“No Resistance.” “Love it the way it is.” And my fave: “Go beyond reason to love: it is safe. It is the only safety.” Just a few of the choice nuggets of wisdom in The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas. (I added the Hu).Published in 1972, this slim little volume has been hanging around our house for over 25 years serving as “a handy trip guide”, offering suggestions for simple attitudes to help stay grounded during ”the most extreme freak-out or space-out, even when your mind is completely blown” or when you’ve had some ”bad dope”.
Lately, it has emerged from quiet obscurity. It just went out of print and now there are hardback editions showing up on eBay for as much as $75 a pop. Hmmm. Is it because this succinct little book is just so deliciously pithy?
Even though it seems like there were a lot more folks pursuing “enlightenment” in the early Seventies than these days, who couldn’t benefit from lightening up in the face of the daily bombardment of grim and heavy news. By that definition, this stuff translates and aptly.
On Love:
”Love is the highest and holiest action because it always contains that which is not love within itself, it always and ever moves to include the unloving.”
”Each of us is the same kind of being, capable of outflowing attention and awareness or withdrawing it. And that is all we need to do: Give full, permissive, loving attention to absolutely anything we see in our minds, in our bodies, in our environment, in other people.”
”Love is the only dimension that needs to be changed. If you are not sure how it feels to be loving, love yourself for not being sure how it feels. There is nothing on earth more important than the love which conscious beings feel towards each other, whether or not it is ever expressed.”
Is that radical or what? Love, not as mush or vague emotional swirlings, but as courageous bigness. Love as acceptance. Letting it all be.
On Vibes:
”The more you love the faster you vibrate, then the less need you feel to control anything, and you are not fearful of change and variety. When you raise your vibration level, you can neatly sidestep collisions, both psychic and physical, and quite literally change the world for the better.”
”A completely expanded being is space. Since expansion is permeative, we can be in the 'same space' with one or more other expanded beings. In fact, it is possible for all the entities in the universe to be in one space.”
On Fear and Attachment:
”Anything that really frightens you may contain a clue to enlightenment. It may indicate how deeply you are attached to structure, whether mental, physical or social. Attachment and resistance are appearances with the same root: when you resist by pulling away your awareness, the emotion is one of fear, and the contraction is experienced like magnetism or gravity; that is, attachment.”
This conjures an image for me of the universe as this great woven strangeness that we all wear like a vast stretchy sweater (Chief Seattle’s web). As each of us is an intrinsic fiber of this intricate intertwining, it is ridiculous to think we can pull away from any part of it without in fact pulling that very part directly to us.
Anyway, a lot of good sanity saving stuff pressed into 80 slender pages. Greatly recommended.
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