When I think about my level of consciousness I'm never
impressed with myself. I think about people like Maynard James Keenan of the
band Tool, and I bet he does a lot of work to move through to higher levels of
being, and I think it shows in his talent, notoriety, and privacy. I'll never
be an enlightened person, so I just work on trying not to getting in the way of
other people and treating people with respect and kindness. I gauge
enlightenment to be either such a complex emotion that I'm unwilling to do
something extra to understand it, or it's too simple that I'm unwilling to let
go enough in order for it to sink in. I treat enlightenment like I do politics,
where I observe it while I'm feeling breezy and it's fun to talk about, and
maybe even get passionate about, but I don't think I'll ever feel personally
involved or thoroughly understand it.
I really enjoy eastern philosophy, but more in a way that, as
dumb as it sounds, just considering the knowledge makes me feel calm. The
conclusions that are drawn from following much Eastern philosophy seem aligned
with my innate personality and my basic perspective of life, and the message
feels like the opposite of getting yelled at as a little kid for doing
something the wrong way. BUT, when I
think of the word "enlightenment" it kind of seems as mysterious as
the female orgasm. It’s a sensation I’ve only witnessed and have heard
testimonials of without having experienced it myself. But I believe it exists.
But why do I feel like I’ll never be enlightened myself? I
think it’s because I’m a person that likes to thoroughly consider things and it
seems like the term “enlightenment” carries the weight of an emotion that
restless thinkers like myself don’t possess. I’m not negative or cynical, or at
least not nearly as much as I have been at one point in life, but I know that I
am not considered an “accepting” person for the reason that I always feel room
for question and change. I question situations and try to get directly involved
with my experiences to control them, and I do both of these things out of the
desire to find good answers and solutions. I wouldn’t say that I’m an
exceptionally judgmental person, in the sense that I don’t reach final
conclusions by having a momentary opinion. I Judge people like everyone does,
but I personally acknowledge that my feelings about those judgments are just
that: feelings. My judgments don’t hold any objective meaning, they’re just my
personal opinions. However, I can get very involved and decidedly blind about
my personal feelings if it feels good in the moment, which is a trait about
myself that I can’t control… or rather THE trait of myself… of having poor
self-control. Though struggling with self-control doesn’t make someone ignorant
of their reality, it just feels like one side of the scale is much heavier than
the other.
I wish I knew what
the word was that maybe an enlightened person feels between tolerance and
acceptance. Tolerance feels too begrudging. When someone says they are
tolerant, I imagine the feeling as a tall flat concrete wall, built to let
others brush up against while keeping their personal irritation and hatred
restrained. Likewise, acceptance feels too warm and personal, like you are
inviting the feeling in to live with you. Both tolerance and acceptance feel
too personally involved. When considering the feeling of enlightenment, it
seems like the emotion is void of the other in some respect, almost requiring
an array of emotions in another dimension.
I do think about people who claim to have found spiritual
enlightenment as if they are aliens. I have to admit, sometimes I think about
people who claim they have found enlightenment and I want to say they’re
ignorant. After all, aren’t they deliberately choosing to not experience certain
states of being? I guess when an emotion
doesn’t provide you with practical application, it makes sense to rise above
it, but pain isn’t a worthless experience when you consider the wisdom it
provides. When someone is in pain they learn the feeling of why it’s caused,
what to do about it, how to avoid it, and they learn what it feels like. Maybe
enlightened individuals all had to go through pain to get where they are. Maybe
pain is the reason they sought out enlightenment.
I’m aware that many people say enlightenment is an
experience rather than a state of being, and that having an enlightened moment
doesn’t cast enlightenment on you forever. I believe these people who have once
attained enlightenment are always in the struggle to re-attain it, or at least
not stray far off. I couldn’t imagine the discipline required to reach
enlightenment or the desire to reach it would disappear after having
accomplished it, and if they do continue to find it again and again, this puts
their life back into the same cycle of ups and downs, same as everyone else. If
this is the case, it makes enlightenment seem as though they are simplifying
their experiences through a funnel of having and not having enlightenment.
Maybe redirecting or confining their thoughts like this helps them get back on
track easier. At a glance, constantly reaching for enlightenment seems almost
self-destructive considering the individual has is depriving themselves of a
vast amount of experiences for the one “enlightenment”, but this is coming from
a person that doesn’t know what enlightenment is. Maybe enlightenment is potent
with the same meaning that is deluded in other positive experiences.
It makes me wonder then, can you get desensitized to the
feeling of being enlightened? When I have a great or terrible emotion from a
similar situation, it becomes more predictable, and I then see through the pain
or buzz of the moment. When you become accustomed to an experience, you get
bored with the obvious details. You block out those details because it’s
useless to take them in, you could guess that they are going to happen before
they do, so you’re not going to devote your consciousness to them. In that
moment, your brain begins to notice finer details. That’s how people get to
really know a person, or how someone really gets good at a skill. If a person
reaches enlightenment more than once, can’t they grasp something new from the
same experience, or is enlightenment an experience that binds all perspective?
The latter would seem too blinding for any human to coherently understand, like
taking too large a dose of a heavy psychotropic drug.
There is too much of a willingness to conform in humans to
get an honest and accurate consensus on what this experience is, and if there
really is a standard to “enlightenment” I’d guess that there are many people
incapable of communicating the experience with justice, and many more that
experienced some vaguely similar emotion and have dramatized it verbally.
I’ve experienced moments of tranquility and deep reflection, but I wouldn’t be
so bold as to call it enlightenment.
As it is, there are too many structures built and cultures
dedicated to this experience to denote a true transcendental reality, but I’m
not saying that I don’t believe it exists. I just believe that there is too
much static in the atmosphere to hear a real frequency on the subject.
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