This book is not offering enlightenment, it's describing it.

The enlightened mind unites intellect and emotion. This split appears in the mythic division between our lower and higher natures, and the separation of mind and body. Intellect and emotion are as color and shape are to vision, one complements the other. When fully integrated, they cannot be taken apart. The topics in the book's first half lean toward the intellectual. The second half looks at the division from the emotional side. What we are separating with one hand, we are putting together with the other.

Struggle: We naturally consider our problems as different from ourselves. We see them in our environment, and rely on our skills and insights to resolve them.

Mind: Your state determines your readiness, arousal, and self-reflection. Your state of mind orients your thinking, how you can feel about yourself, and who you're able to be.

State: With our state of mind, we gather our thoughts and focus our attention. Focus without a state is like a telescope with no one to look through it. The properties of your state determine what you are capable of.

Wisdom: Alternate states of mind support understandings we don t have. One needs a state of mind that can accommodate contradictions without generating conflict.

Instantaneous Enlightenment: Change does not happen instantly, but epiphanies feel instantaneous. The reason is simple: a new state is a whole rearrangement of one’s previous conception. There are no halfway states to total rearrangement. Many pieces need to fall into place before we can make ourselves into something new.

We are at a watershed moment in our understanding of the mind, after which psychology will change. We are coming to understand that what s important is not what you think but what you can think. The Operating Manual is an intellectual, emotional, and neurological road map to the integration you don’t yet have.