Enlightenment

Anyone out there read it?  What do you think?

Knew it was gonna be a bit of a mess-with-my-mind, rattle-my-insecure-ego, kind of a book when I read the first page.  Still unsure how I feel about it, I felt it spoke some truth and yet continuously contradicted itself.  I gleamed many gems and also became rather insecure, an enlightenment being  in Jed's terms can appear very much like a sociopath. 

This is a no messing around, very un-flowery version of what it is to be enlightened.   Am still very much mulching over what this means to my practice right now.  I lent it to a friend so I would have a partner to discuss things over with.  

Generally it all rang so very very true, shattering the popular version of what an enlightened being 'should' be.  Once in India I went to listen to someone everyone said had achieved full Samadhi.  One of my more interesting experiences.  When she entered the room one could tell she was different.  But the surprise came when she acted like a total bitch. In this book Jed explains that before enlightenment you are your ego, during you destroy and shed your ego, after you don your ego like clothes to enable you to function in the world again.  So do we tell if a person is enlightened or not just insane?

One simple line that has stayed with me and seems relevant to where I'm at in my practice right now is:

"In the process of waking yourself up, you quickly realize that there's no outside authority. You have to verify everything yourself"

Yes, that's it.