The
Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind delineates, in one slim volume,
a complete system for achieving personal spiritual awakening, along with
a straight-forward, no-nonsense plan individuals and groups so enlightened
can follow to awaken Humanity en masse and positively transform the world.
Spiritual truth being spiritual truth, and our human condition being what
it is and what it has been, without significant change, for millennia,
nothing in the pages that follow is likely to be wholly original to me
as an author, though much of what is discussed here may come as new information
to you. I am quite confident, however, that the directness and brevity
with which these truths are communicated in this volume is unique.
The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind is a bare-bones toolkit
designed to empower any-one willing to sufficiently apply themselves to
the task to quickly recognize the true human situation, to achieve individual
psychic/spiritual liberation from it, and to subsequently take on an enlightened
leadership role in the much-needed near-future awakening of the greater
human species.
Though
this spiritual toolkit is consciously designed so that absolutely anyone
can benefit from its use, it seems only fair to point out, right here on
page one, that The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind is not necessarily
written for a general audience. There's nothing par-ticularly complicated
ahead; it's just that what I have outlined so succinctly in the pages that
follow is the unadorned truth, and a great many people who claim to be
"spiritual seekers," especially in wealthy, material-comfort-driven cultures
like the United States and Europe, are not really seeking to encounter
anything so unpleasant as naked reality. Simple truth, denuded
of its colorful cultural trappings and stripped of Traditional pomp and
circumstance embellishments can be very unappealing to "seekers" hoping
to trade the dull fantasies of ordinary life for more exciting "spiritualized"
feel-good daydreams. While all can profit from the truths contained
in this book, the tools ahead will prove most useful in the hands of those
already mentally and emotionally prepared to take them seriously and put
them unhesitatingly to work. If you are unsure which of these categories
you fall into – spiritual fantasy-chaser or serious student of awakening
– before spending your hard-earned money on the purchase of this book,
please consider the following:
5 GOOD REASONS NOT TO BUY THIS BOOK
If what you want most from religion/spirituality is to be comforted in your sorrows or confusion, don't buy this book!
If what you want most from religion/spirituality is reassurance that you are perfect just as you are, or that what you already believe about yourself, God or reality is Ultimate Truth, don't buy this book!
If you believe that religion/spirituality is, and should forever remain, "higher," "beyond" or otherwise separate from the "tainted" real world of Earthly human events and issues, and you're not willing to relinquish that belief, don't buy this book!
If you believe that pursuing "airy-fairy" spiritual solutions to important real world human problems is hopelessly unrealistic, and you're not willing to relinquish that belief, don't buy this book!
If you are content to await rescue from the complications of human reality by Traditional religious, New Age, extraterrestrial or even extra-ordinary human saviors of any kind, and you are not willing to take an active role in the advancement of your own or Humanity's spiritual evolution, don't buy this book!
If,
on the other hand, you crave spiritual under-standing that is transformative,
rather than comforting, that seeks truth beyond the limitations imposed
by mere belief, that applies spiritual solutions to real contemporary human
issues, and that puts the power and responsibility to succeed or fail in
your quest right where it belongs – in your own capable hands – then you
are ready for The Simplest Path.
Buy
this book now!
SIMPLE BEGINNINGS
This
book was conceived at the crossroads of three at least apparently disconnected
events:
The
first was my personal spiritual quest and practice so far, now approaching
its fourth decade, which allowed me to become familiar with the many religious,
spiritual and scientific concepts which, together, form the nucleus of
the Simplest Path – plus a great many more that have been intentionally
excluded from it – and to experientially verify, firsthand, for myself,
which avenues of exploration were capable of producing practical results
and which were not, which worked to unveil reality as it truly is, and
which led to dead ends of ego-flattering illusion.
The
second event was encountering the remarkable modern science of memetics,
which is an evolutionary approach to understanding human thought and behavior
in terms of the mind-to-mind transfer of information by way of imitation,
accomplished through the auspices of physically real, and mentally viral,
entities called memes. I won't go into detail here about what memes
are, how they work, or the psychic and spiritual implications of their
existence, as the first six chapters of The Simplest Path, Step One: Free
Your Mind are already ably dedicated to that task. A few sentences
here would not do the topic justice. What matters for the purposes
of this introduction is that the science of memes supplied me with a new
(to me, anyway) real and metaphorical language capable of expressing spiritual
concepts that had been brewing in my mind, with no clear means of coherent
expression, for decades. Memes provided me with a fresh and vastly
expanded context in which to understand the human mind and spirit, and
to "connect-the-dots" between many apparently-unrelated spiritual ideas
to reveal a cohesive picture of our Earthly human condition, as well as
our genuine latent human potential, that is in equal measure frightening
and inspiring of the deepest imaginable awe and personal commitment.
These
first two factors, together, produced a complete transformation of my personal
experience of reality and of my own unlimited potential within it.
But what moved me to finally take up pen and paper and begin the long process
of sharing the path to transformation I had discovered with the world,
first by clearly systematizing my expanded understanding, then by breaking
that system down into logically communicable steps and instructions, and
finally by sitting down to outline this introductory volume in the The
Simplest Path series, was, perhaps surprisingly, a management training
class I attended through my day job on the topic of Diversity In The Modern
Workplace.
In
a segment of the training focused on the unique management challenges presented
by the various generational "cohorts" now working side by side in American
business – the Matures (born prior to 1946), the Baby Boomers (1946 to
1964), Generation X (1965 to 1980), and the Millennials (1981 to 1999)
– the instructor put into words something about my own age group, Generation
X, which I had sensed on a deep, emotional level for a long time, but which
I had never been able to clearly articulate. He explained that, while
our Baby Boomer parents grew up in a 1950s, '60s and '70s environment of
affluence and security to become adults for whom reality "feels" essentially
trustworthy (i.e., work hard and you'll be rewarded with nice toys, invest
and you'll become wealthy, etc.), we Gen-Xers, having been born in the
aftermath of the JFK assassination, and having shared our cradles with
the Vietnam War and its Boomer TV protestors, teethed on Watergate and
Richard Nixon's Presidential resignation, and come of age in the grip of
the Iran-Contra debacle, "Voodoo Economics," out of control divorce rates,
double-digit inflation and cutthroat corporate downsizing that put
the lie to our parents' sentimental "American Dream," tend to distrust
concepts like consensus reality and community values altogether, especially
as received from or prescribed by our parents, skeptically preferring,
instead, to test reality frequently and aggressively for ourselves, and
to draw our own conclusions based on direct personal experience.
The image the instructor used that really stuck with me was that, where
our Baby Boomer parents want to be handed a detailed map to corporate and
societal success, so they can follow it in a straight line to achievement,
stability and wealth, Gen-Xers recognize the traditional map to be an outdated
lie, and ask only that society A) make available the real, practical tools
for achieving material, social and even spiritual success, and B) get the
hell out of the way. What we will choose to build using those tools
is ours, and ours alone, to decide, tradition be damned.
The
Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind is a practical spiritual toolkit,
consciously designed for use by Generation X. That Diversity in the
Workplace training I attended was, of course, strictly a business class,
not aimed at teaching anything even remotely spiritual, but the single
overwhelming insight I took away from it, steeped as I was at the time
in my own personal spiritual practice, augmented by a deep, ongoing study
of memes, was that, of all the many Traditional religions, all the sundry
brands of mysticism, both Eastern and Western, and the embarrassment of
New Age groups and cults and sects and systems available to spiritual seekers
in the 21st Century, not one – not even one single "way" among them, at
least that I was familiar with – belonged to Generation X. Every
spiritual system I could think of, from Traditional Christianity, Islam
or Hinduism, to my personal favorites, Zen Buddhism and Toltec Shamanism
ala Carlos Castaneda, to the Gurdjieff "Work," Theosophy, Anthroposophism,
Transcendental Meditation, A Course In Miracles, Neopaganism, etc.,
etc., etc., were, one and all, couched in the language of Boomers, Matures,
and to a disturbing degree, of generations long dead (all ancient Scriptures
– Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu, et al. – fall squarely into this
later category). I knew from personal experience that many such "ways"
contained important truths, and at least potentially led to genuine enlightenment;
don't get me wrong on that point. But I had gained a tremendous insight
into my own long-term, personal frustration with the unspoken, and until
that day, for me, wholly unidentified requirement I was living under to
translate every spiritual concept I encountered into Gen-X language before
it could become truly useful to me, to expend precious time and energy
in, first, dissecting Traditional and New Age beliefs in order to peel
away the seemingly-endless layers of egocentric nonsense that always seemed
to encase any real, working spiritual tools that might be hidden inside,
and then again to gingerly extricate those tools intact, without damaging
whatever might be authentically valuable about them in the process.
The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind represents my best personal
effort, so far, at least, to extract and assemble a complete set of core
spiritual tools for the achievement of personal and planetary awakening
on behalf of all my Generation X "cohorts," as well as early Millennials
who may share some of Gen-X's "do it yourself" proclivity and take on the
task of translating these concepts into late Millennial language, that
the "Great Awakening" can continue ad infinitum.
So,
here they are – all the tools you need to achieve personal enlightenment
and to then get busy awakening the world. The dross is gone, the
fat is stripped away, the initial translation, to the best of my ability,
is complete. What happens next is up to you.
THE
IMMERSION METHOD:
READING,
PRACTICE, TEACHING
When
I first encountered Carlos Castaneda's many works relating his apprenticeship
to Toltec sorcerer, Don Juan Matus, I was in my late teens. There
were seven books in the series at the time (The Fire From Within had just
been published, if I recall correctly). I read them all, and recognized
in them something very different from any mystical writings I had encountered
to date – and, having begun my spiritual quest in earnest at the tender
age of eleven, by the time I discovered Castaneda, I was already considerably
better read and more experienced in metaphysical thought than were the
vast majority of kids my age. Something about those books was different,
alright, something that I sensed, deep down inside, would make all the
difference regarding my spiritual journey, transforming it from the colorful
escapist dream I secretly knew my quest at the time to be into a real,
hands-on experience of a larger reality beyond the illusion of ordinary
life, if only I could manage to grasp its hidden truth consciously and
hold it up to the light.
But,
by ordinary means, I just couldn't do it. I was a skilled and avid
reader, capable of easily devouring a book a day, but the standard method
in which I had learned to read, alternately losing myself in the story,
then periodically pulling back to analyze specific passages or unfamiliar
words, taking notes, etc., as we all learned in school is the rational
"approved method" for studying any text, was simply not squeezing from
Castaneda's writings the prize my intuition continued to assure me was
secreted therein. So I decided to pursue a more intuitive learning
method – total immersion. Over the course of the next several months,
I read each of Castaneda's seven books seven times, starting with The Teachings
of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the first book in the series, then
reading the subsequent volumes in sequence all the way to the final page
of The Fire From Within, then returning without a break to the beginning
and working my way, once again, through the entire series. I didn't
take notes, or look up words, or analyze text, or even insist that the
endless stream of words flowing into my eyes and swirling through my brain
particularly make sense. I continued to live my normal life, going
to work, socializing with friends, etc., but in the time allotted each
day for reading, I read nothing but Castaneda's books, not even a newspaper
or magazine, while engrossed in this process. I took his writings
into my mind as an undisturbed whole, and let them sink, as one, to a deep
and silent place within my mind, where, without really "thinking" about
them at all, in the usual way I defined "thinking" at the time, I finally
broke through and "got it."
Exactly
what I "got" is part and parcel of The Simplest Path and you'll have to
read the rest of this book in order to "get it" for yourself. My
reason for relating this story here in the introduction is not to so much
to endorse Castaneda or Toltec Shamanism, per se, but rather to illustrate
the point that the "approved methods" by which we do most things in life
more often act as obstructions to understanding than they do as bridges
connecting us to genuine knowledge. The entire Universe, the Earth,
our own bodies are constructed of nothing but reality, and so, by rights,
we ought to experience truth directly and be in touch with reality as it
is at all times, as a simple consequence of being real creatures
embedded in an objectively real world. But it doesn't work that way.
Instead, if we bother to concern ourselves with such things at all, we
must sweat and work and struggle to catch the tiniest glimpse of anything
real beyond the self-centered maelstrom of illusion that defines and engulfs
our ordinary, daily lives. One big reason this is so is that the
vast majority of methods by which we have been taught by society, education,
religion, etc. to look at the reality around and within ourselves are surreptitiously
designed to obscure truth, rather than to reveal it. We don't like
to think that's what's happening, that we've been bamboozled, but that's
the truth of it. As I will demonstrate in the chapters ahead, this
fundamental perceptual problem is no accident. The chief goal of
The Simplest Path is to clarify the mechanics allowing this core psychic
deceit to operate with impunity in our lives, and to provide practical
tools for breaking its power to control our minds.
What
all this means, in the context of introducing this book, is that, if you
plan to just read The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind once and
stop there, treating it like any other book, even one you're reasonably
interested in and planning to read closely, don't expect your life to change
much. Chances are that you'll benefit, and many elements of your
illusory life will, perhaps even dramatically, improve, but you probably
won't awaken spiritually in any measurable, concrete way, and the positive
changes in your life will be short-lived. It won't be the book's
fault, my defect as an author, or even your blunder, in the end, as a too-casual
reader. The blame will lie, most directly, with the faulty method
by which you attempted to absorb this information in the first place.
Just as eating uncooked rice will make you sick, while drawing some water,
turning on the stove, and taking time to properly prepare the very same
rice will fill and nourish you, so the process of immersing yourself in
The Simplest Path that brings the greatest long term benefit is very different
from the method you might apply to reading a popular novel, or even the
many spiritual tomes you have likely already consumed in your lifetime
that promised much, but in the end, delivered little. Reading The
Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind front-to-back seven times, as I
did with Castaneda's early work, is, admittedly, a tad extreme – but I
do recommend working your way through this text at least three times, with
each pass absorbing and processing the same information in very different
ways:
First, do, in fact, read The Simplest Path, Step One: Free Your Mind from cover to cover to familiarize yourself in a general way with the main concepts involved. Don't take notes or highlight text. Don't perform any of the spiritual exercises in Part II. Read each exercise over, but don't spend a lot of time speculating about the effects carrying them out might produce in advance of actually doing so (which comes next). Warning: The exercise connected to Key Question #4, What Is The Value of Human Life?, has two parts, the second of which should not be read until part one has actually been completed. The text has been laid out in such a way that you can easily bundle the pages containing part two of the exercise together with a paperclip, keeping them hidden until you are ready for their unveiling. It's a good idea to pause right now and clip the pages together. Don't cheat yourself out of the full benefit of the exercise by sneaking a peek!
As soon as you have completed your first read-through, return to Chapter One and start the book over. This time, read one chapter each day, as you work through the six chapters that make up Part I, spending the rest of that day contemplating and journaling about the ideas discussed. That will take six days. Follow the same pattern with Part II, but this time, invest the time and energy required to perform each of the spiritual exercises in turn. Some of the exercises take hours, some days, some weeks, and some require ongoing lifestyle changes. Meet the exercises head-on, on their own terms. Let them individually and collectively impact and transform you, however long it takes to complete the process. For now, skip the Key Question Community group exercises that end each chapter in Part II. Focus only on the individual exercises.
When
you have worked your way through all of the exercises and experienced at
least the initial stirrings of awakened consciousness through them, it
is time to teach The Simplest Path to others. Often times, we do
not realize how well or deeply we have taken something into ourselves until
we try to share it with someone else. Then, in successfully teaching
what we know, we are gifted to learn everything anew, from a fresh and
significantly more profound perspective. Whereas, in the first two
read-throughs, we sought to absorb information, when teaching what we have
learned, we are called to reach within ourselves and find the flat concepts
we previously ingested transformed by our personal experience into living
knowledge, worthy of transmission to another human being. By
teaching what we have learned, we simultaneously expand our own understanding
of the material in question, and establish authority within ourselves to
take our newfound knowledge seriously and become living examples of the
truths we seek to share with the world. As you read each chapter
for the third time, one each day as before, don't let the day end without
teaching that chapter to at least one other person. You can describe
the individual spiritual exercises in Part II to your students, but don't
push them to try any without first having made their own complete initial
read-through of this book.
During
this phase, in the course of your third read-through, as you are sharing
The Simplest Path with a growing circle of friends, who are themselves
acquir-ing direct experience of the system and beginning to teach it to
others, is a good time to form your Key Question Community group, and to
begin working through the group exercises that end each chapter in Part
II. Complete instructions for forming a Key Question Community group
can be found in Chapter VI, The Key Questions Technique, as well as on
the The Simplest Path website referenced above.
ENTERING THE PATH
Before
beginning your journey along The Simplest Path, you need gather only four
items – a large notebook or journal for recording your observations and
for working through written portions of the spiritual exercises in Part
II; a small pocket notepad for recording observations during times when
your larger journal is unavailable; a mind sufficiently open to be willing
to challenge even your most beloved and comforting beliefs; and, finally,
the strength of will and sheer Gen-X chutzpah to take these tools into
your own capable hands, and to craft with them an enlightened individual
mind and life, and a bright, awakened future for all Humanity.