Elizabeth

“It’s like I can hum a few bars but I have forgotten most of the words. I can’t stand in line at the grocery and carry on a normal conversation if it gets much past the weather.”
― Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“Don Juan advises Carlito to choose a path with heart. I am familiar with it for the same reason that so many spiritual seekers are familiar with it, because it has that ring of sagely goodness that makes it the one thing out of all of Castenada’s writings that gets widely remembered. Does that make it true or valuable? Obviously not, just another cliché. Just another piece of pretty misdirection. I am well aware that a great many of the world’s most popular spiritual doctrines advocate a heart-centered approach to spiritual development, but popularity among the soundly asleep may not be the best criterion by which to judge a method for waking up.”
― Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

“There are no butterfly experts among the caterpillars, despite innumerable claims to the contrary, and I encourage my students to at least consider the possibility that the world is up to its poles in caterpillars who quite successfully convince themselves and others that they are actually butterflies. Or, to say it plainly, the vast majority of the world’s authorities on enlightenment are themselves not enlightened. They may be something, but they’re not awake. An easy way to distinguish between caterpillars and butterflies is to remember that the enlightened don’t attach importance to anything, and that enlightenment doesn’t require knowledge. It’s not about love or compassion or consciousness.”
― Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing