Quotes by Jed McKenna

     Once unshackled from the life-sucking demands of ego, we clearly see the unformed creatures we had hitherto been, like children.  Not children in the happy, lyrical sense, but in the abrasive, self-absorbed, discordant sense.  What we consider bright and beautiful in children is the inherent nature of the fully developed human.  Our true state is one of playfulness, innocence, lack of guilt, unboundedness of spirit, robust health and inner light, a natural confidence and unerring sense of right, imperturbability, grace, a calm eye and easy good humor, balance, fgreedom from malice and pettiness, the absence of fear, the presence of largesse and a permeating sense of gratitude.  Creativity.  Connectedness.  Correctness.  This is the clear and rightful state of the human being.  One must die of the flesh to be born of the spirit.  One's life energy, formerly squandered by ego, can then be turned to the higher purposes and potentials of life in the magnificent amusement park of duality.

"Where are the people that chose their lives?

... maybe a life of drudgery and carrot-chasing is exactly what we would chose if we did chose, but we don't. That's what it means to be unconscious; to be asleep within the dream. We slip into the lives that are laid out for us the way children slip into the clothes their mother lays out for them in the morning. No one decides. We don't live our lives by choice, but by default. We play the roles we are born to. We don't live our lives, we dispose of them. We throw them away because we don't know any better, and the reason we don't know any better is because we never asked. We never questioned or doubted, never stood up, never drew a line. We never walked up to our parents or our spiritual advisors or our teachers or our gurus or any other formative presences in our early lives and asked one simple, honest, straightforward question, the one question that must be answered before any other question can be asked:

What the hell is going on here?"

Sit down, shut up and ask yourself, "What's true?" until you know.

I like happiness as much as the next guy, but it's not happiness that sends one in search of truth.  It's rabid, feverish, clawing madness to stop being a lie, regardless of price, come heaven or hell.  This isn't about higher consciousness or self-discovery or heaven on earth.  This is about blood-caked swords and Buddha's rotting head and self-immolation, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something they don't have.

    "But what about when people explore their inner selves?  Make journeys of self-discovery?  Aren't they going within to find the truth?"
    "They're just exploring the ego, making a study of the false self, which is a lifequest as valid as any other.  But you don't wake up by perfecting your dream character, you wake up by breaking free of it.  There's no truth to the ego, so no degree of mastery over it results in anything true.  Putting attention on the false self merely reinforces it."

The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world's recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened.  Some are great mystics, some are great scholars, some are both, and most are neither, but exceedingly few are awake.

Enlightenment isn't like graduating high school only to start college, or even finishing college to enter the "real" world.  It's the final graduation.  No more hunt, no more chase, no more battle.  Now you can go out in the world and do whatever you want; learn guitar, jump out of airplanes, write books, tend grapes, whatever.