The Power of Traceless Enlightenment

“To study the Way is to study the Self. To study the Self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever.” ~Dōgen Zenji

The Self: elusive, subjective, exploitative, digressive, assumptive, regressive. And the list goes on. Because the Self is multifariously multilayered. It’s a shattered mirror at best, a broken record at worst. It is deeper than we can fathom. As Freud and Jung exposed, we are not “masters in our own house.” The psyche is a battlefield of sub-personalities, unconscious drives, instincts, and competing archetypes.

So what is a seeker to do? How do we square the circle of the Self? How do we navigate the Mobius Strip of “I”? How do we get out of our own way?

Luckily, we have the shoulders of giants to stand upon, namely Dōgen Zenji. Let’s break it down…

To study the way is to study the Self:

“There is nothing that can rid us of this lethal omnipresence: the self forever confronting itself.” ~Emil Cioran

Only the most courageous of us have the nerve to confront the Self. Most of us are too bogged down by duty, culture, and one-right-way thinking to ever gain the propensity for Self-confrontation.

So the first order of magnitude in achieving elusive traceless enlightenment is to become aware that you are not aware. This is akin to biting your own teeth. It’s almost paradoxical. You must gain the capacity to stiff-arm prescribed conditioning in order to get out of your own way long enough to recondition yourself. This is no easy task.

As George Orwell said, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel; and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”

It’s a psychosocial bramble, a counterculture Gordian Knot. You must first rebel to become conscious, but you must become conscious to rebel. Quite the pickle. It comes down to tricking yourself into awareness, teaching yourself how to unlearn, shooting yourself in the daredevil foot so that you become fleetfooted and free to iterate the Self despite yourself.

This requires curiosity and awe despite certainty and banality. You must be able to reinvent your imagination. Become a marvel at marveling. Be awestruck at being in awe. Fall in love with falling in love.

Pinpoint the Self. Hunt it down. Take a leap of courage out of your clumsy armor and embrace the absolute vulnerability of not knowing, of knowing that you do not know. In the fog of Unknowing, the sublime Self rises like a black unicorn eclipsing the blinding light. Now that you have it in your crosshairs, it’s time to pounce. Wrestle it into submission. And then integrate it into the whole You, the self-actualized “I,” the inexplicable Self.

To study the Self is to forget the Self:

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.” ~Simone Weil

Finally mounted on the Black Unicorn of the individuated Self, with its immaculate white horn piercing the darkness like a flame blotting out the night, you must now sacrifice it to nonattachment.

If you cannot stomach the sacrifice, then you will not be able to withstand the pain of self-iteration and self-overcoming. You will remain stuck, high on yourself, inadvertently caught up in the thorns of the roses you savor. Blinded by the too-bright light of your enlightenments gleaming horn (accomplishment, trophy, accolades, “having made it”), you can no longer smell the interconnected rose garden for the stench of the roses.  

Attaining a fleeting glimpse of interconnectedness, or an “enlightened state” can become the subtlest, stickiest trap of all. You finally “get it,” and then the mind starts guarding it, polishing it, comparing itself to others, or secretly waiting for the next upgrade. That very guarding re-creates a self that possesses something “special.” And Boom! Duality sneaks back in through the back door wearing “holier than thou” robes.

The secret? Guard against guarding. Let your Self off the hook of enlightenment lest you fall hook-line-and-sinker for grandiosity, self-importance, pretense, or your own fresh hell of delusional dogmatism.

Play Wack-a-Mole with your enlightened iterations. When a “mole” rises up seeking comfort, security, and safety in the throne room of your complacency, regenerate the nerve of the gambler, don the mask of the trickster, trump mindfulness with No-mind, get out of your own way with Wu-wei, and then double down on never doubling down.

To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe:

“The first and greatest victory is to conquer the self. To be conquered by the self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.” ~Plato

Having gotten out of your own way and sacrificing yourself to your Self, you are now free to embrace comsos. The interconnectedness of all things becomes paramount. You see how you are merely a speck in the universe, but you are also the entire universe in a speck. You feel how everything connects to everything else with a Mobius Strip twist. You hear a language older than words, speaking in the mother tongue of Interdependent Health.

You taste the heart of God like a raspberry bursting in your mouth. You finally understand that we do not need a God because everything is already God. You’ve transformed “God” into a question that doesn’t need an answer.

You stand as a mighty pivot, hinged between worlds, nonattached, hungry for the Truth Quest despite the “truth,” iterative despite perfection, honing yourself despite the cutting, truly honoring the journey being the thing.

Sovereign in the Void, balanced in a unity of opposites—where shadow and light, anima and animus, beast and sage become transcendent, provident, and mercurial. You see the big picture despite your small picture ego. From this strategic advantage, you’re able to utilize cognitive shifts in perspective. You move with grace, you laugh readily, and you create elegantly.

Here, your ever shifting Mandala-like self is free to maneuver, to existentially pivot, to mythopoetically inflict the static world with flexible seeds of paradox. You are the infinite cosmos individuated. You are the finite integration of an infinite expression. And it is your responsibility to become aware of it, to stay ahead of it, and to not allow it to overcome you.

To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self:

“Given cognitive vulnerabilities, it would be convenient to have an arrangement whereby reality could tell us off.” ~Rebecca Goldstein

What kind of “arrangement” could this be? This casting off the mind and body of the Self where reality can “tell us off”?

Self-interrogation is one way: Unconventionally twist the conventional. Wring out all the rules and habits and pithy pacts. Squeeze out all the dogma and orthodoxy and conformist moors. Turn it all inside out. Question to the Nth degree. Vivisect the animal of thought. Analyze the guts like a taxidermist on crack. And then honor what the interconnected comsos deciphers.

Empirical testing loops beyond formal science is another way: Run personal experiments. Treat beliefs as hypotheses rather than core precepts. Track outcomes with brutal honesty. No obsequiousness or placation. Never make the mistake of believing what you think. Use Nature as an arbiter. Let health guide you through the chaos. One-up your propensity toward clinging with nonattached iteration.

Elevate yourself above the battlefield of the human condition and build the nest of the Phoenix. Cast off the body and the mind. Sacrifice yourself to the fire of the Self. Embody rebirth. Practice resurrection. Cultivate revival. Trace the outline of your “deaths” in chalk on the invincible bones of your muscle memory and bare witness as traceless enlightenment re-enlightens (un-enlightens) you.

Which leads to traceless enlightenment:

“Accept that you’re a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace—and maybe even glory.” ~Tom Robbins

When it’s all said and done, you are a freckle on the ass of the comsos. You are a flea in the fur of a mammoth universe. In the grand scheme of things, your enlightenment won’t matter. It will be a flash in the pan of a Big Bang banging into God only knows what. But, in the small scheme of your fleeting life, it will be a saving grace. Especially if you can wipe out any traces of enlightenment along the way while still honoring the process.

How does one do this exactly? True awakening leaves no footprint. It’s not a special state you possess, but the way things are when delusion drops. How the Self resonates when all the masks fall away, including especially the mask of enlightenment. For nothing leads to delusion quicker or more nefariously than enlightenment.

So, after all your iterations, after all your “getting out of your own ways,” after all your bridling the horses (or unicorns) of your secondhand natures, after all your layer upon layer of enlightenments, it all comes down to having a good sense of humor and an elevated taste for Introspective Irony.

Ironically, it’s only when you achieve enlightenment that you realize achieving enlightenment is a hindrance to further “enlightenment.” This is not anti-enlightenment; it’s anti-clinging-to-enlightenment. The moment you turn awakening into an achievement or an identity, it becomes another form of self-congratulations. Realization only stays alive when it keeps dissolving itself.

Dissolve it in the acid of your High Humor and Introspective Irony. Laugh at the cosmic joke. Prank your enlightenment with recursive traceless enlightenment. Practice holy hijinks and tantric tomfoolery. Stay ahead of the whole damn thing by realizing that you’ll never be ahead of it. It’s all laughable. It’s all a comedy disguised as a tragedy. It’s all a tempest disguised as a temptation. Traceless enlightenment is choosing to be the eye of the storm while winking at the ebbs and flows of enlightenment and un-enlightenment forever.

Image source:

Unbound by Stuz0r

About the Author:

Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.

This article (The Power of Traceless Enlightenment) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.org. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.