Enlightenment is being really really awake

I realised today that it can be very painful to realise and fully accept some of your beliefs and behaviours about yourself. I have always understood that masks were a psychological device for presenting to others the image you prefer to give to them, but I realised that I have been presenting a mask to myself for a long time. Today, I took it off.

Ancient Sages tell us that, in an enlightened state, we are blissful and happy, with a deep inner peace. Today I felt much more awake to the reality of who I am. By taking the mask off I felt really really awake. But the feelings I experienced were the opposite of bliss, happiness and inner peace! There was a kind of inner peace, but quite different to the peaceful moments I have often experienced.

Hopefully, I am travelling somewhere?

Enlightenment is just the beginning

Much of life is about finding ways to lift the limiting beliefs that we have chosen to accept earlier on in life, in our culture, education and experience, and which prevent us from achieving our full potential, or at worst, may even destroy us.

Young children, without such beliefs formed, are happily enlightened without knowing it. That's why we can learn so much from the wisdom of children.

Whatever path we take, whatever spiritual disciplines we practice, the key is to remove negative and limiting beliefs and replace them with positive and creative beliefs. It is these positive and creative beliefs that are our natural innate state.

Eventually, we become more positive and creative than negative and limiting and, eventually, these better beliefs will be understood to be more than beliefs, but will be understood to be the reality of who and what we are. Enlightenment.

But the most important and enlightened realisation is that we are all naturally connected, at a higher level, as one, and one enlightened part of the whole is really enlightenment of the whole.

I like the notion that if there are a sufficient and a critical mass of people on the planet who are living in a more enlighted state most of the time, that this will trigger a more enlightened state naturally for others. So we work to help others and ourselves as one humanity.

Enlightenment is becoming the ocean

I like the idea that the universe is a great ocean of life.
A great ocean is continuously producing new waves that then grow, live for a while, and then merge back into the ocean again. Its a non-stop process.

An ocean of life is continuously producing new 'beings' that then grow, live for a while and then merge back into the ocean again.

The problem is that many of us believe that we are the finite waves, with a seperate birth, life and death, instead of knowing that we are all the vast infinite ocean itself that is continually creating and manifesting beings in so many different ways.

One big wave, perceiving itself to be seperate and rushing towards the see shore said to another big wave, 'we are going to crash and die'. The other wave said, 'just relax, flow and be, and you will see how we will all gently subside, pull back from the shore for a while, as part of our natural cycle, and then recreate again, as new waves, later'.

Enlightenment is a joke

In moments of laughter we go way beyond the rational mind.

For an instant, we seem to lose control. We freewheel. Fear and judgement simply disappear. We glow. We become our natural selves.

It's great to laugh, but too much laughing seems to then cause pain.

Yet the only thing to do in pain and suffering is to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

What's extraordinary is that life seems to be a dance between opposites, until we laugh. And then we remember, momentarily?

Enlightenment transcends duality

The dualistic notions of:

- inside and outside of 'us'
- spiritual and material
- past and future
- heaven and hell
- life and death etc

are, according to the ancient sages and an increasing number of modern philosophers, all wrong notions, that may well help us at some lower level of partial understanding of our reality, but need to be recognised for their limitations, and ultimate unreality.

Reality, expressed as the oneness of everything, suggests we are beyond this duality, at a higher level. So, perhaps we need to expand our perceived individual consciousness to an ultimate universal consciousness, so 'we' disappear and there is no individual self. Therefore, no

- inside and outside us but simply 'all-ness'
- spiritual and material but simply 'everything in nothingness'
- past and future but simply 'everything that ever was, is, and will be'
- heaven and hell but simply ' whatever is'
- life and death but simply 'one eternal consciousness'

I can cope with personal oneness and even community and global oneness, but I find difficulty contemplating the experience of universal oneness? Perhaps that is the privilege of the astronauts?

Enlightenment and the Wizard of Oz

I was intrigued and amused to read in the book 'The Buddha, Geoff and Me' by Edward Canfor-Dumas, the comparison between the three Buddhist virtues of Compassion, Courage and Wisdom and, from the Wizard of Oz, the tin man who needed a heart (Compassion); the scarecrow who needed a brain (Wisdom); and the cowardly lion who needed (Courage).

Of course, the Wizard taught them that they had all these qualities inside of themselves. Buddhism teaches that they can be cultivated through meditation and other spiritual practices.

I like it when ancient eastern and modern western thoughts say the same thing with profundity.

The truth is the truth - whatever label we care to put on it?

Enlightenment is Blissful Wisdom

We are told that there are at least three key phases to a successful and fulfilled spiritual life:

1. Blissful Ignorance - 2. Painful Knowledge - 3. Blissful Wisdom

1. Blissful Ignorance - a new born baby seems to be the nearest to this first phase of perfection, and connection with One and All.

2. Painful Knowledge - when a child learns, for the first time, about life and death and develops an incorrect belief in a 'seperate' self. Then, as a result, we develop our egos and our sense of fear, scarcity and need for competitiveness.

3. Blissful Wisdom - when we realise who we truly are. When we realise that we are part of a highly interconnected One and All. We are not seperated at this higher level. We are not ego's. This Oneness of life, the essence of which is eternal, continues beyond the mere birth and death of the physical body. There is no death only continual life and transformation! This Oneness of life is abundant and full. There is no need to compete - only to openly communicate, collaborate, learn, share, serve, create, and, most importantly, enjoy! .

Enlightenment is discarding the raft

The Ancient Sages talk of many different paths, but that they all ultimately lead to the same one Truth. It's impossible to do otherwise. The Truth is the Truth.

Each path can be likened to a raft to help us cross a river to the other side.

Once we have crossed, we are then supposed to leave the raft and continue on our way. It has done its job.

The trouble is, we can become too attached to our raft and want to keep carrying it on our back, as a burden. Even worst is when we never start our crossing at all but build a beautiful dwelling on our raft to stay. Some even measure the raft and know exactly all its dimensions and like to spend all their time painting it pretty colours and going nowhere.

I like the other analogy of 'pointing a finger to the moon'. Here the problem is getting too distracted and fixed on the finger, and not even seeing the moon.

But it is not that easy, as it can be very comforting to have a good raft sometimes, and letting go can sometimes be scary?

Enlightenment is instant creativity

I have always been interested in the notion that our dominating thoughts create our reality.
It works for me - think a loving world - see a loving world - think an evil world - see an evil world. So we need a collective world dominated by positive thinkers, not the other way round.

I really like the idea that we can truly 'create' our own reality from the unlimited, invisible, formless abundance and so there is no need to 'compete' for what is already formed. Instead, create something new and add this to the world.

I have learned that humans create most new things from the already formed, which is good, but I am told that we should spend far more creative thinking time to bring about new forms from the formless. I agree.

But the world wide web is now enabling much more of formless creativity around the world, much faster than before. I think thoughts, create a blog, share it, and hope for feedback, to help me better shape my thoughts, to then create more :-)

Amazing!

Enlightenment is seeking not to seek?

The mystic seeks the experience of unity with a Higher Self.

The sage seeks understanding of the Higher Self

The saint seeks to work through the Higher Self for the good of others

The non-seeker probably seeks something else.

The Highers Self seeks mystics, sages, saints and non-seekers?

Why seek?