"Focused awareness is difficult not because we are inept at some spiritual technology but because it threatens our sense of who we are."
-Stephen Batchelor (Buddhism Without Beliefs)
"It's too close so we overlook it. It seems too good to be true so we can't believe it. It's too profound so we can't fathom it. It's not outside ourselves so we can't obtain it anew."
-Dzogchen saying
"We live in illusion. And in the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing. And being nothing, you are everything. That is all."
-Kalu Rinpoche
Enlightenment really is only a light switch away, you just have to find the damned light switch. There is the rub. After a lifetime of habitual inculcation which tells you that there is no light switch or even the possibility of enlightenment, you decide "what the hell" and think that enlightenment is something that you can do at the drop of a bucket. Unfortunately there is the matter of your habitual inclination...that lifetime of training in the push-pull of craving and ego defenses. So that even if you figure out where the light switch is, you don't flip it, afraid of losing the only identity you have known.
Between the rats that have gotten inside you, and the greyfaces that are multiplying faster than rabbits in heat (aren't they always in heat?), getting that pineal gland to constantly glow may seem damned near impossible. And that's exactly what they want you to think. (They as in THEM. Not they as in the rabbits who don't give a damn about humanity's existential angst or tribulations, except where it affects them...by the way. Mice, on the other hand...) Are you going to keep taking it like that?
If you start by deconstructing the house that ego built, they (as in THEM) will not be able to get any hold over you. You can realize that the Buddha is in the palm of your hands. Perhaps it's just that you have wrapped Buddha up in filthy rags and you have forgotten how to unwrap them. Deceived into thinking that chaos is chained into your deluded notions of lifespan, life-form, species, sentience, thought-form, and perception, you have forgotten the every day ordinary truth that all of these things are merely expressions of chaos. You are part of chaos' living work of art. And you are also the artist. There is no audience to the spectacle and you are the audience. There is no secret highest fulfilled teaching and you are the secret highest fulfilled teaching. The Buddhas show nothing that you can attain, therefore they show you the most precious gifts. If you are not a lamp unto yourself, there is no one who will be a lamp for you. The path of awakening does not exist except when you are walking it. And there is no finish line. Your belief in the end of the story is a dogmatic lie foisted upon you by those who are so caught up in pretending to know better that they can't even see that "knowing" is a trap.
"Emptiness is said by the awakening ones to be the letting go of views, but they also say that those who hold to the view of emptiness are incurable."
(Nagarjuna; "Verses from the Center") The fine lines lose their distinction in both the circle of confusion and in the focus of clarity. And there are times when your search for clarity gets in the way of seeing directly what is in front of you. Take care and pay attention to your life. You are a star. Don't forget that your firm belief in your soul is what makes sure that your present neuroses are what get reincarnated, daily. Nothing implies something in as much as dogma implies the possibility of freedom from dogma. Are you still trapped in the pernicious idea of a soul, a lifespan, a figment that lives from birth and death? While these ideas are socially useful, how much of what is socially useful has no real bearing on what is really going on? You are not a verb, a noun, nor any other word. Not even a name. You are a story composed of cut-ups and insertions and commentaries and re-edits and careful or careless proofreading not only from others around you but from your own thinking. The discontinuity between what your story is really saying and what you are interpreting from your story can become vast. The shattering reality of how your story is actually composed, concocted, and conditioned could be enough to wake you up into seeing how fabricated your version of the events in your life really is. There is no smooth timeline. No continuous arc of consciousness. No solid definable ego. Nothing but an onion that you can keep peeling away at and stripping until you get to the core and realize that the onion was really in the art form and the layering. No true essence hiding away deep inside somewhere to be discovered.
This can be enough to scald and scare you away. Your so-called self, if tightly clung to, will cry out at the injustice of a universe and at the processes of your own life that refuse to conform to the mistaken assertion that you have a solid stable identity that has clear borders between "you" and "other." But this may be the key to exploding the pineal gland and deep frying away all of the dross, or at least making it easier to peel the dross away. (Or you can collect the dross and sell or trade it for more useful or valuable items.) You can hate me if I warn you about the way you are going about things by saying "Hey, buddy, you're about to crash into a thicket of poisonous brambles and thorns!" You can tell me "Screw off! No one can tell me what to do!" But telling you what to do is exactly what I have not been doing. In this case, the warning was made as a suggestion from someone who once did the exact same thing. And then when you are filled with cuts, scrapes, and poison, you will hate me some more because you have to pay for all those charges you racked up on your credit card. Your hatred is only more interest accrued for you to pay off. It bothers me none. It makes me chuckle at your damned seriousness. Remember, we all did or will do the same at some point.
You can disregard anything that you disagree with and say that you are just being skeptical. But in your assumed posture of intelligence, did you ever stop to think that you have never applied your own skepticism to the things you agree with? Your opinions have become like beliefs and those are common dross. None of them are really as important as life itself. With skill, you can take that dross and turn it into pigments for painting this canvas you call your life. But beliefs, whether of the believing or disbelieving approach, are merely the same opinions held too tightly. Taken to extremes, skepticism becomes another dead end and it becomes necessary to yet again freely think.
And all of these mentations are just that. Impermanent concoctions that swirl around and sometimes endlessly repeat themselves. Taking yourself too seriously only gets you caught up in the droll spectacle until you realize that even your actions are impermanent concoctions. Then you may notice the same of your "self." And then what? Are you going off to join some monastery or retreat community? (If that's what you really want, so be it.) Or are you going to come down off of your "most-certainly-I-am-right" high horse and play with the rest of us here in Eris' playground?