The Quickest Path to Enlightenment: How To Contact Source, Build Resilience, & Harmonize Your Awareness of Paradox—Without Meditating In a Cave For a Decade

What’s arising in your awareness — right now?

Now, tell me, what’s passing out of your awareness — right now?

I’d guess that you are very skilled at noticing when a thought, feeling, mental image, or sensation arises in your awareness. That’s ordinary.

However, you are likely not skilled at noticing when AND how that stimuli passes out of your awareness. That, my friends, is extraordinary.

Today, we’ll turn to Shinzen Young—an American mindfulness teacher, neuroscience research consultant, Shingon monk, and author of The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works—to teach us how to develop that extraordinary skill.

In fact, Shinzen proclaims that this single meditation technique is the quickest path to enlightenment:

Just Note Gone.

So, how does it work?

Per Shinzen, “Practicing Just Note Gone is pretty straightforward. Whenever a sensory experience suddenly disappears, make a note of that fact: clearly acknowledge when you detect the transition point between all of it being present and at least some of it no longer being present. You can use the mental label ‘Gone’ to help you note the end of the experience. If nothing vanishes for a while, that’s fine. Just hang out until something does. If you start worrying about the fact that nothing is ending, note each time that thought ends. There is only a finite amount of real estate available in consciousness at any given instant. Each arising somewhere causes a passing somewhere else.”

Before we proceed, let’s define Gone.

Gone is a one-word mental label for detecting when a sensory experience ends, OR is ending.

Simply, you “note” a sensory experience as Gone by saying “Gone” inside of your head.

That’s it.

Just. Note. Gone.

Next, some disclaimers:

Gone does NOT necessarily mean that the sensory experience is:

• 100% Gone

• Suddenly Gone

• Gone forever and never coming back

In fact, something that passes through your awareness may arise again instantly.

For example, you are grieving the passing of your friend in a tragic accident. But, then you notice a bird flying by your window. In the instant you notice the bird, there is a small “Gone-ness” of your grief. However, your grief may come back the very instant the bird flies out of sight.

But wait, why does Gone matter anyway?

Harmonize Your Awareness With Paradox

In the modern Western culture, and even in most meditation practices, we are taught to value and become aware of—or “note”—the arisings and presence of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and material things.

However, Shinzen warns us…

If you are not aware of when arisings start Going, then that “creates an unbalanced view” of the nature of life.

Instead, when you Just Note Gone, you are acknowledging the only undeniable truth in the paradoxical human experience: change is constant.

Impermanence is permanent.

And in the most peculiar way, this puts you into contact with that which does not change.

Let's find out how.

Contact The Source

Furthermore, if we don’t Just Note Gone, this “also causes us to miss one of the more interesting ways to contact the Source”, per Shinzen.

What does that mean?

Well, when you Just Note Gone, you are directing your attention towards something that’s actually not a thing.

This practice points you to something that is NOT human.

In other words, you are directing your attention to that which created the universe—the non-thing that created every thing.

That non-thing is the “Source” to which Shinzen is referring.

So, each time you Just Note Gone, you contact the Source.

How is that possible?

Simply put by Shinzen, “Where things Go is where things come from.”

Now, what about the pain and suffering in the human experience? Does that ever go away?

Build Resilience

Additionally, when you Just Note Gone, it gives you a growing sense of power, resilience, and inner peace.

For example, as you become more aware of when and how a stressful thought is Gone from your awareness, you experience relief.

Often, we don’t acknowledge if we've made subtle—or even substantial—growth that has reduced the intensity and/or frequency of a negative pattern.

That is to say, we are unaware of how Gone those patterns are.

Even worse, we often incorrectly and immediately assume things are permanent: such as a challenging life situation or an undesirable aspect of self.

But, as Shinzen reminds us, “Relief and tranquility are a natural consequence of the nature of vanishing.”

This is profound.

If vanishing—or Gone—is natural, this implies that the arising of relief and tranquility are natural too.

But, you have to notice the vanishing—in the present moment—in order to experience that relief.

Otherwise, you delay the satisfaction of overcoming what’s beating you down.

See, the Stoic philosophy “This too shall pass” implies that there will be future relief.

On the contrary, when you Just Note Gone, you experience—in the present, not the future—that this too is passing, moment by moment.

Now, how do you put this into practice?

Practice: Just Note Gone

Here are the factors that determine your level of Gone mastery:

• The totality of your momentary focus

• The quickness of your momentary focus

• The totality of your momentary equanimity

• The quickness of your momentary equanimity

In other words, completely and instantly focus on an arising sensory experience.

And, completely and instantly become at peace with that.

If you don’t acknowledge what arises, there will be nothing to Just Note Gone.

And if you don’t become at peace with what arises, it will never be Gone.

But hold your horses.

Before you complain that Just Note Gone is too hard or abstract, I want to remind you that this is NOT a practice exclusively for monks meditating in caves.

Sure, you can do this in the micro — in your meditations.

But, this is a most beneficial as a macro practice — a way of experiencing your human life.

By the time you finish reading this sentence, you will have completed at least 1 breath, which equals 2 Gones—1 inhale Gone and 1 exhale Gone. And this sentence will be Gone from your awareness by the time you read the next one.

You can Just Note Gone everywhere, all of the time.

Just look in the mirror, you will be Gone from Planet Earth one day. In fact, you are already Going right now. You’ve been Going since the second you were born.

So, how do you know when you’ve Just Noted Gone?

Here are some internal signs:

• A blank mental screen: no images or visualizations in your mind’s eye

• Physical relaxation, and/or reduction in bodily tension or sensation: for example, a defocused external gaze

• Equanimity or emotional neutrality

• Mental quiet: the lack of thinking (remembering, planning, predicting), or temporary cessation thereof

Remember, Gone does not mean that you have permanently annihilated your recurring negative thoughts or experiences.

Some things don’t fully go away.

That’s why the even more extraordinary skill than Just Noting Gone is noting the subtle Going of sensory experience, which regression is often undetected by your awareness.

Then, the more sensitive you become to detecting Gone, the more Goneness itself becomes the object of concentration.

That means, your default state of consciousness will become focused on no-thing.

Or, simply said, your default state of consciousness will become locked in on the Source.

Gradually, gone becomes less something you Note or observe.

And instead Gone becomes what is always there.

In Shinzen’s poetic words, “a figure-ground reversal takes place…Self and world become fleeting figures, and Gone becomes the abiding ground. Needless to say, experiencing that will have a huge impact on how you relate to aging and death.”

Trippy, to say the least.

Just.

Note.

Gone.

Strength & Love, Connor

P.S. Thank you for your time and attention. It means the world to me.

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