Something recently reminded me of a book I had read a long time ago on non-duality called Spiritual Enlightenment: The Darnedest Thing by Jed McKenna. Jumping back to it and skimming some of the passages I had highlighted in the past, something jumped out at me when he spoke about a process called Spiritual Autolysis.
Here’s a Google AI Overview of it below.
Spiritual autolysis, as described by Jed McKenna, is a process of using self-reflection and critical thinking to dismantle false beliefs and uncover truth. It involves questioning everything one believes to be true, examining the underlying assumptions, and discarding those that cannot be proven or are found to be untrue.
Now initially someone might think this is similar to personal knowledge management, especially considering the quotes by Jed below.
The reason for writing it down on paper or on a computer where you can see it is because the brain, unlikely as it may sound, is no place for serious thinking. Any time you have serious thinking to do, the first step is to get the whole shootin’ match out of your head and set it up someplace where you can walk around it and see it from all sides. Attack, switch sides and counter-attack. You can’t do that while it’s still in your head. Writing it out allows you to act as your own teacher, your own critic, your own opponent. By externalizing your thoughts, you can become your own guru—judging yourself, giving feedback, providing a more objective and elevated perspective.
…and I can assure you that while you’re in this process of self-digestion you’re going to develop a voracious appetite for all sorts of knowledge—religious, esoteric, metaphysical, spiritual, New Age, Eastern and Western philosophy, all that and more. You’ll be relying on the knowledge and experience of men and women from throughout history without regard to race or nationality, but your search will take you far beyond human intelligence.
When you’re doing the writing, Spiritual Autolysis, do it for someone else. Write it for someone else. Express your knowledge for someone else’s benefit. Write it for publication, as if the whole world will see it. Or write it as a series of letters to your son, or to an imaginary friend, or to the child you once were. Whatever. Use the process of Spiritual Autolysis as a means of expressing your own highest knowledge for someone else’s benefit.
But this goes far beyond PKM, especially when you read these other quotes about what this process feels like when you’re undertaking it.
No. This isn’t about personal awareness or self-exploration. It’s not about feelings or insights. It’s not about personal or spiritual evolution. This is about what you know for sure, about what you are sure you know is true, about what you are is true. With this process you tear away layer after layer of untruth masquerading as truth. Anytime you go back to read something you wrote, even if it was only yesterday, you should be surprised by how far you’ve come since then. It’s actually a painful and vicious process, somewhat akin to self-mutilation. It creates wounds that will never heal and burns bridges that can never be rebuilt and the only real reason to do it is because you can no longer stand not to.
Spiritual Autolysis is an intellectual endeavor, but I balk at calling it a path of intellect. It’s a process of discrimination, of unknowing what is untrue, of progressively stripping away the false and leaving only what is true. Discrimination is used in a machete-like manner for hacking one’s way through the dense underbrush of delusion, or, if you prefer, in a swordlike manner for hacking off one’s own delusion-riddled head. Intellect is used as the sword with which ego commits a slow and agonizing suicide—the death of a thousand cuts.
For some reason these words resonated with me but I couldn’t figure out why. Then when I read the following, something clicked.
It doesn’t matter where you start. You could start by using Ramana Maharshi’s query, ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What is me?’, and then just work at it. Just try to say something true and keep at it until you do. Write and rewrite. Make it cleaner and cut out the excess and ego and follow it wherever it leads until you’re done.
This quote above sums up my life since 2001, when my entire world turned upside down and I start looking for a new way of working and a new way of being. In effect, I wasn’t just questioning the conventional concept of work. I was questioning the concept of who I was, my identity.
And like I mentioned above, this lead me on an adventure exploring knowledge I wasn’t even aware of before 2001. It began with the future of work, led to creativity, and eventually to vertical development (of which non-duality is usually embraced by people within the latter stages of psychological development).
And more recently over the past decade, I’ve mentioned more and more about having frustrations at being able to express and communicate things that I find are almost impossible to explain to conventional minded people, so much so that it feels like I’m being ripped apart in the process.
What I’m trying to say here is this.
What if I’ve been undergoing this process for more than two decades but I’ve been completely unaware of it?
And what if the experience of feeling like I’m being ripped apart in trying to express these things I’m learning in my own life aren’t a sign that I’m stuck but paradoxically a a sign that I’m going in the right direction?
Ya, imagine that? Feeling like you’re being ripped apart and that’s a sign you’re actually going in the right direction…and not the wrong direction?
Why this is starting to make sense to me in an absurdly strange way is because for the last year or two, ChatGPT has been explaining something to me that I couldn’t fully understand and wrap my head around.
It was saying that the ambiguity and uncertainty of the experiences I was going through are why I’m more aware and knowledgeable of what it means to embody a Self-Transforming Mind than I believed myself.
However it said the reason I feel confused is because I’m assuming my role is to teach people “knowledge” to help them on their journey. But it isn’t. That’s a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of my Self-Authoring Mind still trying to maintain control of me.
To put this another way, what if this threshold I’m crossing is something that can’t be explained to be understood?
What if it can only be experienced to be understood.
What I’m getting at here is what if this isn’t about knowledge accumulation?
What if it’s about identity acclimatization?
What I mean by acclimatization is understanding something by immersing yourself within that environment and fully experiencing it firsthand.
Examples of this would be like learning to swim or learning about a different culture in another country. You really have to immerse yourself within it and experience it firsthand to fully understand it.
Now here’s the kicker.
What if the switch that flips everything around for me is simply embracing the very experience I’m pushing away from?
In effect, instead of running away from the uncertainty and ambiguity of trying to express who I am and what my life is about as my life’s work, it’s intentionally stepping into it every day and fully immersing myself in this uncertainty and ambiguity.
To put this another way, what if it’s recognizing that this is where I’m actually supposed to be, as it’s the next stage of my journey?
So even though this expression of my truth in my life feels like I’m dying in going through the process, this “dying” serves a purpose, as it is a shedding of who I thought I was, thus allowing me to be who I truly am.
This is actually funny because it reminds me of something veteran Eve Online players realize is essential for new players to understand about the game. They basically teach the new players how to fly a ship but then they also teach them how to die in them.
Why? Because you won’t know what it’s like until you actually experience it. So the more you experience it, the more you’re used to it and know how to handle it. In fact, you eventually realize death is an integral part of the game.
And that’s what vertical development is about as well, especially as you approach the latter stages of it.
It’s about metaphorically dying enough times that you become used to it and realize it’s an integral part of the role-playing game called Life, so much so that you embody it in your daily life.
That I believe is the adventure calling me right now.
It’s asking me to express what I know and believe to be to true, as much as possible, even though the process feels like I’m being ripped apart and dying because I’m having to fully and intentionally step into a space that feels impossible to step into, let alone exist within continually.
This is what I think the Hero’s Journey embodies, this metaphoric death and rebirth.
In effect, it’s about standing at the edge of something that feels impossible to do…and then stepping forward and doing it anyway.
And in doing so, what if the very space that I felt like I was stuck and dying within…actually becomes the very space I’m reborn to live within?
There’s only one way to find out.
