On your road towards enlightenment

“Before enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment: Chop wood, carry water.”

What is enlightenment?



Firstly, there is actually no road. This is not something that can readily be grasped. It may seem that you are at A, and that enlightenment is at B (or maybe Z). It may seem that enlightenment is something you must achieve, a place you can go. It is not. One might think that for enlightenment to be achieved one needs to understand enlightenment.

No one understands enlightenment, and no one can explain to you what enlightenment is. Those that deem to be enlightened or are deemed to be enlightened, does not know what enlightenment is. Those that actually are enlightened does not know what enlightenment is. They can simply understand that they are enlightened! There will, on the other hand always be several different opinions about what enlightenment is.
Well how then, can someone be at a place where you are not, and yet there is no road to where they are?

How can it be that they possess something you do not, and yet there is nothing for you to do? Well it is quite ridiculous; because you are already enlightened. Deep enough down, we all are. It is merely that some people have come to know they are, and you have yet to know it. What can you do about that? Nothing!
Enlightenment will come to you. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Now, what you can do is showing yourself to be a student.

Being the student



Being the student is almost as vague as being enlightened. There will be several different opinions as to what a student must do. Understand this; there is nothing you must do, there are many things you can do. Being a student is quite peculiar. You will find that you will not know how good of a student you are, you will not know how far you have come, there is really no one else to compare yourself to and in the game of being a student of enlightenment there is nothing right or wrong you can do.

Buddhists will tell you what you must do, yogis will tell you what you must do, mystery schools will tell you what you must do, different Zen masters will tell you what you must do. This is more often than not just a hilarious game not easily understood by the practitioner. No one ever became enlightened by doing what Buddha or Lao Tzu did. There is no one road up the mountain of enlightenment; there is no one path more righteous than any other paths. Many would also argue that this particular mountain does not really have any top.
It can become quite clear after a while, that each road is actually totally and utterly unique.

There will be similarities of course, but no two people ever took the exact same path. If you by now are disillusioned and dissatisfied, I will not be the one to convince you to stay. If you on the other hand would like to know more, I can as a student of light offer my views on what you might do. You are free to ask me any questions you might have, but hopefully this thread will go on illuminated by the viewpoints and approaches of other members.

Awareness and the egoic state of consciousness



The word awareness can be somewhat treacherous. We can be aware that we hear something, feel something, see something, etcetera. This makes a convincing case arguing that the brain itself, which senses all these things, is the awareness. This can surely be the case, but it is not like it has to be that way.

In our brain there are thoughts, and then there is something that is aware of thoughts. This can be one and the same thing, but we should admit a particular duality. Descartes said “I think therefore I am”, which implies that without thought there could be no existence. I argue that we exist, and that we are something that can observe thought. Our very existence is consciousness itself.

This can (and will by many) be coined self-awareness, one of the brains many attributes. But it gets somewhat weird when we then can be aware of a self and our thoughts, as we do when we meditate. This is where the egoic state of mind comes into play. In this excellent thread the consciousness and the sub consciousness (or ego) is explained rather handsomely.
Awareness and awareness of awareness is immensely important if we are to consider ourselves students. It is important to get to know the ego and what it is, and there are no shortages of information on the internet. And it is quite crucial that we put effort into strengthening the consciousness, and that leads us right into the next part.

meditation



Meditation is really nothing but solidification of the consciousness. Meditation comes in many, many forms. Meditation is getting into the role of the observer, not being the mind (ego) but seeing the mind. This can be done in countless ways. Yoga for example is best done in a mindful and meditative state. I will leave it up to you to do your own research, but feel free to ask. Although the “meditation scene”, in lack of any better term, is quite divided when it comes to the understanding of chakras, I believe they play a vital part in exalting our consciousness.

Chakras



Again I ask you to do your own research. I’ll do a crude and basic orientation on chakras; along your spine and skull there are seven main energy points called chakras. At the base of your spine is the root chakra, after that comes the sacral chakra, and then we have the solar plexus followed by the heart chakra. Above the heart chakra we find the throat chakra, followed by, and arguably the most famous one, the third eye chakra while at the top of our head we have the crown chakra.
These energy points have different spiritual, physical and mental (soul, body and mind) tasks in our body. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you research the different chakras and do what it takes to open them. In the business of honoring and opening the chakras, the ego will be greatly diminished. The chakras will show you, through meditation and research, the right way of living.

The right way of living



Mind you, the right way of living does not exist. Chakras will merely show you the right way to live for you. In the meanwhile, you can take it upon yourself to honor those aspects of living that are right for everybody. Love is surely better than fear. Letting others live is surely better than the opposite, order is surely better than chaos and so on and so forth.
The understanding that there are not one right way to live leads us down to the last part.

Truth - there aint no religion higher!



Follow it. Everywhere. Be not afraid of where truth takes you, and it shall surely set you free. In this post I offer my view on what truth is. It is my opinion that we hold individual truths, and you must follow that which is true for you.


This will hopefully not be a thread where we discuss whether enlightenment exists or not, if you want to do that, there is this quite amazing thread here. This will be enforced by the moderators (it will not). Well, at least it will make me angry! (it will not).

reply to post by OleMB


What is this, an objective thread on how to be subjective? Or a subjective thread on how to be objective? Either way, you're trying to set water on fire. The stuff you're trying to explain can't be explained from one person to another without both already knowing what's being discussed.

If people come on here not believing a thing about enlightenment, they will walk away understanding exactly as much as they did when they arrived. Just as with any philosophy or religion, you have to wade in with a package of assumptions already strapped to your back by a long rope of suspended disbelief.

I guess what I'm saying here is, by the vary nature of your thread, in order to logically analyze your premise, you have to make so many assumptions and stretches that logic is no longer effective. It's more speculation that anything else.

For years I searched. I read and traveled, followed and questioned. Meditated and contemplated.
looking for my teacher.

To the river I came and I swam. I found stones and dug, lifted and carried to a new place. One stone was small when I began to dig. I dug and dug and the stone got bigger and bigger and bigger. Hours and hours, days and days. Under the flowing water of the river, each day removing to particles the moving water had replaced from my earlier digging.

Finally the stone began to become smaller and I knew I would soon be able to pull it free. Pulling it free of the river bed took an afternoon. Rolling it side over side, sliding it up the bed from the deeper to more shallow water consumed another day.

My neighbor came with his tractor and we gently strapped the stone and lifted it out of the river and carried it home. I considered how to set it down. This way or that. Here or there. Finally I decided in the garden.
Friends would come to marvel at it and the others in my garden. 700 lbs? they would gasp.

One day a long ago friend visited and upon leaving asked to roam my place and take home with her, pictures of where I now live.

Weeks later I received in the mail, a photo of the stone. It seems she had been to the stone at the right time of day in exactly the right position to take a picture of the true nature of the stone. The picture is my avatar.
My teacher had arrived.
Now I listen.

reply to post by TerryMcGuire



Yoda has come.

I am not surprised. What a great, true, . . . story.