James Wood Teachings

Awakening is the recognition of transcendent Value that easily surpasses anything the world has to offer. This would seem attractive to people who long for Satisfaction more than anything else. The problem is that the supreme Value of awakening is arrived at through a process of negation.

Ingrained in most people is the idea that value is obtained by getting and having; but the only way to attain the supreme Value is through giving and letting go. The only way to attain true happiness is to destroy what destroys happiness. Happiness is natural to the awakened consciousness. If you destroy what’s in the way, happiness is established. This is a kind of asceticism or renunciation that goes against the grain of most people. The term destruction is typically repellent. Can’t we establish happiness constructively? Can’t we be positive? Let’s be positive, people!

No. If a dam is blocking the flow of fresh water needed to provide irrigation to parched crops, the solution is to destroy the dam. If a prison wall is keeping you from being free, you must destroy the wall, or at least unlock the door, which is in a sense destroying the prison. Is a prison with an open door still a prison?

Destroying what’s false establishes truth. It’s that simple. It’s healthy to realize that “two plus two equals five” is false, even if you have based your entire existence on it. The profound Joy that is a consequence of awakening is not something you can create. You can only wake up from the dream and see its prior actuality.

It’s not that you can’t in some way “tune in” or glimpse Truth as a positive value. It’s just that Truth Itself is so subtle that the slightest mental noise gets in the way. If you get a glimpse of Truth and experience Joy as a result, great. You have tasted the eternal Nectar of Now. But over time it fades. It fades because of ingrained mental noise generated by a smokescreen of thoughts in your mind.

If you want a more abiding and durable awareness of Truth and the consequent Joy, you must see what’s in the way. You must notice the thoughts you are believing in (attaching to) that aren’t true. One such thought is “The world exists independently.” This is a barrier to awakening. So you have to destroy that thought by seeing its falseness. This destroys the world that almost everyone assumes is real, but is actually a kind of nightmarish hallucination: the world of form.

When you give up the world of form, it’s given back to you in its true Formless Substantiality. This is ultimate Satisfaction. So you have to get used to the idea of negating falsehoods. You have to get used to tearing down illusions. You have to get used to getting over yourself. Because yes, the primary illusion is “self.” Self and world arise simultaneously. Destroying one destroys the other.

But oh, is it worth it! The Freedom is indescribably, absolutely satisfying. Nothing is left over. Infinity wakes to Itself and is satisfied. What else is there to say? This is the supreme Value that ends all suffering, all selves, all worlds. It is worth anything you could give for it. But you have to get used to letting go, negation, and destruction as a way of discovering Truth. If you blow up the dam of false ideas, you release the River of Joy in your awareness.