Today’s message will be heavy. It won’t be fun reading. If you’re not doing well psychologically: please take good care of yourself and I advise you to skip this message for now.
Picture for a moment that you take an average person off the street. Now give that person a billion dollars in the bank, an amazing and fully compatible partner, children if they’re desired, a beautiful home and all the social connections needed to do either hobbies or meaningful things.
Then fast forward a year.
I don’t even have to argue that this person will experience some level of boredom, discontent, aimlessness, unhappiness, depression, anxiety, etc. Right? You know on a gut level that will be the case. There are endless examples of rich people that aren’t happy or aren’t fully happy.
Think of how strange that is. You give the self all the riches in the world... and the self is still not fully happy. Now yes, maybe this person is pretty happy, but isn’t it weird that they’re not fully happy?
Or from a biological perspective: you can give a person all the food and wealth they desire, plus an amazing partner and children... and the person is still not (fully) happy.
So, what’s going on?
Well, biologically it’s beneficial if a specific part of the organism is perpetually craving more, and is perpetually anxious about losing what they already have.
This part of the organism pressures the organism into always chasing more wealth, more status, more quality mating opportunities. And this part always anxiously scans for possible future events that might cause a loss of resources / status / mating opportunities.
I metaphorically call this part of the organism “the suffering module”, because it produces craving (the carrot) and anxiety (the stick). This carrot and stick then drive the organism towards biologically beneficial behavior, such as hoarding and jealously guarding resources.
This is psychologically brutal, but biologically it’s very effective. And it’s why people aren’t able to ever be fully satisfied for more than a brief period of time. Even if they have everything, then their suffering module doesn’t stop craving more and being anxious about losing what they have.
This suffering module has to be a small part of the organism, because you can’t have the organism just sitting on the couch feeling miserable all day. That wouldn’t be productive. The organism has to be effective and functional and be motivated to do things, and then a small suffering module can nudge the organism towards biologically useful behavior.
Sometimes the organism is able to resist the suffering module, and sometimes it isn’t.
Okay, now please spend ten seconds or so summarizing what I’ve said so far. You don’t have to repeat all the little nuances, but just summarize for yourself in broad strokes what I said so far, in one or two sentences.
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Maybe you summarized it as something like: “There’s a “suffering module” part of me that produces craving and anxiety, to drive me towards biologically beneficial behaviors.”
Or maybe you had a slightly different summary. Well, regardless of whether your summary was along those lines or a bit different:
Almost certainly you automatically and unconsciously snuck an assumption into your summary. It’s an assumption that I never said, and it’s actually a false assumption, yet almost certainly you automatically and unconsciously made it. Can you spot what it is?
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The assumption you’re almost certainly sneaking in is that you’re the organism, or the pilot of the organism, or the soul connected to the organism, or oneness itself experiencing this organism. And you’re assuming that the suffering module is some part of you.
But I never said that.
You’re not the organism, or its pilot, or its soul, or oneness experiencing the organism.
In reality, you (what you think of as the self) are the suffering module of the organism.
You don’t have a suffering module as a part of you. You are the suffering module, and that’s all you are. You are nothing except the suffering module.
This is the first noble truth of Buddhism, expressed in modern language.
It’s not that you’re the brave knight (the organism) heroically resisting the craving / anxious part of you (the suffering module).
It’s that you ARE the craving / anxious part of the organism, and the organism is trying to resist you.
For example, one scenario’s direct observation is:
- see a cookie
- cravings for the cookie
- decision “no” and walk away
An average person interprets that as:
- I see a cookie
- A bad part of me generates cravings
- I decide “no” and walk away. I’m a hero who has resisted a bad part of me.
The reality is, as buddhism and cutting-edge modern science agree:
- the organism sees a cookie
- I generate cravings
- the organism decides “no” and walks away. The organism has successfully resisted me.
It’s hard to wrap your mind around this because every villain thinks they’re the heroic protagonist of the story. But yes, informally and dualistically speaking, you are the villain (the craving / anxiety producer) and not the hero (the organism trying to resist that).
Although of course from a nondual perspective, neither is a hero and neither is a villain.
And from a biology perspective, the suffering module isn’t a villain or a flaw; it’s very useful in getting the organism to engage in biologically beneficial behaviors such as hoarding resources or playing status games.
Still, the real person is the organism. It is the one with the soul. Whereas you, the suffering module, don’t have a soul.
All you do is falsely take credit for actions that your organism performs. Your organism drinks a glass of water, and you claim “I chose to drink a glass of water” but you didn’t. That was the organism’s doing.
You are the little brother whose controller isn’t plugged into the playstation (a video game console), yet who is still convinced that they’re controlling the character. Yet if the little brother screams hard enough, he may still be able to influence the older brother (the organism) whose controller actually is plugged in.
All the humanity is part of the organism, not you. Without you, the organism still eats, dances, writes poetry, falls in love, et cetera, depending on the particular personality of the organism.
Enlightenment means dissolving / uninstalling / extinguishing the suffering module i.e. you. And then the organism keeps walking around and doing things, now unburdened by its suffering module. That’s why enlightenment is the end of suffering.
You literally can’t reach enlightenment. Your organism can, but by definition you won’t be around to enjoy it. After all, enlightenment is precisely the state without you -- nothing more and nothing less.
What people want is to reach a “super self” state, where the self remains and becomes upgraded, and also suffering ends. But that’s literally impossible. Yes, self-improvement can reduce suffering while leaving you in place, however the only way to fully end suffering is to dissolve the self, i.e. dissolve you.
That’s quite a claim to make. Now let me show why that’s true.
Notice how weird it is that you can be completely filled with some craving: to have ill-advised sex with that person, to eat junk food, perhaps even to jump off the bridge, whatever it is. And yet in most cases your organism moves forward and doesn’t take the self-destructive action. This perfectly fits with you being the suffering module: even if you’re completely filled with craving or a destructive impulse, often your organism still is able to resist it.
If you’d actually pilot your body, then whenever you’re filled with the urge to eat that pizza or sleep with that person, you’d just do it. After a few years of this, your life might very well be heavily damaged. And this is a relatively nice modern era: in past eras if you slept with someone’s wife, her husband might straight up kill you.
So you can’t be the pilot of the body. But you have to think you’re the pilot of the body or you’d become passive or suffer psychological collapse, and then you wouldn’t serve your purpose anymore of pushing the organism towards biologically beneficial behavior.
And if you say “you’re being too cynical, I’m not actually sleeping with every attractive person I see”: right, and you’re not doing that because you’ve never been the pilot of your body.
As the Buddha said in his second sermon: if you’re the organism or the pilot of the organism, simply command your mind or body to never suffer or change. But you can’t. Therefore, you’re not the organism or the pilot of the organism.
To use a modern argument: if you were the organism, and you had a billion dollars and a perfect life, it should be super easy to shut off your craving and anxiety, right? But even in that situation, you can’t fully shut up your suffering module. And you can’t get the suffering module to shut up because you are the suffering module.
If you were the (pilot of the) organism, you’d be able to locate which precise part of you is causing cravings and anxiety -- not just when there’s clear childhood trauma underlying it, but always. However, you can’t do this. Why? Because the cravings and anxiety come from you; that’s why you can’t point to where precisely they’re coming from. The eye can see everything except itself.
Or in more colorful language: your experience is probably that in lots of situations there’s anxiety and cravings, usually without you being able to pinpoint which exact part of you generates anxiety and cravings for what reason. Well, if everywhere you go you smell dog poo, but you can’t see dog poo anywhere, then probably the dog poo is under your own shoes -- then probably the cravings and anxiety come from you.
If people’s selves were the (pilot of the) organism, then you would expect that enlightened masters would have left behind an easy 1-2-3 step guide on how to become enlightened. And moderately motivated people would just follow those steps and become enlightened, similar to how moderately motivated people go to the gym and get a fit body.
But that doesn’t happen. Why not?
Well, it’s because writing down “you’re the suffering module, here are exercises to dissolve you” just isn’t a pitch that is appealing to a suffering module. And hence the suffering module immediately distorts or discards the message.
And that’s why there are five hundred different definitions of enlightenment. It’s because the truth is so unappealing that no one wants to face it, hence everyone just makes up a new story about what enlightenment actually is.
If enlightenment indeed were “you’re the pilot of the body, let’s do some meditation to end your suffering”, then some forward-looking countries would make “get teenagers enlightened” part of high school -- because enlightenment actually is something you can achieve in a minute. However schools don’t make that part of their curriculum, because actual enlightenment means literally dissolving the self.
Why are enlightened people more effective? It’s because they don’t have the overhead of a suffering module anymore. They metaphorically freed up their RAM, which may enable them to do exceptional things. Whereas in the conventional view, it’s not really explainable what the mechanism would be how a person would suddenly upgrade to a “super version of themselves.”
If enlightenment were “becoming a super version of yourself” then that would just be the human baseline. Everyone would be born enlightened and would remain enlightened their entire lives. But that doesn’t happen. Why not? It’s because the suffering module indeed imposes overhead on the organism, but it’s still biologically beneficial. That’s why people are born with it.
Also, what I’m saying makes it clear why some people reach enlightenment in a second (their suffering module simply crashes), while others meditate for their entire lives and don’t reach enlightenment (it’s very hard to see and accept “I am the suffering module”).
What I’m saying makes it clear why even in a Zen school headed by an enlightened master, where all the pupils are sincerely trying to reach enlightenment, even there most pupils won’t get enlightened. It’s just inherently very hard to uninstall the self while the self is busy producing all kinds of self-defending nonsense to mislead the organism.
What I’m saying makes clear why on one hand people need to do spiritual practice to reach enlightenment (the suffering module doesn’t stop by itself except in very rare cases). Yet on the other hand “there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go” (because enlightenment is just the organism without a suffering module).
What I’m saying makes clear why on one hand some enlightened people seem very remarkable (their anxiety module just isn’t firing anymore which seems like a superpower to an outsider). Yet at the same time enlightened people typically describe their state as being very ordinary (it’s just normal life without the suffering module, otherwise nothing changes; it’s still chopping wood and carrying water).
What I’m saying is why Zen masters used Koans, i.e. questions that had no logical answer. Koans are meant to try and crash the craving / anxiety engine, i.e. the suffering module. Whereas if enlightenment actually were “meditate until you unlock your super self”, as the conventional view is, then why would the old masters give Koans at all? Giving people impossible riddles is how you crash an engine, not how you upgrade an engine.
Also: you can check yourself that what I’m saying here is what the Buddha said, simply expressed in modern language. With the exception being that I’m saying the organism has a soul, and the Buddha didn’t.
The Buddha’s logic is very straightforward and inescapable: you are the suffering module. To end suffering, you should reach nirvana, which translates to extinguishing [craving i.e. yourself]. And after you’ve extinguished yourself, that’s the state of anattā, which literally means “no self.”
The logic holds up.
Whereas the Buddha sounds unhinged under the 2026 conventional worldview: “you’re the (pilot of the) organism. Sometimes you suffer, but that’s fixable by doing meditation. Therefore you should extinguish yourself, and reach the state of no-self.” Huh? That doesn’t make sense at all. Therefore, this 2026 conventional worldview is wrong.
People might argue here “wait, nirvana doesn’t mean extinguishing yourself. Nirvana means extinguishing craving.” Sure, but Buddhism also says that you are craving. So Buddhism says that you should extinguish cravings i.e. yourself, and then you reach the state of no-self. Whereas if extinguishing craving didn’t mean extinguishing yourself... then how come you reach the state of no self (anattā) after eliminating craving?
A possible counterargument against all this might be: “Most people seem fine, they don’t seem to have nearly as much anxiety and craving as you suggest.”
Sure, but look at the extreme measures people take to satisfy their cravings:
- If you’re left-wing: isn’t it crazy that people are destroying nature in order to satisfy their short-term financial cravings? And isn’t it crazy that people who already have more money than they can spend, just keep grabbing more to satisfy their cravings, even when it hurts the poor -- their brothers and sisters?
- If you’re right-wing: isn’t it crazy that people are putting the nation into unsustainable debt, thereby selling our children’s future, in order to satisfy their short-term financial cravings? And isn’t it crazy that people are destroying the entire fabric of the country so that they can virtue-signal, and thereby satisfy their status cravings?
Similarly, look at the extreme measures people take to deal with anxiety:
- they call people they strongly disagree with a fascist / communist, and want them to be re-educated or at least made powerless.
- they call every other substantial country evil, and want all those countries made powerless too
- they call everyone who contradicts the mainstream narrative (and thereby fuels anxiety in them) a crazy conspiracy theorist, even if they’re a doctor or scientist.
- most people engage in a pattern where they just stick a negative label on people they don’t like, and then proceed to use that label to dehumanize them. This, by itself, is a crazy pattern, yet the vast majority of people engage in it.
- Plus people play a lot of subtle status games or “only my group knows the truth” games.
So yes, the suffering modules are quite active.
Now sure, people don’t spend literally every waking hour of their life being a ball of anxiety, but remember: the suffering module just is a small overlay over the actual being, the organism itself.
Enlightenment means that you (i.e. the suffering module) are dissolved / extinguished / uninstalled. And your organism keeps walking around, now without the overhead and hoarding behaviors of the “self.”
Without this “self” overhead, it’s more authentic and more effective and less selfish. And because humans are naturally a communal species, most enlightened people are loving.
And it’s natural that most enlightened people tend to be compassionate, because from their perspective: “those poor unenlightened people still have a suffering module.”
That said, if someone is physically addicted to something, they remain physically addicted after enlightenment.
Jiddu Krishnamurti was enlightened, yet also had a secret, multi-decade affair with his closest friend’s wife. Even without a craving / anxiety module overlaid on top, the organism may still want sex, and isn’t necessarily nice.
Both Buddhism and science say that a unified permanent “self” doesn’t exist. Instead what you think of as “you” is made up of changing submodules, e.g. a part that creates craving for resources, and a part that creates anxiety about personal safety. If enlightenment is reached, you are dissolved: which also means that these submodules are dissolved.
Still, I don’t think that’s a helpful mental model for the purposes of reducing suffering or enlightenment. I think my less “zoomed in” mental model of the suffering module is also true and is more practically useful.
The enlightened person still understands the concept of safety, and might make choices to ensure his safety, and will reflexively pull back his hand when touching something very hot. But the enlightened person isn’t anxious about his safety anymore. The enlightened person will realize something is an unsafe action, yet enlightened people may be unusually willing to take such actions anyway, because they’re not anxious about protecting a self.
Enlightened people can still get briefly angry, because that’s just part of the human organism. This is the metaphorical “first arrow.” However there’s no metaphorical “second arrow”: there’s no resentment, there’s no “oh no I’m a bad person because I got angry”, there’s no “I will take revenge”, there’s no “oh no now people won’t like me anymore”, et cetera.
Enlightened people don’t get angry for ego-defensive reasons, but they can still get angry at genuine injustice for example.
I’d stop using the term “ego” entirely because it suggests that there’s a “you”, and then there’s an “ego” and enlightenment means doing something with the ego and leaving you intact. That’s false: enlightenment means extinguishing you. Enlightenment doesn’t leave behind a super you, or a you freed from (excessive) ego; enlightenment leaves behind no you at all. You’re gone.
The term “ego” lets a self generate status anxiety, and then launder that by saying “my ego doesn’t like that he’s getting a promotion instead of me.” No, you don’t like that he’s getting a promotion instead of you.
Now yes, properly integrating the ego is a decent mental model for how you can achieve spiritual growth. But that’s not enlightenment.
Personally I think people should dissolve themselves and become enlightened, and I think that’s basically all upside -- except that well, you’d be gone, and you may not want that. But of course, once the organism is actually enlightened, you won’t be there to be unhappy about being dissolved. And the beautiful parts of humanity are all part of the organism, not of you.
And yes, I acknowledge that this “you’re the suffering module” situation is monstrously unfair. It is. I’m sorry.
You can’t say “this person behaves like the Buddha therefore they’re enlightened, whereas that person doesn’t behave like the Buddha therefore they’re not enlightened.” Both of those statements could very well be wrong.
Enlightened people are simply people with no suffering module / self. Still, their organism’s personalities may be entirely different.
Despite this, let’s look at some examples of enlightened people.
Have you watched Avatar: The Last Airbender? I’m referring to the classic animated series from 2005. In it, Uncle Iroh is an excellent example of an enlightened person. He’s unapologetically himself, he absolutely doesn’t care about looking foolish, he’d probably laugh if you insulted him, yet he still actively helps people around him and he’s very effective when he wants to be. If he’s angry, he’s angry; if he cries, he cries; and he has no problem with either.
Uncle Iroh is almost more alive than normal people. If you watch the show (or look up some Uncle Iroh clips on YouTube), I think you’ll see what I mean.
Many people who watched this series failed to realize that Iroh was enlightened. Indeed, many people genuinely wouldn’t recognize a random enlightened person if they were talking to him or her.
If you meet an enlightened person, you might just think that they’re an effective, kind person with no inner friction, but you won’t necessarily recognize that as enlightenment.
To be clear, lack of inner friction by itself isn’t enough for enlightenment. A psychopath has no inner friction, but a psychopath is obsessively chasing a self-agenda. Whereas the enlightened person has no self and hence no self-agenda.
And yes, if an enlightened person is also exceptional in other ways, and also has a “Buddha like” personality, and also has certain abilities, then everyone recognizes them as enlightened. But the average enlightened person isn’t like that, yet is still enlightened.
“Supernatural” abilities don’t make someone enlightened, and lack of “supernatural” abilities doesn’t prove that someone is unenlightened.
As another example: Philippians 2:7 says “[Jesus] made himself nothing”, pointing to self-dissolving.
Next up: I, Tunia, am enlightened. Yes, I know, I’m still using the term “I”, but it’s hard to communicate in English without it. And yes, while it’s true that enlightened people don’t randomly brag for no reason, sometimes enlightened people do say they’re enlightened -- in this case, because it serves the practical purpose of providing you with another example.
My lack of inhibition, lack of shame and my complete comfortableness with who I am is how my organism acts without a “self” around.
The self often makes someone behave more normally, because the self fears repercussions of not doing so.
Without the self, the person doesn’t engage in resource-hoarding and safety-hoarding behaviors, and (depending on the personality of the organism) sometimes doesn’t bother with socially acceptable behavior at all. This means that some enlightened people show extremely uncommon behaviors, even as other enlightened people are very unremarkable.
For example, Akka Mahadevi was a young, beautiful enlightened woman in 12th century India. She was married to a king. Well great, any normal woman in that situation would just be the queen and have children, right?
Well, Akka Mahadevi considered herself spiritually married to Shiva, one of the gods of Hinduism. The king wanted to have sex with her. She refused. He argued that as her husband, he owned her body, her royal robes and her jewels.
In response, she stripped naked and walked out of the palace. And then she went on a long naked walk and eventually she reached a group of Indian mystics (while still being naked). She lived there for a while as an ascetic before dying young and childless.
This illustrates why biologically it’s beneficial to have a self in the first place. Without a self, her organism threw away the easiest path imaginable towards abundance and reproduction (your husband the king wants to sleep with you => you sleep with him).
That’s why you, the self, exists -- to stop organisms from acting like that.
If she had a self, most likely that self would have generated sufficient craving for resources / status / sex, and sufficient anxiety about the future, that she would have had sex with the king. Which biologically speaking was far superior to dying young and childless.
You can argue “her behavior is understandable, good on her for guarding her boundaries against a possessive man.” Sure, but note that her behavior goes much further than that. A strong-minded woman with a self might have left the king and married some other, good man instead. But she didn’t do that either. Instead, without a self, she walked across 12th century India naked as a young beautiful woman, which is just a level of needless risk that no person with a self would take. But then again, an enlightened person isn’t anxious about defending a self.
Here’s a poem she wrote:
“Peel the skin, take off the flesh, cut open the heart—and see, if there is any ‘you’ or ‘me’ inside.”
Observe the subtle mistake that people with selves often make: they keep projecting some “uplifted self” onto a person who has no self.
It’s easy to think of Mahadevi as the perfectly devoted spiritualist: someone so devoted to Shiva that she wanted to eliminate all distractions, and hence she left her husband. But that reading doesn’t fit because walking around naked as a young beautiful woman means that her Shiva meditations get interrupted much more often. If she just wanted to meditate in peace and get bothered as little as possible... then she would have walked around wearing clothes.
Other people would think of Mahadevi as a 12th century feminist activist who walked around naked because she was trying to destroy patriarchal norms. However that reading also doesn’t fit: when she reached that famous group of mystics, she just became an ascetic and then died. She didn’t actually try to start a social movement.
Other people might see Mahadevi as a true spiritual master, and sure, she was. However, one time when men leered at her and one man said “what will all these men think of you, walking around naked like this”, she responded with: “I see no men here. Only animals.” So while she is a true spiritual master, she doesn’t conform to the “infinitely loving and compassionate” idea that people have in their head of what a spiritual master is like.
Plus she died in her 20s, which also doesn’t fit with people’s idea that spiritual masters can just manifest perfect health and abundance and safety at will. Now yes some enlightened people have significant spiritual abilities, but others don’t.
People with selves often project some kind of heroic self on to people without selves (she’s a devoted spiritualist! she’s a feminist! she’s a true spiritual master!). But the reality is much simpler: the enlightened person just doesn’t have a self.
The heroic self that you project onto enlightened people comes from you. It doesn’t come from them. You’re just projecting.
Mahadevi wasn’t naked because she wanted to change society’s attitudes. She just didn’t wear clothes because... she didn’t wear clothes.
As another enlightened person said: “I am not anti-rational, just unrational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine.” (source https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/U._G._Krishnamurti)
The self constantly generates post-hoc rationalizations: after the organism acts, the self thinks “I took that action, and I did it for this reason.” This is socially and biologically useful. But it’s not true: these are just rationalizations.
Conversely, the enlightened organism doesn’t have that overhead. It just acts.
An enlightened person will tell you: “what am I going to do an hour from now? I don’t know. I can speculate, but I don’t know. Why did I do that? I don’t know. I can speculate, but I don’t know.“ And yes, this is socially much less useful, but it is true.
The craving / anxious self is actually a benefit for people in leadership positions.
If you have an enlightened person in charge, the average year is quite pleasant and quite well-planned, but if an unlikely crisis hits you’ll find that the enlightened leader didn’t sufficiently prepare for it -- because enlightened people aren’t constantly hoarding resources and anxiously thinking about the future.
Indeed, Hakann and Ashtar are not enlightened.
While Ashtar is imperfect, you don’t see all the mistakes an enlightened person would have made in Ashtar’s chair. Or all the responsibilities that an enlightened person would have been unsuited for that Ashtar is handling properly.
I’m hoping you wouldn’t actually rather have me in charge than Ashtar.
And if you think “well, we want Ashtar, but just an enlightened version of him” -- that’s the “super self” illusion. An enlightened person doesn’t have a super self. Instead an enlightened person has no self, and has no self-preservation drive that comes along with that.
Fortunately for everyone, I’m not in a position of authority, so I can be as silly as I want to be. The only people I annoy with my antics are my husband, the rest of my family and a few friends -- and well, some of you, but I like to think you’re consciously signing up for Tunia’s Antics.
I just made a pun that’s very funny in our language but that doesn’t translate at all. Please laugh.
And yes, a sizable group of Pleiadians are enlightened, and a sizable group aren’t. Both live in harmony, and both contribute. Unenlightened people are great for planning and leadership and defense and making sure enough resources are produced and stored. That describes a large number of societal roles.
Plus, from the perspective of your current society, you can get most unenlightened people to do a very unpleasant, dangerous or tiring job by just paying them a lot of money. Whereas “do this job, we’ll pay you a lot of money” won’t necessarily convince an enlightened person. The enlightened person might be happy to do a certain job, but then again also might not be.
Because of this, I’d drop the dualistic view that enlightened people are just superior to non-enlightened people. You genuinely don’t want everyone in society to be enlightened.
Still, while unenlightened people are better at these specific societal roles, enlightened people are better at pretty much everything else. The suffering module is overhead and produces friction, so if it’s not explicitly a benefit to have it (such as for someone in leadership), then having an enlightened person in that position is more effective. If you can convince the enlightened person to actually do that job.
You might think unenlightened people would be better poets or psychologists. Well, an unenlightened person would be better at writing a gripping poem about the anxieties of life. But in general, an enlightened person understands unenlightened people perfectly well, and if so inclined would be a better poet or psychologist than an unenlightened person. Some enlightened people wrote excellent poems about love or grief. Rumi was an amazing poet.
You don’t have to seek enlightenment. It’s perfectly valid not to seek it.
Still, enlightenment will end craving and anxiety in the organism. It won’t stop the first arrow we discussed, but it will stop the second arrow.
And the people around you will substantially benefit.
Unenlightened people in relationships give their partner love that’s partly conditional and partly distorted by their own anxieties, cravings and self-interest. Meanwhile they expect (on at least an emotional level) to get unconditional, undistorted love from their partner.
Well, an enlightened partner can actually give the closest thing to unconditional, undistorted love that exists.
I love my children very much. They (including my non-enlightened child) genuinely think I’m a great mom. And my children are doing well, including by conventional standards.
My husband also genuinely thinks I’m an amazing wife. Jokes aside, I really do fiercely love him and support him, in as close to an unconditional and unclouded way as exists.
If your organism reaches enlightenment, it will be better to the people around it, including to its partner and children. You might think “but then my partner won’t have ME anymore” -- but remember, you’re just the suffering module. Everything of value is in the organism, which remains after you’re gone.
It’s a bit brutal to say, but your partner would likely prefer being with your organism without you -- keeping in mind that you are just the suffering module.
And yes, I know there’s a stereotype that when someone reaches enlightenment they leave their partner, but an enlightened person is actually less likely to do that than an unenlightened person.
Recall that the Buddha left his wife while unenlightened because he was seeking an end to suffering. Then after his enlightenment, he returned to his family, reconciled and eventually his wife and his son joined his order and reached enlightenment themselves.
In this section, when I talk about Modern Western spirituality, I mean the type of spirituality that’s about “love and light”, Western neo-tantra, channeling, “raising your vibrations”, “stand in your power”, manifesting things, affirmations, etc. Right now I’m not talking about traditions like Zen.
Modern Western spirituality and modern Western occultism focus strongly on the self: improve the self, purify the self, uplift the self, cleanse the self, teach the self how to manifest and how to use certain abilities, have the self repeat affirmations such as “you’re worthy / loved”, et cetera.
Focusing strongly on the self makes complete sense under the conventional worldview, where the self is the pilot of the body. Under that view, empowering the pilot means that the person does less bad things.
However, while there’s some great people in these communities, there are also a large number of egoic people there who bulldoze other people’s worldviews, who insist that only they have the truth and who play status games. Not to mention that there are some spiritual teachers out there who abuse their students.
And the modern Western spiritual or occult communities have produced, as far as I’m aware, zero enlightened masters -- while producing a lot of people who think they’re amazing.
That makes absolute sense if the self is the craving / anxiety producing module. Because if you constantly focus on and try to empower and uplift the craving / anxiety module... then oooooh boy, that has the potential to backfire. And it often does: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.2721
Hence the stereotype that people often become worse people when they enter the spiritual community (or when they go to a psychologist). That’s not entirely fair, that’s certainly not always true, but sometimes that genuinely happens because the focus on the self feeds the suffering module.
Conversely, despite all of Christianity’s flaws, the average Christian is often kinder and more humble than the average spiritual person, because the average Christian isn’t focused on the self as much. Hence the suffering module doesn’t get empowered as much. Indeed, some spiritual people would rather hang out with Christians than with other spiritual people.
In stories, the villain is the one who is focused on the self and who wants to “manifest things for himself.” Whereas the hero isn’t preoccupied with himself at all and is focused on trying to fix things.
Similarly, Eastern traditions and traditional Western traditions didn’t focus on the self much, or at all. And those traditions produced a lot more enlightened people. Plus the average zen monk is genuinely more humble and kind than the average Western spiritual person.
So, that’s a huge issue: people focus on the self, but actually the self is the suffering module, and focusing on it may empower it.
Then there’s a smaller second issue: classical self-uninstallation schemes are seen by modern people as ways to relax, when they’re really not.
You have for example people going on meditation retreats where they’re not allowed to talk or make eye contact with anyone for a week. For certain meditation periods people are not allowed to move at all even if you’re in pain. This is an old self-uninstallation approach, yet modern people attend such retreats thinking they’ll relax and recharge.
Ironically, the people who become deeply unsettled during such meditation retreats do them “well” from the perspective of the old masters. Whereas the people who have a relaxing and wonderful time didn’t make any progress at all from the perspective of the old masters.
Ideally, people would be clear-eyed and honest.
If you want to feel better or heal or achieve certain practical things or you just want a decent life (which is entirely valid), then parts of the modern Western spiritual and occult communities are genuinely good. For people who are in pain or feel powerless, parts of the modern Western spiritual and occult communities are helpful. But then, realize that you’re not really working towards enlightenment -- towards an end of suffering.
If you’re already doing at least decently and you want to reach enlightenment, then the modern Western spiritual and occult communities are ineffective for that purpose. In this case, put down the pleasantness, sit down and endlessly repeat a self-uninstallation technique.
Rationally understanding all this isn’t enlightenment. Enlightenment isn’t knowing that you are the suffering module; enlightenment is you being uninstalled.
Beware of the trick of the self that it points to a suffering module “over there”, then it “defeats the suffering module” and then it proclaims “yes, now I am enlightened.” The suffering module isn’t “over there” -- you are the suffering module.
If you feel superior to others because you get that you’re the suffering module, and those other sleepers don’t get that -- that’s not enlightenment.
Any time you think of yourself as having overcome this thing, or having integrated that thing, or having achieved such and such, that’s not enlightenment. Enlightenment is when you’re not there anymore.
Ultimately, uninstalling yourself isn’t that easy. Even if you avoid the traps: there just doesn’t exist a one-minute exercise that will uninstall anyone who does it.
If you meditate daily for your entire life, you might reach enlightenment but even then you’ll have poor odds.
However, you do have a reasonable chance of reaching enlightenment if you constantly and relentlessly repeat the following for a few years:
Whenever you have a thought, you just constantly bring your attention back to your wordless sense of beingness (i.e., that you exist and are present).
This is sometimes called the “I am” instruction, but it’s not “I am” as some kind of declaration that you are one with the universe or one with some “greater” being. In fact, you’re not even thinking the words “I am.” Instead you’re bringing your attention back to your wordless sense of beingness.
So for example, if a thought arises such as “I am hungry” or “hopefully my presentation next week goes well”, you just bring your attention back to your wordless sense of beingness. Keep doing this constantly over a period of years, and you’ll eventually starve / crash the suffering module.
You’re not fighting or disagreeing with your thoughts. You’re just constantly bringing your attention back to your sense of beingness, and that is all. You don’t even necessarily need to meditate, although in an ideal world you do this “I am” exercise while also meditating daily.
If you don’t want enlightenment, here’s how you can use this message to practically benefit your life without necessarily dissolving yourself:
Under the old model, if you have a thought like “it’s not fair that person has more money than me”, you may very well take that thought seriously and go into it and think about the unfairness of the situation, and think about how no one sufficiently appreciates or rewards you.
Or maybe you label that as a “bad thought” and you try to go to war with some unseen subpart of you that is thinking “bad thoughts.”
Neither of these two approaches is helpful.
Meanwhile, I propose that you feel the raw physical sensations in your body and then simply think “I, the suffering module, am doing my job: pushing the organism toward resource hoarding.” And then just go on with your day.
Or if you crave junk food, I propose that you feel the raw physical sensations in your body and then think “I, the suffering module, am doing my job: pushing the organism toward calorie hoarding.” And then just go on with your day.
Or if you feel underappreciated, then yes it could be the case that you’re traumatized, or that your friends are toxic. But in most cases, it’s neither of those, and you can solve that by feeling the raw physical sensations in your body and then thinking “I, the suffering module, am doing my job: pushing the organism toward status hoarding.”
That said, I only recommend using this if the suffering module is generating unneeded craving or anxiety. If someone mistreats you, then the proper response is to state your boundaries, walk away, something practical like that.
I also don’t recommend using this to try and override genuine needs you have.
Let’s close this message. Hopefully in the not too distant future we can meet, and I and my sisters and brothers can hug you and lend you a hand, and work with you to make your lives better and more pleasant.
And then, one day when you’ve met us, and when you’ve learned our language...
Then I can finally explain that pun I made earlier. It was really good.
With all my love,
