Enlightenment Experiences: Understanding and Integration Challenges

Enlightenment experiences are profound but fleeting, emphasizing the importance of present life and personal responsibility.

### Exploring Enlightenment: Personal Experiences and Insights
* 🌅 Good morning, sports fans! Today, I felt compelled to address two questions that came in after my last video, focusing on **personal experiences of enlightenment or kensho**.
* 🤔 The first question inquires about my own direct experience with God and whether it has been a **singular event** or if I am in a **continuous state of God consciousness**.
* 📚 I shared that I detailed my significant experience in Japan in my books, "Hardcore Zen" and "There is No God and He is Always With You," describing it as an **enlightenment experience that cannot be quantified or compared to others**.
* 💭 I emphasized that while some people claim to be in a **perpetual state of God consciousness**, my experience taught me that such states are **fleeting and cannot be maintained indefinitely**.
* 🔄 The essence of our current experiences is paramount; I believe that the **most important thing is what we are experiencing right now**, as it connects us to the universe and to each other.
* ⚖ Additionally, I discussed the misconception that enlightenment leads to **moral perfection**, warning against the danger of using such experiences as justifications for **unethical behavior**.
* 🏈 I likened the first enlightenment experience to **losing one's virginity**—memorable but not necessarily the **pinnacle of future experiences**, as subsequent encounters may feel **less spectacular due to prior memories**.
* 💖 Lastly, I encouraged viewers to support my work through Patreon or PayPal, as I continue to **explore and share insights on these profound topics**.

Good morning, sports fans. I don't plan to make it a habit of doing a video every day, but just after I finished the video yesterday, I got this question, or I noticed this question I got by email, and I really wanted to answer it. And then

another question hot on the heels of the first one came asking kind of about the same thing, so I thought, time to make a video. The first question is, it is about the time you had a direct experience of kensho of God. Was that the only time it has

it repeated? Are you in a continuous God state of mind? How do you deal with such an extraordinary and yet ordinary experience? The person who wrote this mentions that he had similar experiences and asks himself, will it ever happen again? And why doesn't it come again if

it came the first time? The other question goes, quick question about something you wrote and your own experience being considered a teacher to many folks in this stuff, and then my quote right after they've had their first enlightenment experience. So this was a quote from Koban Chino who said

the worst time to deal with a student is right after they've had their first enlightenment experience. Then you go on to say that it can often be a problem that it doesn't help to integrate it into daily life. Have you seen this personally yourself with

people you've interacted with? And my answer to him was yes, me, in two of my books, in Hardcore Zen and There is No God and He is Always With You, I wrote two accounts of a certain experience I had in Japan while crossing over a bridge over the San Gawa River, I think.

I've mentioned this in a video before, but I'm not sure which one. Maybe regular viewers can put an answer to that question. I'm not going to go into the experience in a lot of detail since it's already in the books and I am, I'm sure

it's even in some of my online postings and things, but this is what it's referred to. And it was one of those experiences that people often classify as an enlightenment experience or Satori or kensho or Awakening, or all of these other sorts of things. The question is

what do you do about it? I think that's a really difficult question. The answer to whether I've had other experiences or whether it's an ongoing thing is like this: In this world, there are a whole lot of people who have made it their stick to be an awakened being, and some of them

have made pretty big names for themselves based on an experience that they've had. We could talk about the particular experience I had, and you could ask, well, was it as big as the experience that insert name of favorite and mic and being here had, or was it a

smaller one? I think that kind of question is based on my experience of this thing, this phenomenon. It is, it is, it is a kind of question that would seem to make sense until you've had the experience yourself. And then you go, that doesn't make sense because the, the

person you are, the time of life you've had the experience, all of that kind of combines with it to make it impossible to, to separate the experience from the person who had the experience, which means that you can't, you can't quantify it in any way. It would be like, am I more

Brad Warner than Dave Smith is there are people around who kind of make it their thing to kind of walk around and like well look at me I'm in a perpetual state of God consciousness and I'm going to tell you all about it that's um I I

mean I you're probably going well how do you know it's you can't see inside their heads based on my experience of this phenomenon let's call it a phenomenon it's you can't stay there it's it's impossible what you can probably do

is kind of work yourself into into a kind of frenzy of mixing up the memory of the experience along with some other little mental tricks you might do and kind of you know convince yourself that you're fully in this experience at all times but I don't think that's possible

even to do so what happens when you've had one of the experiences is the experience this is all metaphorical so please don't take this literally but the experience kind of transports you somewhere it doesn't transport you anywhere but for metaphor's sake it

transports you somewhere and then drops you off back where you started why does it drop you off back where you started if the most important thing for you to experience in life was God consciousness or whatever this thing is that you have then wouldn't it just keep you there but

it doesn't and and I think there's a reason for that and the reason that I believe is that this experience you're having right now you right out there watching this and the experience I'm having right now me here making this video are actually the most important

Thing, the most important thing in the universe is what's going on with you right now, this very second. So why is this, this life you're living right now, right here, why is this the most important thing in the universe? I think it's because the very same thing that

looks out at the universe through my eyes is looking out at the universe through your eyes and is looking out at the universe through your cat's eyes and through your, through the snail's eyes, it's crawling along the edge over there, and through the fly that just flew past

mates, looking through those eyes and it's looking through the eyes of this pen, this German pen. These are the best pens by the way, these are really good pens. What we are to God is his eyes and ears on a particular part of his creation. I'm saying his because that's

the common gendered pronoun for God, you know that. I don't mean that God is a male, so that's why it's, it's the most significant thing. This is what you are supposed to be doing is paying attention to this bit. So it's

it's like you've got a job to do and they put you down in the boiler room to make sure the boiler doesn't explode and and that's your job is to stay there in the boiler room. It might be boring in the boiler room, but somebody's got to

stay there and make sure it doesn't explode, or else everybody's upset because the boiler exploded and nobody likes that. So, so that's, that's what your job is, is to keep this thing going, this, this little part going as well as you possibly can. And if you jet off into the

stratosphere into god-consciousness, you're actually abdicating your real responsibility, and that's no good. This is not what the universe wants; it doesn't want a bunch of people abdicating their real responsibility by going off and having there's a lot of

things that one would think an experience like this would answer for you that it doesn't really answer for you for one, and I've discussed this elsewhere on this YouTube channel, is there life after death? You'd think you get a glimmer of that, but you don't

really get that one, and people who say you do are full of it. What you do understand is that, as I said earlier, what looks out through your eyes is the same thing that's looking out through everyone's eyes. So in that sense, there's no way you can die, but this this thing

this Brad Warner thing will die. We know that for sure. That's one, to death and taxes, you're the the two things you can count on, right? So we know that that this is going to die, whether my experience, whether my Brad Warren Ernest continues

on in some form or not, is is an issue. I I think it probably does, but in such a form that it's probably stupid to call it 'me' anymore once it's once it stops being this, you know. So in that sense, no answer, but kind of an answer. And the

other thing it doesn't do is suddenly make you morally perfect. That's that's another line they feed you. You, the people who want to kind of dominate you and control you, say, 'I've had the experience of awakening and now I'm morally perfect.' You can still

make as many ethical mistakes as you could before the experience. It's just that you have a certain perspective on those mistakes that makes it a little bit, a little bit more difficult to engage in them. But here's the problem: if you have an experience like this without

any kind of grounding in some kind of ethical framework, there is a chance that you're going to say, "Well, I am God now, and everyone is me, so anything I do to somebody else is just something I do to me. So, oh hey baby, I'm just grabbing my

own boobs." You can get into a mindset like that, and I think it explains a lot of the that we see going on in the world of spirituality. It's probably people who've had a kind of a little glimmer of an experience like this and

then kind of turned it into something that they think is a license to do whatever the they want. It's not a license to do whatever the you want because if you, if you start messing with other people's lives, you're also messing with your own life. So, so, so don't do

that. You know, just don't do that. The other aspect of this is, as I said, there's a whole, I don't know, a world of people who made their whole thing being enlightened beings. What often happens is it's a bit like reliving the big football game that

that you won in high school. You know, you were the quarterback for the big football game and you wanted in high school, and every time you get drunk, you're going to tell the story of it. And pretty soon, people just get sick of hearing that story. Well, there's a

There's a certain audience out there for hearing the story of your enlightenment experience over and over and over and over and over again, and if you find your audience for that, you could you could make a good living. And who doesn't want to make a decent living, even if you're

enlightened? You want to make a decent living. So that happens a lot also as far as having more experiences. I would say that the the first one, the first sort of major one is a bit like losing your virginity. Like you might have done, you might have

fooled around a little bit and had a little bit of fun on other things, you know, but then you'd lose your virginity and you're always going to remember that, even if, like mine, it was kind of bad. You're gonna keep, you're gonna remember

it. Like I can't unremember mine. I think a lot of people feel that way, but it doesn't mean you're never gonna have the experience again. It just means that the next time you have that experience, you also have a kind of memory of the

previous time and it makes it a little less spectacular, although it might still be kind of spectacular. The sex metaphor continues there as well if you if you want to go that way. Okay, that was a long one. That's what she said. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you want to donate to my having more enlightenment experiences on Patreon down there, PayPal down there, that's how I make my living, and I really appreciate your support. Thank you, and see you next time.

Spiritual Awakening is Bullshit

Hardcore Zen

Responding to viewer questions about enlightenment experiences.

First question: Was a past kensho experience unique, or is it a continuous state?

First question continued:  The viewer asks about the possibility of repeating such experiences and why they might not recur.

Second question:  Concerns the challenges of integrating enlightenment experiences into daily life, referencing Koban Chino's quote.

Speaker recounts personal experience described in his books, noting it's been mentioned in previous videos.

Quantifying and comparing enlightenment experiences.

Speaker discusses the difficulty of comparing enlightenment experiences due to their personal and subjective nature.

The speaker argues against quantifying the experience, highlighting its inseparable nature from the individual.

The speaker comments on those who claim a perpetual state of enlightenment, suggesting it's likely a constructed state.

The nature and purpose of enlightenment experiences.

The speaker uses a metaphor of transportation to describe the temporary nature of the experience.

The speaker questions why the experience is not permanent, suggesting it's because present life is the most important.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of present experience, connecting it to a universal consciousness.

Humans are described as God's eyes and ears in a specific part of creation.

Responsibilities and potential pitfalls of enlightenment.

The speaker likens the experience to a job, emphasizing the importance of fulfilling responsibilities.

The speaker points out that enlightenment doesn't provide answers to all life's questions, such as life after death.

Enlightenment doesn't grant immortality to the individual, only to the universal consciousness.

The speaker notes that enlightenment doesn't automatically lead to moral perfection.

The speaker warns of the potential for misuse of enlightenment, leading to harmful behavior.

The societal aspects of enlightenment experiences.

The speaker compares repeatedly recounting enlightenment experiences to oversharing a past achievement.

The speaker notes that some individuals can profit from sharing their enlightenment experiences.

The speaker compares the first enlightenment experience to losing one's virginity, emphasizing its memorability.

Subsequent experiences are influenced by the memory of the first, potentially diminishing their intensity.