Table of Contents
Introduction: Grounded Enlightenment 1
Part I Questioning the Obvious
Chapter 1 A Powerful Openness 9
Beginning to Wonder 9
Beyond the Self Mind 11
Knowing and Not-Knowing 14
Self and Being 19
Chapter 2 Moving Beyond Belief 25
Learning to Not-Know 25
Natural Contemplation 27
Zen Influence 29
Relating Differently to Beliefs 31
Creating a New Perspective 33
Empty Your Cup 36
Chapter 3 The Cultural Matrix 41
We Are Culture 41
Not-Knowing in Our Culture 47
The Self in Our Culture 50
The Cost of Our Assumptions 52
Your Own Experience of These Consequences 57
Chapter 4 An Experience of Not-Knowing 63
Learning versus Knowing 63
Thinking without a Net 66
What Is an Experience? 69
What Is an Experience of Not-Knowing? 74
What Is an Insight? 77
Chapter 5 The Principles of Discovery 81
Four Cornerstones of Discovery 81
Authentic Experience 84
Honesty 87
Grounded Openness 90
Questioning 95
Embracing Paradox 101
Part II Our Self Experience
Chapter 6 Conceptual Dominance 107
Creating a Conceptual World 107
What Is a Concept? 112
Concepts Dominate Our Perceptions 115
There's More to Perception than Meets the Eye 118
The Solidification of Concepts 120
Challenging Conceptual Dominance 122
Chapter 7 You Don't Have to Rehearse to Be Yourself 129
Being Yourself 129
The Real and the False 131
Masks and Hats 133
Superficial Remedies 137
Looking for Self in All the Wrong Places 139
Chapter 8 Unknown Origins 143
Our "Need to Know" Level of Consciousness 143
Mistaking the Uncognized Mind for the Real Self 147
The Origins of Your Self 151
Part III In Search of Real Being
Chapter 9 What Am I? 159
OurExperience of "Being" 159
Identifying Ourselves 164
Our Conceptual Self Experience 168
Chapter 10 Self and Being 173
What Is a Self? 174
What Is Being? 180
What Is Your Self and What Is Being? 185
Chapter 11 The Self: Noun or Verb? 193
Am I a Noun or a Verb? 196
To Noun or to Verb? 199
"Doing" versus "Being" 204
Part IV Creating Self
Chapter 12 Inventing Self and World 213
The Self-Identity Reinforces Itself 216
The Never-Ending Story of Me 219
Inventions 221
Inventing Personalized Worlds 226
Manipulating Circumstances 230
Chapter 13 Lost in Translation 233
What Is Not and Never Was 233
Interpretation Revisited 236
Reconstructive Interpretation 239
Self as We Know It 243
Life in the Loop 244
Chapter 14 Creating an Experience of Self 251
The Myth of Real Self 251
Apples and Oranges 254
Believing in Your Self 257
Mandatory Misrepresentation 259
Living as a False-Self 260
The Snowball Effect 262
Assembling a Particular Self 267
The Way You Are in Particular 270
Chapter 15 The Self Principle 273
All about You 273
Meaning Steers the Self 276
Two Domains of Survival: Physical and Conceptual 279
Social Survival 282
To Be Frank 286
Surviving as a Self 288
Chapter 16 Survival Is Not Being 291
Three Distinctions in Consciousness 291
What Is "For-Itself"? 297
Beyond Happiness and Suffering: Perceiving Something For-Itself 301
For-Itself versus As-Itself 308
Experiencing the Truth Is Not the Purpose of Self-Survival 309
For-Itself versus As-Itself-an Ontological Overview 315
Surviving Isn't Being 317
What Does Persist? 319
Entertaining the Possibility of Not Surviving 320
Part V Penetrating Experience
Chapter 17 Recognizing Self-Survival in Your Own Experience 325
Getting from Here to There 326
What Is Being at Effect? 327
Becoming More Conscious of Effects 331
Experiencing Something For-Itself 334
Changing from Reaction to Experience 336
Changing Context Changes Effects 341
Chapter 18 Beyond Belief 353
A Quick Review of Belief 354
Getting Free of Our Need to Believe 359
On the Shoulders of Giants 362
Using Beliefs as a Map 364
Radical Openness 367
Eliminating Beliefs 369
The Practice of Dispelling Beliefs 372
A New Experience in Consciousness 376
Chapter 19 Freedom from Assumptions-Part One 381
Making Connections 383
Emptiness 388
Chapter 20 Freedom from Assumptions-Part Two 407
Self-Doubt 407
Feeling Trapped 413
Suffering 416
Struggle 429
Chapter 21 Contemplation 437
Creating a Place to Stand 437
Being as Unknown 441
Contemplation 444
Pre-contemplation 445
Contemplating 451
Developing a Steady Practice 455
Looking Both Ways 465
Chapter 22 Awakening the Uncognized Mind 467
Finding Our Way into the Unconscious 469
Contemplating the Uncognized Mind 470
The Process of Contemplating Uncognized Mind 473
Explaining the Process 476
A Sample Bottom-Line Contemplation 478
Guidelines for Your Bottom-Line Contemplation 482
Five Points of Reference 484
Part VI The Nature of Reality
Chapter 23 The Nature of Emotion 491
Fear 493
Anger 501
Desire 507
Pain 515
Chapter 24 The Nature of Everything 523
What Is Everything? 524
The Distinction "Distinction" 528
Distinctions and Existence 533
Chapter 25 The Nature of Being 539
Meaning Doesn't Mean Anything 539
In Search of Absolute Knowledge 541
The Possibility of Direct Consciousness 545
The Nature of Being 546
The Paradox of Being 552
Being and Self 553
Chapter 26 Being and Life 559
What Now? 559
Life Principles 563
Happiness: Don't Want It 570
Discipline and Freedom 575
The Lava Syndrome 576
A Final Word 578
