A Very Streamlined Enlightenment Protocol Part 1
- rogerthisdell
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
I am presenting a process that admittedly is entirely theoretical as to whether it would work or not; and additionally, I believe if there is any chance of it working it would require a very specific kind of person to pull it off. I believe that person needs to be both highly analytically and phenomenologically minded; meaning they need to be able to logically organise and navigate a compendium of subtle concepts, while connecting intimately to their first-person experience with precision. What’s more, of the small percentage of people that could potentially enact this ‘shortcut’, there is a non-trivial possibility of it devastating their lives - at least for a period of time until they integrate the insights that follow.
What be enlightenment?
'Enlightenment’ is a term that is highly controversial, especially to orthodox types, but for practical reasons we need a name to refer to a radical, spiritual, psychological phase shift that myself and many others have gone through where ‘enlightenment’ or ‘awakening’ are some of the closest appropriate terms that do its significance justice. To be honest, I can’t find a term I like to use and if you don’t want to call it ‘enlightenment’, or ‘nonduality’ or ‘(mctb) 4th Path’ or ‘anatta realisation’ etc., then call it whatever you like, just don’t call it ‘hogwash’. We are pointing to something very real and important in human development and it would be a shame to miss out because of a word you don't like.
There are a number of hallmark descriptions that come from reaching the transformative attainment I mean here. Some of the main features that I come down on are a mind that by default: is completely centreless, boundaryless, with no singly positioned epistemic agent, has no sense of a watcher/observer/doer/knower, neither identifying nor disidentifying with anything, no encompassing will to be or will to not be, has no points of solidity in the bodymind, having synchronised and dissolved into the flow of life and recognises the emptiness of all (including emptiness itself), has deep insight into dependent origination (or the co-arising nature of all phenomena) which gets one out of fundamentally reductionistic epistemics, and understands the interconnectedness of all things, which means they are no longer fundamentally ontologically confused and has moved past debates on ‘grounds of beings’, and is liberated from a core existential dissatisfaction (dukkha) or a type of suffering felt in the depths of one’s being that is predicated on an expectation that any experience can/will fully gratify them. This is to name some of the most standout features.
What is the process of enlightenment?
All of the above are reviews rather than recipes, that is, mostly descriptions of goals, but not instructions on how to get there. However, I do have a super succinct framing, which somewhat straddles the recipe vs review distinction and gets at the crux of what this enlightenment thing is about, giving both a description of the goal and the process. That is my (de)objectification framing!
An essential confusion of a non-awakened mind rests with it having built a world on the mistaken priors that suggest there are subjects and objects (and this also includes the conception that mind is a subject or object itself). As I like to put it: the degree to which you perceive yourself as being in touch with some objective mind-independent part of reality is the degree to which you are not enlightened; including the prescencing of everything being of the mind, as well (it gets meta)! The (de)objectification process deals with this, while my streamlined protocol gets straight to the heart of the (mind)matter.
The gist of it is we need to reformat the mind to simultaneously objectify (recognise, and not make a subject/true self) and deobjectify (not thingify/make into a thing/dereify) all phenomena instantaneously, as soon as they come into being. By objectifying phenomena and then deobjectifying them we can eventually arrive at a fully (de)objectified mind, removing a metaphysical veil of ignorance, causing a radical upgrade in baseline lucidity of the nature of reality (a.k.a. enlightenment).
What is this streamlined protocol?
For most of us - if we’re lucky to even go through it - this (de)objectification process is a long, challenging, sometimes laborious journey, filled with dark nights, periods of nihilism and taking years of finding phenomena to objectify (to become aware of and detach identity from) and then deobjectify, also known as recognising its emptiness (that it is not a thing, not a noun, in and of itself/doesn’t have an independent essence). This looks a lot like going through a stack of nested phenomena until it bottoms out - which eventually it does, because it is not infinite.
I believe, however, there may be a way to skip to, if not the bottom, but extremely low in the stack and single out and (de)objectify some main supporting pillars; which are at the root responsible for the rest of the mind building its dukkha filled subject-objectified world upon, and subsequently causing the ontic confusion that the unawakened mind deals with. If these support beams are (de)objectified, everything else would automatically follow in being (de)objectified (so the theory goes).
So the trick is like finding the initial line of error in our source code and then deleting it. This debugs the whole mind, though would entail a hefty rebooting, re-scripting and re-writing phase which can be challenging for the individual, to say the least - actually, I will say much more on this further down.
A Useful Analogy
For simplicity’s sake, imagine an inverted house of cards, this represents the structure of the mind, with each card being a prior, making up the beliefs of your world-simulation. It’s inverted because higher, more abstract and complex beliefs are built upon lower, simpler beliefs.
Essentially, what we would be doing is taking out the second from the first row (not the first), and this would be sufficient for collapsing the whole mind structure, built upon problematic priors. What those priors are exactly I will detail in part 2.
In part 2, I will explain the method for enacting this ‘shortcut’*, but before anyone learns how to do it, a discussion on the potential dangers is needed; so that those who attempt this are better informed about what they could be doing to themselves.
*I keep writing shortcut with quotes marks because as you’ll see in part 2, although the protocol is very simple, it still requires a lot of training to perform and so it could take a long time.
Forewarning
It is wisely said that “slow and steady wins the race” and what appears to be a shortcut at the time, actually ends up costing you much more in the future.
A shortcut to 4th Path enlightenment would result in a sudden and radical paradigmatic shift in thinking, feeling, perceiving. Depending on a person’s starting position, i.e. what kind of mind they’re working with beforehand, and the support they have around them (a.k.a. their life set and setting), then the psychological toll of going through this phase shift could more or less derail the life they’ve set up for themselves hitherto.
Even for people who steadily progress along the paths, and have helpful frameworks for understanding what they’re going through and a sangha/community for support, they still report moments of psychological instability, dark nights, lots of emotional processing and trauma resurfacing. And even after we’ve reached this momentous attainment, there's still lots of integration and refinement to do, as the significance of the change often doesn’t hit us all at once. I think of it like there are lots of subminds which didn’t fully get the memo and take time to catch up.
So you can just imagine the shock to the system it would cause if someone’s starting position is: little to no direct meditation insights, lots of unprocessed trauma and little to no support network that understands the nature of spiritual awakenings to help them. And from there they dive into a heavy (de)objectification training protocol designed to collapse the stack of their mind at its base.
During 2024, I was living with one of my best friends, who worked on psychiatric wards in various hospitals, dealing with patients who suffer with the worst of the worst mental health. He would routinely tell me stories of patients living with persistent psychosis and going through mania. For some of them, there are aspects in those people’s stories that could sound like spiritual awakenings, gone awry.
My friend even told me of a patient who was really into meditation and would talk about the jhanas… and yet he’s locked up in a psychiatric hospital with almost zero self autonomy. As it’s said: “The mystic swims in the same waters the psychotic drowns.” and “Beware of unearned wisdom”. I write this because I take interfering with the mind seriously and I have massive amounts of respect for safeguarding people’s wellbeing.
So, before reading part 2, I encourage you to be honest about your life circumstances. If you were to seriously devote time to following this protocol, can you afford to have a destabilised, rocky year ahead of you? Don’t presume yourself to be psychologically unshakeable (the universe has a way of humbling us). Do you have people physically close by, who can understand, at least in principle, what it means to go through a spiritual journey and who can support you? Or do you have people highly dependent on you to keep going as you are?
These precautions may be overstated for many, however the conversation is always worth having. Set, setting and timing are all very important, so keep them in mind before following the instructions in part 2.