Enlightenment Is Not Worth Striving For

The idea of enlightenment as a magical event that makes everything perfect is a fairy tale, a misunderstanding of what it really means to be free.

If you have been on a spiritual path for any length of time, this may be a hard pill to swallow. We know. We walked a spiritual path for many years ourselves once, and taught it to many others believing that our deep understanding of spirituality had brought us home.

We were wrong.

We have great respect for Ramana Maharshi, the Buddha, and Nisargadatta. In our view, they came very close to the core. In fact, it was their work that brought us to the real core of the problem and its simple solution.

You can see for yourself that the truth of the problem of human dissatisfaction with life is very simple: it is fear. It is the fear of life itself that arises very early on due to the difficulties of human birth, and neither its misery nor its cure has a drop of spiritualty in them. Freedom requires nothing more than a direct taste of what it feels like to be you.

The search for enlightenment or self-realization is a search for an escape from life and its difficulties. The longing for awakening is actually a desire to go to sleep, to escape from the reality of your own mortality.

What is possible is to free yourself of that which keeps you searching for an escape from ordinary life into an imaginary state where everything is perfectly safe and unchanging.

The goal of our work is to free you of the invisible, unconscious environment of false fear upon which your mind has developed over time, and to give you the means to choose what is worthy of your attention and what is not.

That changes everything.

Download and read the free ebook Lookers Tell Their Stories to see a small sample of what is happening to thousands of people all over the world.

5 thoughts on “Enlightenment Is Not Worth Striving For

  1. Right on John,
    I started the looking about 8 – 10 years ago. You got it right I WAS looking for the enlightenment that would basically make me different and one with everything. I did the search for many years, mostly listening to the many spoken words of one “guru” after the other. You [or the looking] ended the search, stopped it cold dead. I thank you for that and I feel better without it and see clearly what I was falsely looking for.
    The thing is is with the fear dissipated , when I hear your pleas to help save the world I’m like ..why? what needs to be saved, the world is the world. It seems that that road is starting the search again to make everything OK.
    As you rightly stated , the fear is what drives the search for “enlightenment”, for me to really get behind saving humanity would require me to buy into the fear again.
    It seems that one of the byproducts of the looking and following you in the early days has produced for you a non follower [for lack of a better word] I still read your articles from time to time, but other than that I am pretty happy to go through this life in this world as it is, trying to make the best of what is, with out the “i gotta get it right, gotta be careful & watch out” thoughts that used to be behind the scenes all the time.
    The one thing that I really liked abut your meetings is that you were never trying to get anyone to some other place..not selling anyone anything,[i’m not saying this very well].
    I guess it’s what you said about after the looking we would go one of 2 ways, get active to change things, or go off into the hills…I guess all i’m saying is that I am the latter.
    sorry to ramble and not be more precise, but I guess that’s all I wanted to say, best of luck and thanks for all you do,
    Jeff

    1. Hello, Jeff.

      We are happy to hear that the fear has dissipated in you.

      If we had not been working very hard to bring Just One Look to the world, you would not have found this simple solution to the fear of life.

      We are not encouraging people who work with Just One Look to become followers of anything. We are trying to encourage those who feel motivated to do so to help us let more people know that this message is freely available to all.

      If this is not something you feel motivated to do, you really do not have to do anything other than enjoy your life as it is.

      You must see that the world is in a very sad state nowadays. It is true that this has happened many times in the past, but it seems that the accumulation of collective fear throughout time has brought us to the brink of extinction. To us, this is an urgent situation and we try to call attention to this.

      Just One Look can absolutely reverse our march toward self-destruction, but it needs to spread quickly. Humanity cannot afford to wait another 20 years. Who knows what will happen then? So, anyone who feels motivated to tell others that this simple solution to the root cause of all our troubles is available to all – and free of charge – is welcome.

      We hope this has clarified our position for you. Let us know if you have any more questions.

      1. Thanks for your reply .
        I do truly appreciate the work you and your team are doing, and the way you do it.
        I can’t really pin point any great single change from doing the looking, but I know that something HAS changed. I guess the main change may be as simple as the search ending. Before ,I was in a “waiting for the big bang of enlightenment” mode, basically going through the motions until it [awakening] hit me.
        So now that THAT has gone I feel in a Limbo of sorts..I Guess I need to actually take responsibility for my own life and where it goes…no more waiting for MR. Awakening to make everything OK.
        That IS the awakening.. Mundane as it is…That IS the awakening….
        That is REALLY hard to sell! “hey do this ..and I can guarantee nothing much will happen…I’m being a little sarcastic here but that is kind of the way it feels.
        I also do see that it is the truth, and that it IS real.
        But I do sometimes miss waiting for the ” pot of Enlightenment “at the end of the rainbow. But Here I am..my eyes open, looking forward to seeing what the future will present.
        To quote a line from hitchhikers guide to the galaxy-
        “Perhaps I’m old and tired but I think the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say “hang the sense of it and keep yourself busy”
        Busy doing what?..hhmmmmm…..go out to work and create a customers ideal outdoor living space…or.. save the world ….or Go for a walk.
        Thanks again for all you do,
        Jeff

  2. Thanks for your honesty Jeff, and thanks to John and Carla for allowing your comment.
    I don’t have any desire to save the world either. I’m still trying to save myself. At any rate, like you suggest, I think that the push to “be compassionate” and to “help your fellow man” has been intimately tied to the fear of life, and that (because of this), these ideas can actually encourage the fear. Religion and culture have sold these ideas to the public for centuries, and they have become part of the search to “be a good person”. Which isn’t to say that someone who is truly beyond fear couldn’t help out without getting attached, but after many years of popping by here, that’s not me. I don’t consider myself sane, or free of fear, and I can still get wrapped up in ideas that encourage the worst in me … in the same way that if I started listening to talks on enlightenment, I would be more prone to encouraging attachment in that direction.

    1. You say you are still trying to save yourself. Have you really looked at yourself in the manner we suggest? Even if you have, please download our free ebook on our website and try it again.

      What do you mean by “helping without attachment”? This is just another empty spiritual idea. What does it really mean?

      The sheer weight of the misery that is spreading like wildfire throughout humanity really affects us and since we have seen so many hundreds of people become free of fear and come to love their life, we feel strongly motivated to bring this possibility to all human beings. All we want is to let everyone know that it is available. It is up to each person to decide if they want to try it or not.

      Our attempts to encourage people to help us spread the word about the looking has nothing to do with pushing people to be “compassionate” or to “help your fellow man” or to “be a good person,” as you suggest.

      Our invitation to join us in spreading the news about Just One Look is for those who recognize that they are free of fear and want to share this possibility with others.

      If this is not what you experience right now, this invitation is not for you. At least not yet.

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