As I understand enlightenment

[KnowSelf]

My first awareness of something more than what I understood my world to be began as a teenager. I wanted enlightenment to have an edge over people and to be better than them as a means for exploitation.

I learned that enlightenment is available to everyone who seeks it by natural attraction. Enlightenment is oneness and completeness, it's knowing and detachment from the busyness of life. As a third-party observer who can take part in life’s drama or not by nonparticipation or the ability to think objectively.

In 2005, I had a spiritual conversion that through faith I turned my life to Jesus who inturn released me from sins past and present. Faith, complete trust that everything is as it should be, therefore nothing to fear, because everything is as it should be. Included in faith is love, the capacity to give and receive love as much or as little as I desire. Should we love everything? Yes, there is a difference between loving everything and loving as much and as little as desired. Love is a positive energy, the opposite of positive energy is negative energy. Life has choices, of which we choose.

KnowSelf

 

[wil]

The Dalai Lama says you know you are enlightened when everyone you see, you see as enlightened.

My preacher says he goes to the shopping mall....to see how far he still has to go.

 

[KnowSelf]

To see beauty and intelligence in all people. All people are valuable, irreplaceable and highly cherished. Enlightenment is knowing truth, however, more or less is known.

I am spiritually connected to God whether this is enlightenment or not, I have no need to search further. Peace circulates through my body and soul, I am happy and pleased.

 

[KnowSelf]

Perhaps everybody is as enlightened as they "choose" to be

 

[Arif Ghamiq]

So some do in fact choose ignorance ?

 

[KnowSelf]

Perhaps, how do you define ignorance is like defining enlightenment. It is something you have or don't have. Brings me to the question can a person who is ignorant be enlightenment? Maybe to him/her enlightenment is ignorance to some people and to others not.

 

[Cino]

Faith, complete trust that everything is as it should be, therefore nothing to fear, because everything is as it should be.

...

Life has choices, of which we choose.

Thanks for your thoughts. To me, there is an interesting tension there: If everything is as it should be, what is the point of making choices?

 

[KnowSelf]

I think we are drawn to the state of being we choose to be a part of. Free will is like the rudder of a boat that allows us to navigate the course of life we choose. Choice unites us with circumstances and people that helps us reach our destination whatever that may be.

 

[Cino]

Let me rephrase, I'm not sure I came across well.

In the light of complete trust that everything is (already) as it should be, what does it mean to reach a destination, and make choices to get there?

Or put another way, can I make a bad choice, if I trust that everything is as it should be? Can I even make a wrong choice or fo an evil deed, if everything is as it should be?

(Yes, this is a variation of the Theodicy.)

 

[RJM]

In the light of complete trust that everything is (already) as it should be, what does it mean to reach a destination, and make choices to get there?

Perhaps it means that angels will be able to nudge and guide me, instead of the world hitting me across the head with a stick. It means I am sensitive to divine guidance?

 

[Cino]

Good point, RJM. Still, where would divine guidance guide us, if everything is (already) as it should be?

 

[RJM]

where would divine guidance guide us, if everything is (already) as it should be?

where, indeed ...

 

[KnowSelf]

I believe our lives unfold based on the decision we make in life, therefore life is as it should be based on our desires. I believe we are in control of our destiny simply because we will it so. However this does not take into account there are other forces at work in addition to your will. These other forces are strong and the will other people that may oppose your will or desire.

 

[Thomas]

Love is a positive energy, the opposite of positive energy is negative energy.

There is love, which is positive, in the sense that it is outgoing, communicative, the giving-of-self to another. Love is necessarily dynamic, it is a verb, not a noun.

I'd say 'negative energy' is not so much an energy, as an energy drain. It wants for itself, it is jealous, it is the taking-from-another for the self. It takes, it gives nothing back. It reduces, it's debilitating.

 

[Thomas]

The Dalai Lama says you know you are enlightened when everyone you see, you see as enlightened.
My preacher says he goes to the shopping mall....to see how far he still has to go.

Oh, I dunno. I thought George Romero was making an enlightened statement when he set "Dawn of the Dead" in a shopping mall, a comment on consumer culture

I get where you're coming from, but I find these aphorisms always problematic. What do they actually mean? I don't buy it. I suppose in a given context of the Dalai Lama or your preacher's point, they have a kind of koan value, but removed from that they become bland and meaningless. After all, if it's true, then the DL and our preachers are frauds!

I remember mine once saying Jesus referred to his followers as sheep. Why? Sheep are stupid, smelly and suggestible. Context is everything.

As an amateur writer, I sometimes do an exercise of snapping a biography of people I pass in the street. Reading their expression and creating a backstory ... surprisingly, it means you actually look at people! And on one occasion, going up an escalator looking at people coming down, I knew they, and I, and all of us, were loved ... we are enlightened because the dynamic light of love illuminates and animates us, but whether we live in that light our our own darkness is another matter.

The philosopher said, and St Paul agree, 'in Him we live and move and have our being' ... but that doesn't mean we necessarily know it, or act accordingly.

 

[wil]

The philosopher said, and St Paul agree, 'in Him we live and move and have our being' ... but that doesn't mean we necessarily know it, or act accordingly.

Does it matter? That we know or act accordingly.

Of course not... It matters when we 'Know' we act accordingly.

Every koan is just words without context, or without a desire to deconstruct.

If you pick a scab on your left arm with your right hand....neither the fingernail if your right hand and the bleeding epidermis of your left arm...know they are part of the same being...

Not the one doing the damage, nor the damaged.

But is it damaging? Or is it leading to healing...

 

[RJM]

@wil Profound

 

[KnowSelf]

I'm listening to audible book entitled "Understanding the Dark Side of Human Nature" People with no regard for the life of living beings, to enjoy and receive pleasure from the suffering of others.

Can a person of this magnitude become enlightened staying within his/her present state of understanding?

The light or enlightenment is love and love is secure openness. Secure openness is not being afraid or worried about self or life because life and self are one.

 

[Thomas]

If you pick a scab on your left arm with your right hand... But is it damaging? Or is it leading to healing...

Exactly my point: context dependent, isn't it.
A man saws off your leg. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Again, without context, you can't answer.

Does it matter? That we know or act accordingly.
Of course not...

Really?

Let me paraphrase: On this planet, we live and move and have our being.Let me Does it matter how we live?
To Greta Thunberg and an awakening many, yes it really, really does.

Every koan is just words without context, or without a desire to deconstruct.

I rather disagree. Koans are absolutely precise within a psychodynamic context, a device to be used with clinical precision. Their very purpose it to deconstruct — the mental constructs that confine us.

 

[Cino]

I'm listening to audible book entitled "Understanding the Dark Side of Human Nature" People with no regard for the life of living beings, to enjoy and receive pleasure from the suffering of others.

Can a person of this magnitude become enlightened staying within his/her present state of understanding?

The light or enlightenment is love and love is secure openness. Secure openness is not being afraid or worried about self or life because life and self are one.

Part of this dark side is a lack in empathy. In some of these persons, it is a physiological, neurological difference. Others developed this lack in empathy out of traumatic experiences in childhood.

Empathy is not simply a matter of understanding, whether intellectual or emotional. Some people are lacking the faculties for empathy, much like a colorblind person is lacking the ability to distinguish certain colors.

If enlightenment was only available to people with "normal" empathic abilities, that would be a very limited, unfair kind of enlightenment, in my book.

On the other hand, enlightened narcissists, thats not easy to reconcile with notions of enlightenment that imply love, kindness, generosity, sympathetic joy and so on. Also, I find it a bit scary, even if it accounts for at least some of the abuse that goes on in the "enlightenment circus".

Complex world!

(edit: clarification)