Six Common Traps on the Path to Enlightenment

Most People.

If they're going to.

Get caught some place that's going to prevent them from becoming enlightened it's going to be in allocating.

So much time and energy to finding the right map, the right model for my teacher, the right situation.

That there's little time in Enerji left to actually do the practice.

So we might call that the map trap.

The second trap on this speaking broadly.

About the spiritual path is what we might call the fundamentalism trial.

You buy into a mythological system.

That allows you to make.

Dramatic and significant improvements in both your happiness subjectively and your behavior object if Lee.

Even small positive changes in a person's life in terms of being happier subjectively and behaving better objectively. That's what I mean by positive changes even small positive changes in a person's life are.

Very very difficult to come by ask any psychotherapist.

To have huge positive changes in a person's life quickly dramatically.

That's not a small thing.

Something really good happens.

The problem is your intellectual horizons have now become closed the very mythological structure that allowed for these positive changes.

Prevents the next stage in positive change the antidote for not getting caught in a good place for the fundamentalist is too.

Realize what I just said.

If they can't.

Let's say that you do a meditation practice, you can.

Achieve states of common concentration and that's certainly a good thing.

But year after year after year that's sort of where you're at, is it down. Everything is sort of.

Train full time passes quickly you get up your refreshed.

But that's about it.

Well, that's a good place, but

It's you can go beyond that, to a better place. So we might call that the tranquility trap. The antidote for that particular getting caught in a good good place is you take these blissful tranquil, States and then you clarify them by distinguishing different flavors of restfulness that brings a clarification component into the tranquility peace.

You think that you're going closer and closer to the source by exploring the world of Archetypes. Special powers leave your body experiences. Former lives you name, it, it can be a good place, but it can also limit you.

You think you're making spiritual progress going deeper and deeper and deeper towards performance source, but actually you've turned 90 degrees. You're now on a trajectory that's at right angles to going down to the source of consciousness, but you don't know it. You're going out out out exploring the power problems.

If you deconstruct the realm of Spirits Mindfully, it will take you to spirit.

And that's the anecdote to the realms of power trap. You interpret the experience of the power runs as a sensor event just like any other sensory event.

Our bizarre you treated as though it were but now.

Add you apply concentration clarity at equanimity to it as you would with any other sensory event and that then allows you to go deeper and deeper and deeper towards not the realm of spirits, but.

The role of the great spirit shall we say that form was doing that are Macaya.

It can happen that you get classical enlightenment period is the real thing. It's permanent. You've seen the note self, but you think you know more than you do.

And you come out even start teaching from that place and that's another good place you can get caught in.

Enlightenment is of many faceted.

Jewel you can see it from many, many sides in my experience. It's a continuum of vast continuum with many facets a person could easily miss some of those facets.

Just 'cause you seen the no self.

Doesn't mean you?

Don't have a long, long way to go.

To become truly liberated from your old habits? What should we call it.

The Enlightenment trap.

Well, they antidote to that is the courage to take feedback from other teachers.

And to find teachers vastly senior to yourself.

To take feedback from them.

Constantly take feedback from your environment one of my teachers used to say kill nor Satori Wabash Tunnel, much if I you may know sartori. It's the Japanese for awakening today's enlightenment is tomorrow's mistake.

Meaning you have to be constantly willing to move forward.

The Observer Trap is the characteristic weakness in the mindfulness way of working now that doesn't mean.

That, it's a show stopper. It just means when you work with in that way. You have to be aware that this could be a problem and you have to be aware of what the antidote is what the fixes.

2 parts to the fix the 1st is to bear in mind. what I just said that there is this possible danger. If you're not aware of this possible danger then.

You know you might fall into that trap.

So you know that this could be a possible danger, but then how do we not have that happen.

Well.

Think about when you learn to drive a car assuming you have learned to drive a car.

When you first.

Attempt to do it, I remember when I first learned to drive the car was on a stick shift.

And it took so much effort and I had to think about everything I could just barely do it and I thought to myself, I'll never be able to operate. This car and do anything else, I'll just have to be constantly thinking about 2 dozen things I have to be constantly thinking about.

But you know what after 6 months I'm just.

Bopping, along on the freeways in la that was singing to the radio munching on a burrito.

Talking to somebody and it's rush hour traffic.

Small log it's chaos.

Ann.

No problem.

What happened?

The.

Fact of having driven so much.

Was driving the car In other words, the driving became second nature?

Mindfulness practice.

Develops concentration sensory clarity and equanimity.

At first you have to think about it.

And it takes a lot of effort.

At some point, the concentration clarity and equanimity start to go on autopilot.

Then.

The subtle mental images.

Subtle internal conversations.

And subtle emotional sensations in the body that.

Create the sense that there is someone meditating that there is a self directing this process.

Those sensory arisings.

Start to get in folded within the momentum of the concentration clarity and equanimity without the need for more of them to be directing the process. In other words, just driving metaphor, the habit of driving eventually can drive your car.

So, in the mindfulness metaphor, the habit of mindfulness eventually meditates.

You.

And seeps around and dissolves the sense of a meditator.

And that's how it works.