The Hoax of Enlightenment

Mark Whitwell

Paradiso Theatre, 1-4pm

"The cultural obsession of looking for perfection diminishes our noticing the perfection that is already established in us as life, abundantly given."

Join Mark for this one-off special event: an unpredictable and subversive mixture of talk, practice, discussion, and general radical myth-busting. Mark has been teaching Yoga-capital-Y around the world for many decades, and has witnessed the commodification of yoga and spirituality, and the chaos created in people's lives and relationships as they search for impossible states of perfection, dissociating from lived experience. He offers talk and practice based around one simple instruction: "Stop looking, start living". If you feel stuck in spiritual practice, world-weary with it all, or have noticed that despite all your efforts, you're operating on the same fundamentally flawed logic, this afternoon may bring joy and relief. Release yourself from the hoax of enlightenment and discover how genuine Yoga can be simple enjoyment and besotted participation in life, not a search for anything at all.

"The assumption that truth is somehow absent and needs to be found is culturally

ingrained whether we are religious or not. Our uninspected cultural behaviours of proposing and seeking “higher realities” known as God or enlightenment have been spread as doctrine through societies as instruments of political power. They inherently deny the wonder of this present reality and its power, particularly as it manifests as male/female mutuality. Seeking denies individuals their own force and intelligence that is Life, just as the cultural model of the perfect person (the enlightened one) inherently denies the perfection that is Life already established in each person. The body and all that is experienced is the absolute condition, not the absolute of culture, which is mere conjecture that moves attention away from reality." -Mark Whitwell