A Peek at a Course Promising Enlightenment

The Finder’s Course has a 60-70% enlightenment rate. I’m on day 19.

It all started 5 years ago when I saw an ad for a course on meditation. It drew me in with its use of psychological, secular terminology and scientific rigor. Important sounding research institutions were mentioned and it claimed to be one of the first, large scale, studies on enlightenment. But there was something in the too-slick advertising that immediately turned me off. It felt like a get rich quick scam selling spirituality, and I quickly rolled my eyes and moved on.

Years later, I caught an in-depth interview with the course founder, Dr. Jeffery Martin, on Buddha at the Gas Pump, a podcast that has “Conversations with ‘ordinary’ spiritually awakening people”. There, Martin discussed the history of his methodology. He was initially a skeptic, but after interviewing over a thousand people from different cultural and religious backgrounds who claimed some form of this persistent mental shift, his view changed. He put people through a battery of physiological and psychological tests to categorize and study the phenomenon. As the data flowed in he began to view it as an actual thing.

SKEPTIC

This paralleled my own trajectory with meditation. I grew up on Indian tales of magical yogis, and later studied Eastern philosophy and religion. Although I was fascinated with the subject, the practice itself never really stuck, and I never bought the grandiose claims. And the idea of an end to the contemplative journey didn’t even make sense until a few years ago, around when I first saw the Finder’s Course ad. 

At the time I was getting into Stoicism, cognitive behavioral therapy, and other more acceptable, less “hippy sounding” schools of mental development. But I soon started consuming books and podcasts on “hardcore,” “secular,’ or “pragmatic” dharma - writers like Daniel Ingram, Sam Harris of the Waking Up app, Sharon Salzberg, Stephen Batchelor (author of Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist), Shinzen Young (author of The Science of Enlightenment), Culadasa, and, most popularly, Dan Harris, author of the NYT Best Selling book, 10 Percent Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. 

In one form or another they described a practice that was non-religious, practical, and had a great love of both skepticism and science. When I dipped my toes in and genuinely tried the practices, they worked for me. With a bit of trust built up, I noticed many of them were talking about more than just mental strategies applied to individual moments. They also hinted at a permanent mental shift that could occur. Up until then I viewed such claims as pure fantasy. 

This all begs the question - what exactly is this psychological transformation?

AWAKENING

Stripping away the dogma and poetry, the way Martin and others like him describe it is as a persistent state where the primacy of the ego/narrative self/personality is dramatically reduced/shifted. Rather than viewing the world through the lens of the ego, the ego is simply one of many elements in broadened awareness. 

Imagine yourself in a dream - there’s you, acting and moving around and other characters you interact with.

You’re in school, you have to give a presentation, you’re unprepared, and the teacher is angry.

When you wake up you’ll describe the dream - “I was in school again, and I was nervous because I wasn’t prepared, and then teacher started yelling.”

But that’s not true, is it? You were the teacher. You were the class. You were even the dream itself. But yet, we automatically view the world from the perspective of our self, even when recounting a dream. 

This shift can occur when people clearly observe the narrative self vanishing, then reappearing, while maintaining complete awareness.

This tends to trigger a series of massive psychological changes, which makes a lot of sense. Suddenly you know that everything you associated with your self isn’t all there is to “you” (pronouns get really hard at this point).

Basic forms of meditation focus on understanding that thoughts and emotions are like clouds passing by and aren’t essentially YOU - You aren’t angry, anger is only visiting you for a moment. This also applies to mental images, memories, hopes, desires, even the voice in your head.

Your narrative, ego-centric self is another thought passing through the sky of awareness. If you aren’t the only fixture, then all of your hangups become fundamentally less substantial.

The result of this shift is a larger way of viewing the world - one that removes a great deal of suffering.

Imagine giving advice to a friend - that friend might be in agony, but you have a greater capacity to view his situation with rationality and calmness. But when similar circumstances occur to you, that equanimity flies out the window. 

This persistent, non-ego driven view has different names throughout cultures and mystic traditions: the peace that passeth understanding, ego dissolution, non duality, unitive experience…And while it can also come through happenstance or intense drug trips, it’s usually experienced through some form of lengthy and rigorous mental exercise.

WHAT WORKS

The biggest issue Martin encountered in his research was “The Fit Problem”.

People didn’t necessarily practice the type of mental exercises that worked best for them. Back in the day, the guru down the street may have gotten enlightened with one method - but that didn’t necessarily mean it would work for you. Yet disciples would practice that one method for decades, either because they didn’t have any other recourse (another guru) or simply because the guru was so sure it would work.

The Fit Problem also answers a tangential issue - why does this have to take so long? The assumption is that such a spiritual and cognitive leap can only occur after a lifetime of practice - even though some people appear to stumble upon it in an instant. A large portion of the class focuses on honing in on the right technique for individuals.  

After listening to the interview I started reading everything I could on the course - which had a lot of behavioral and accelerated learning elements embedded into it that particularly appealed to me. Unfortunately, it was very expensive, intense, and long (4 months). But due to the pandemic, Martin released a 45 day version. It wasn’t the full protocol, and according to him the rates of success are a lowered 60%. Stuck in quarantine, I figured, why not?

I’m now about halfway through.

THE COURSE

In my own research and testing, cross training is one of the best methods to significantly increase learning and skill development. The Finder’s Course does this in a big way. We are directed to intensely practice specific “Gold Standard” meditations - ones that kept floating to the top when test subjects described what caused their psychological shift. I’ve practiced techniques I never thought would work. To say they have had a powerful effect on me is to put it mildly. The other day I started meditating in a chair and ended up on my back after continually losing track of my identity and passing out, not quite remembering how I got to the floor.

In addition, there are morning and nightly practices of visualization, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion. There are continual exercises, very similar to my tally clicking experiments. And there’s a once a week group meditation that is far and away the best practice I’ve ever read or heard of.

There are also one-off exercises that I find immensely informative. I’ve written out my life story and a eulogy of my own death. Both are exercises I initially thought quite silly, but were surprisingly powerful when done formally.

The extensive goal setting was also unexpected. As someone who is really into the behavioral science of habits and sticking to things, this was particularly important to me. 

Martin knows his stuff.

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If I were to describe the course thus far in one word? 

Surprising. 

I’m trying and doing things I never would have. The course has significantly exceeded my hopes and expectations. And although I remain a skeptic as to the overarching lofty course goal, I would gladly pay for this course again – and highly recommend it – as a method to stretch a meditation habit and launch it into overdrive.