The mistake of Buddha

The Buddha first pursues esoteric yogic practices. It results in advanced states of consciousness. 

This produces no Enlightenment. 

The Buddha then turns to extreme negation whereby everything pertaining to being human, including thoughts, emotions and even nurturing his body is eliminated to remove its filtering effect on the clear presence of reality. He makes a quintessential oversight, believing reality to be different from any of its parts, in this case being fully human. 

Therefore no Enlightenment occurs.

Realizing that neither manipulating consciousness nor fighting against one’s human aspects will achieve reality, the Buddha gives up interest in techniques that modify experience and instead moves toward the actual experience presenting itself.

He accepts a simple gift of rice pudding, its rich taste symbolizing this move back towards life and embracing its full range of experience.

This is true or pure Buddhism, the way the Buddha experienced it. 

It is the direct path to simple and absolute reality. The reality that includes your psychology and preferences; your life - both pleasant and unpleasant, and the full stratum of consciousness delineated neither by time, nor space, or even the existence of personal shadows and ego. Reality makes no distinction between any of these parts, whether divine or wretchedly marked by our sometimes ignoble struggle. Reality awaits that all be a total part, fore there is no such thing as partial Enlightenment. With the direct path you will find reality with a very small step, inside the tormented mental state, not void of it. It is much easier than finding reality from within sublime meditative states.

The process is uncomplicated and without philosophical framework. It allows your life to continue according to its own preferences, joys and ailments, unaffected by morals and contradictions, free from the inherent chafing of conflicting parts. 

Luckily, there is no need for spiritual expression; no lame “namaste” to tame human interaction, no need for a spiritual community to balance the echo of your single self, no Tibetan artifacts in your bookshelf or bumper stickers on your electric car - not even a meditation routine is particularly needed. Meditation without Enlightened guidance is almost always conducted to pivot and alter your state of mind, mistaking real conscious progression with entrenchment in a loftiness. If you are not feeling more of your human state and becoming human, you are doing meditation wrong. Then it is better to drop it entirely. And if you insist on spiritual expression, put a Buddha sticker on your Smith & Wesson. I bet both Wesson, Buddha, and Smith would have appreciated the gesture, lending a nice vibe to a tool sometimes used under horrible circumstances and giving the Buddha some much appreciated hype. 

In the end, there is only your experience and the extent of your willingness to consciously transform. Whatever your life experience is - is a most suitable position. However many hours you have meditated or not, is equally right. What you know and have learned so far, of little real import more than your courage to disentangle from it. This is the path to reality - simpler and more humble than what you have so far gleaned from spiritual books and teachers. You don’t make progress - you are the party that pays for progress, with the idea of your self.

The process naturally encompasses form, because form is reality. It approaches any sort of life expression, because life is reality. The process places no great emphasis on authority or teachings, rather returns you to yourself and your very own experience. But make no mistake: you will need a benefactor who guides you, because the inner process is impossible to navigate on ones’s own. A text like the one you are reading is by no means sufficient, more than as a primer. A significant amount of conscious support from an Enlightened benefactor is vital to succeed. Rarely was there any other way. Yet it is in your own life it all expresses and where your focus belongs, not on a teaching, a teacher, or even on the goal of Enlightenment. Therefore, meet with genuine care your inner shadows and surrender with profound dedication to the direct guidance of the Enlightened, yet without ever compromising the expression of your personal life. 

Enlightenment is the ultimate aspiration and the only desire that resolves the human experience, setting it clear beyond the mental and emotional gray scales of the world. Enlightenment does not diminish the notion of the “I”, the ego, and all other personal references - it makes all aspects holy by recognizing what they are; brilliant creations, diamonds in the open, ready for embodiment. All this is both near and afar; near when your need for it permeates you and you have found guidance from an Enlightened source. Afar when your own machinations trap you in useless practices and perspectives, fueled by unknowing gurus, of which most are. 

An Enlightened benefactor is a rare occurrence and the thriving spiritual market place sports exceedingly few. Your discernment and sense for authenticity must wake up from rosy spiritual imagery to distinguish real inner efficacy, allowing you to avail yourself of the arrow that pierces, not merely glances.

To that end I avail myself to you. 

I invite you to contact me and make use of my achievement the way you most of all need. Rest assured, I am just like you, a fool whom to his character perhaps best impersonates the principle of two step forward and one, not seldom two, steps backwards. Nevertheless, out of tenacity, good old providence, and purity of intent, I became that which had lured me for so long. That which lures us all back to its simple fold: reality, truth, realization, whatever name you choose.

The purpose of each my words is to inspire, instruct, and avail consciousness to your every fiber. Maybe I will also lure a crooked smile from your bright soul. 

You need not understand a word for this to unfold, nor be happy or content, just allow, feel, and give way.