you can still be married and have a family and be awakened, but you can't set up family and profession and kids as a false destination. You've got to bring them toward awakening; it doesn't work the other way around." http://www.planetdharma.com/