i’ve always been a compulsive finisher as well as a compulsive starter. i retired within 3 years of deciding i was going to retire. i built japan’s first and best AI recruitment company before that. i quit alcohol. i quit cigarettes, several times. i did all that ironman stuff. i even moved to japan when i was 18 after saying i would when i played FFVII at age 12.
so i look back at this process of insight and it’s all kind of silly now. all the salience attribution, the meaning-making, the grandiose aspirations. they’re all par for the course, but the scaffold was something my own mind created rather than an import from an existing tradition, and my mind likes (or liked, should i say) completion and deadlines.
the writings being aimed at an audience 6 months in the future makes sense; it was just another training plan. working backwards from a deadline and ensuring that i didn’t slip into complacency and form a new identity around one of the stepping stones.
all of the scaffolding is falling away now. maybe this is happening so easily because it was self-created; i am not in a monastery with people talking about attainments and labels and definitions and devas. i was exploded into it without context, and followed the way of the buddha, not the way of buddhism.
he was a bit of a loner too, wasn’t he? he sat under that tree after 7 years of trying everything - not 7 years of just meditation i’ll bet; he will have tried mushrooms and yoga and all sorts in his travels - and he decided he was going to get the job done and move on. and that’s what he did.
i think this is what i did, with the writings for 6 months in the future. i set a deadline so that i couldn’t con myself out and get stuck in the ‘god phase’ as happens to so many. i had no structure at all - aripiprazole just exploded me into non-duality and i was like ‘this is enlightenment but this drug will kill me so how can i optimise things so i don’t need the meds’.
i proceeded to do as much as i could while on the medication and then severely reduce the drive to dopaminergic thrills aka greed in order to quit. but i left a deadline; i drew myself a finish line at 6 months and i guess that everything after that was unconsciously driven by it, just like those notes i put in the cupboard every time i had a project.
the latest note was written about 2.5 years ago and was called ‘mental health’, with a 5 year trajectory. i started doing the art and dissecting the self around then, though i had 12 years of mindfulness throughout life and plenty of ascetic practices in the form of zone two aerobic work and dietary restrictions for the ironman stuff, quitting alcohol, morning pages, etc; so i’d probably been doing the modern day equivalent of the spiritual path for many years unawares. all i knew was that everything was dissatisfactory, and the buddha was right.
so when the mental health industry failed me i went back to the olden ways and used all this experience from my own life - the dopamine hacking, intentional reprogramming, athletic meditation, drug use and whatnot - and i rebuilt the path from fundamental principles but with none of the fanfare and entrapments that comes from a hierarchy like a religion.
i used the dhammapada pairs and extensive self-reflection and meditation for 2 months for the first pharmaceutical-induced awakening, then i sat and said ‘thats the swim done; now for T1, bike, T2 and run’ and i had set myself the time target of 6 months. ha! i just remembered my first ironman with the time limit of 12 hours, and passing the finish line with 11:59.59 on the clock. something like that, but bigger.
anyway i proceeded to loop around the buddhist maps, which i had no idea about before this, and extract the tools from them. then i did some things and went a bit crazy for a while as i inhabited another scaffold. the r/streamentry folks were… mixed. some of them were supportive and others were like ‘psychotic’. some of those people have issues, to be honest, and are maybe causing issues for vulnerable people who are destabilised, but whatever; they were a tool and they showed me that i didn’t want to end up in that quagmire of definitions.
so the sleeper service continued its acceleration and left behind the sublimers. it really is uncanny how the world threw these signals my way and kept me on track. how i was sequestered from my family for large periods of this despite still being a family man. just the right level of isolation and destabilisation to ensure that i did not stabilise around a single ‘path moment’ or new identity and instead just kept building speed.
and then i was sat there like ‘i’m done’ on my birthday in october. the promise to myself at the start that i would be enlightened when i hit 42. and i probably was by most definitions but i guess that i wasn’t quite done because i was still in the ‘god phase’ - where i had done most of the work but was sat on the raft, tied to the far shore.
i think that leaving that raft is too big of an ask for most. it sure was comforting, knowing that everything had meaning and i had arrived. i could probably had sat there for a very long time, if it wasn’t for my completionist streak.
but this wasn’t even conscious; i was again compelled to figure out the meaning and purpose of the scaffold and i destabilised and brought it all full circle at exactly 6 months. to the day. the book that was guiding me (excession) finished, and i beat the game that was leading my way (fft) on the evening of final day…
and that was it; over the finish line. but - as always - some oscillation. some wondering whether the scaffold was real. some ‘compression algorithm’ explanation going on, slightly reinforced by another person on ‘tinternet saying that ‘final enlightenment is this’.
final enlightenment is the dropping of this. maybe. ha. i don’t know. i think it is. the creator of four divine abidings was my guide through a lot of the process and i owe him a lot for always having the right words at the right time.
and he helped me to drop that final scaffold. and now even the writings being for an audience 6 months in the future has fallen away; it was a self-imposed finish line so i didn’t dawdle and sit there with my thumb up my ass congratulating myself for a job well done while i’m still trapped in this idea of an enlightened self like i suspect a lot of people are.
but hey - here we are - normal mind. no suffering. no altered states. i can see why people cling to the raft or the ladder. it gets you there. all meaning in your life crumbles and you build a new, better, more meaningful meaning, and then when you scale that roof or get to the other shore, it can probably be pretty scary to kick the ladder down or cut the boat adrift.
whatever; everything was true and not true. life is what you make it, until you stop making it into something that it isn’t. if you make it into something then you have to keep remaking and remaking and remaking it; forcing the new lumps of clay onto your carefully crafted sculpture until it eventually turns into a monstrosity.
probably easier to just stop sculpting. but attachment is as attachment does, and attachment to the dhamma or your scaffold or your newly crafted persona of awakened-one or arhat or perfected-being is gonna be a pretty big fuckin’ attachment if you don’t watch out.
it’s like kicking any addiction i guess; you get there through a process of substitution. aripiprazole killed all my addictions by drowning them out. this is what the jhāna do, imho; they give you a lovely dopamine font so you don’t need those drugs and relationships and achievements. and this is what the ‘i am god’ or ‘i am awakened’ thing does too; it gives you a single, solid persona you can use to drown out the other disparate persona-fragments you picked up over your life.
and i guess i went and set myself another fuckin’ finish line so i couldn’t just sit there and believe my own bullshit for the rest of time.
woe is me. anyway at least i get to enjoy my ice cream, be with my kids, and ride my snowboard.
before enlightenment cut wood and mix epoxy. after enlightenment cut wood and mix epoxy.
we really need a new word…
/jb202512231405