Jed McKenna Quotes & Sayings

Maybe you think death is the opposite of life, or that all this death-awareness stuff translates into the end of happiness and good times, but this is not the case. Death isn't morbid, fear is morbid. Death doesn't oppose life, fear opposes life. To close your eyes to death is to close them to life: what could be more morbid than that? From your perspective, death and suicide are horrific and unthinkable. From my perspective, they are empowering and lifeaffirming. and I would look at any person that doesn't have an open, honest relationship with these subjects as themselves nine parts dead. — Jed McKenna

When we believe in the world outside of ourselves, gain is often perceived as good and loss as bad. When we stop believing in a world external to self. that reverses: gain becomes bad and loss becomes good. Nothing we can lose was ever ours in the first place. All we can ever lose is illusion. — Jed McKenna

Suffering just means you're having a bad dream. Happiness means you're having a good dream. Enlightenment means getting out of the dream altogether. — Jed McKenna

Once you start seeing this place for the madhouse it is, you can't stop seeing it that way. It's everywhere, everyone. It doesn't make any sense. That's not life. It can't be. I don't know what it is, but it's not life. — Jed McKenna

I don't have something you don't; you believe something I don't. — Jed McKenna

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it's just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn't in the character, it's in the underlying truth. — Jed McKenna

The point is to wake up, not to earn a Ph.D. In waking up. — Jed McKenna

How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon? Dr. Seuss — Jed McKenna

Wake up first. Wake up, and then you can double back and perhaps be of some use to others if you still have the urge. Wake up first, with pure and unapologetic selfishness, or you're just another shipwreck victim floundering in the ocean and all the compassion in the world is of absolutely no use to the other victims floundering around you. — Jed McKenna

All fear is ultimately fear of no-self. — Jed McKenna

We slip into the lives that are laid out for us the way children slip into the clothes their mother lays out for them in the morning. No one decides. We don't live our lives by choice, but by default. — Jed McKenna

I don't see it as my role to save or rescue anybody any more than regular people feel the need to rescue each other from sleeping and dreaming. — Jed McKenna

Listen! Here's all you need to know to become enlightened: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what's true until you know. That's it. That's the whole deal; a complete teaching of enlightenment, a complete practice. If you ever have any questions or problems - no matter what the question or problem is - the answer is always exactly the same: Sit down, shut up, and ask yourself what's true until you know. In other words, go jump off a cliff. Don't go near the cliff and contemplate jumping off. Don't read a book about jumping off. Don't study the art and science of jumping off. Don't join a support group for jumping off. Don't write poems about jumping off. Don't kiss the ass of someone else who jumped off. Just jump. — Jed McKenna

There is no such thing as a rational person. We are emotional creatures with some token capacity for reason. — Jed McKenna

The bottom line remains the same: you're either awake or you're not.One day, there it is. Nothing. No more enemies, no more battles. — Jed McKenna

The belief that something is wrong is the fire under the ass of humanity, is how I explain it to Sarah. — Jed McKenna

Enlightenment is the unprogrammed state. — Jed McKenna

Only themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves, As Souls only understand Souls. Walt Whitman — Jed McKenna

The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world's recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened. Some are great mystics, some are great scholars, some are both, and most are neither, but very few are awake. This core misconception will be a big theme in this book because it's the primary obstacle in the quest for enlightenment. Nobody's getting there because nobody knows where there is, and those who are entrusted to point the way are, for a variety of reasons, pointing the wrong way. At the very heart of this confusion lies the belief that abiding non-dual awareness - enlightenment - and the non-abiding experience of cosmic consciousness - mystic union - are synonymous when, in fact, they're completely unrelated. — Jed McKenna

Both In and Out of the Game Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. Walt Whitman — Jed McKenna

Enlightenment isn't when you go there; it's when there comes here. — Jed McKenna

There's nothing left to contend against and nothing left that must be done, and there will never be anything that must be done ever again. — Jed McKenna

It is your show.
It is your universe.
There is no one else here, just you,
and nothing is being withheld from you.
You are completely on your own.
Everything is available for direct knowing.
No one else has anything you need.
No one else can lead you, pull you, push you or carry you. — Jed McKenna