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Thinking Your Way To Enlightenment

Virtually every spiritual teacher that I know has stated that you can’t “think” your way to enlightenment. I consider myself a heavy thinkaholic and because of my personal experience I know that they’re right. I’ve tried to think my way into an enlightened and awakened state so hard, so many times, that the effort has led to the exact opposite result of what I intended. Reading, viewing, and listening to spiritual material can get you to the bus stop of awakening, but it doesn’t guarantee that the bus will arrive on time. It doesn’t even guarantee that the bus will arrive at all.

So, what’s a thinkaholic who wants to discover his/her true root of being supposed to do? You can’t stop thinking because, like flying is innate to birds, thinking is innate to the human condition. Thus, I’m stuck in an endless repetitive cycle of gathering more and more thought-based spiritual knowledge even though I know that it doesn’t work.

  1. July 13, 2009 at 4:32 am

    Glad to know that you also experience this.
    Thinking our way into enlightenment-
    isn’t this ironic? lol
    Anyway, I’m sure that thinking is never a waste of time.

  2. bulldozer00
    July 13, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    Thanks for the feedback. We’re comrades in arms :^)

  3. Greg
    August 12, 2013 at 11:38 pm

    Thank you for sharing this. I stumbled across it while searching for precisely that term in Google (you can’t think your way to enlightenment). I had never heard it said before, or at least not in those words, but it suddenly became clear to me a moment ago how true it is.

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