7.2 In terms of your own life, how do you measure the success or failure of this teaching?

Any statement about reality, if it is to be of general relevance and usefulness, must be subject to a simple practical test to establish its validity. If any individual or group makes an observation on an aspect of reality which is not susceptible to a simple test to establish its validity, then either the observation needs refining until such a test can be found, or the observation is irrelevant in the face of reality. This teaching of the clear setting face to face with reality must satisfy such a simple, practical test to establish its validity.

You can only establish the value and accuracy of the description of reality contained in this book through your own experience. Your intellectual views and personal beliefs are irrelevant distractions in the face of reality. Just as you are subject to the law of gravity, regardless of whether you think about it or approve of it, so you are subject, in the same way, to the implacable implicate laws of reality, regardless of whether you accept these teachings or not.

You are set on the path to experience reality fully only after you have attained the first stage of enlightenment. Then, as your confusion and uncertainty about the meaning and direction of your life diminishes, you will be able to confirm the validity of this teaching through your own experience. You can use a simple test of the validity of this teaching to provide you with a measurable goal during the period of uncertainty and confusion about your life.

This test, to be applied by you in the course of living your life, is simple and straightforward. The key to the validity of this whole teaching is attaining the first stage of enlightenment. The test is this: after one hundred days of committed daily practice of meditation, understood within the context taught in this book, have you attained the psychological stage of enlightenment?

If the answer is yes, then you will know with the certainty of experience that there are indeed two such things as enlightenment and a path. If the answer is no, then you need to establish whether the failing lies in yourself or in the teachings. Committed practice of the teachings given in this chapter should set you back on the path to the first enlightenment; if that fails to help you, then you must draw your own conclusions about the validity and relevance of this teaching for you.

7.4 ‘I have practised the meditation intermittently, with no sustained effort, and it seems to produce no worthwhile results – why not?’

Your whole organism, your mind and body, in reality linked inextricably as a unity, is structured with the built-in desire, capacity and ability to attain enlightenment. The drive to attain enlightenment is a natural part of your existence – the aim of meditation is to awaken and fulfil that drive. The capacity to become psychologically enlightened is well within the ability of any ordinary intelligent person.

The purpose of the simple meditation technique taught in this book is to awaken, strengthen, mature and bring to successful fruition your in-built capacity for attaining enlightenment. The way to achieve this is committed daily practice of meditation. It is only with sustained duration of effort through time that your inherent capacity to attain enlightenment will awaken.

The reason you have achieved so little is because you have committed so little of your self. Out of arrogance, laziness or fear, you have only dipped a toe in the water, or only rolled your trousers up and gone paddling in the shallows. Then you wonder what there is in swimming which is so satisfying to other people.

Be clear on this: until you have sustained the practice of meditation through a period of time, you have not begun to meditate. Intermittent attempts to meditate are only intermittent attempts, nothing more. Unless you persevere with a minimum of fifteen minutes meditation daily, you will continue to live your self-illusory, self-deceiving and self-wasteful life.

By now, having tried meditation a little, you are probably aware of how demanding such a simple practice actually is. This is because living your life fully and honestly is very demanding. Think on this and what it tells you about yourself.

7.6 ‘I have worked hard at meditation, made some progress, then I became stuck at some point – what is happening?’

There is one simple test to establish whether you are genuinely progressing towards enlightenment. The test is whether you experience your day-to-day life, in all its ordinariness, as a constantly unfolding process of change. If you experience your life as an endlessly flowing and changing process, then you are progressing along the path; if you experience your life as repetitive or static in its ordinariness, then you are stuck and will need to take corrective action before you can proceed along the path.

The teaching in this section identifies the most common faults which may block your progress on the path. It will provide you with practical advice on how to recognise and overcome the blocks. These blocks are purely temporary and can be overcome with the awakening of self-knowledge.

The whole process of enlightenment is to awaken your self-knowledge. It is a considerable error to confuse self-knowledge with solely contemplating your personality. That is a very limited and destructive form of self-obsession, which has only the remotest connection with self-knowledge and the quest for enlightenment.

Attaining self-knowledge requires facing up to, and going beyond, the limitations of your personality. This is invariably a painful and unpleasant experience. It is also unavoidable if you are to attain enlightenment.

The basic error you are making, in your search for enlightenment, is that you are not facing up to the simple truths about yourself which reality is teaching you through the events of your life. This error occurs in two common forms in your life – failure to face those aspects of reality of which you are aware, and failure to face those aspects of reality of which you are unaware. Both incur severe karmic penalties, which you experience as emotional and physical suffering and misery.

You cannot escape from this apparently remorseless process of misery by attaining, or hoping to attain, some object you desire. As you progress along the path, you will discover that even desiring enlightenment is a block to attaining that state of freedom from emotional constraints. To pin your hopes of fulfilment and freedom on achieving this aim, or attaining that object or person, is to delude yourself with fantasy.

There is only one path to a genuine and lasting sense of joyous freedom and release from the misery of emotional and physical distress. That path is to set yourself directly face to face with reality as you experience it each moment. To be set on your journey along that path, you must learn to overcome the obstacles in your way.

7.6.2 Blocks in Progress: Problems you are unaware of.

The second and more difficult stage of this process of self-evaluation is to identify those areas of your personality in which you are unaware that you refuse to face up to reality. The test to assist you in establishing the necessary intuitive insights into your own nature is simple. All Implicate Technology tests are simple, and all require considerable clarity of thinking and self-honesty if they are to be applied successfully.

The test is this: to become aware of an important aspect of your life, although at present you are unaware of this part of yourself. To a greater or lesser degree, we all, without exception, suffer from this failing. Unless you succeed in this test, you will remain blocked, with all the dissatisfaction and unhappiness which that entails.

You cannot become conscious of something about yourself of which you are presently unconscious by observing the problem directly. What you can observe in your life directly, you are not unaware of. instead, make a start by becoming aware not of the problem itself, the obstacle in your life preventing progress along the path to enlightenment, but of the effects on your life of the problem within yourself.

To progress in your self-knowledge, to satisfy the test so that you can proceed along the path to enlightenment, you need to become aware of the recurrent patterns in your life. That is to say, you are trying to find, by thinking back over your life, a series of events or emotions which crop up as disturbing repetitions in the events of your life. This process of self-analysis may encompass feelings of rejection, failure, bitter quarrels, deep frustrations or disappointments – the list of possibilities is endless.

Be clear: the sole cause of any recurrent patterns in your life is the interaction between your own nature and the workings of karma. This implacable implicate law of reality spontaneously structures the events of your life so as to bring to your attention the next aspect of your nature which it is necessary for you to understand if you are to progress along the path to enlightenment. Always keep this in mind: once you have become aware of a previously unknown limitation in your own nature, you have the opportunity to correct it and so make progress towards ending your unhappiness.

You can proceed with the test by working on yourself during your daily meditation. Do this by focusing your thoughts on the broad sweep of your life; through meditation, learn to understand the general trends of your life. After a time, and with sustained committed practice, your natural intuitive abilities will bring into your mind an awareness of the relevant pattern in your life.

When this happens, switch to the meditation practice taught in the first stage of this self-evaluation process. Now, when your thoughts drift from observing your breathing, focus them on the pattern in your life you have become aware of: committed daily practice of meditation, incorporating the insights which spring from it into your daily life, is the key to breaking out of the pattern of misery and unhappiness at the heart of your life.