DeDukshyn
22nd July 2011, 00:08
This is just something I dug up, I wrote it a few years ago for someone specific, but I think there might a fair bit of info here for people to contemplate. It's not as cohesive as I would like to think it is, but if you like to philosophize a bit, you may enjoy it.
Discuss, praise and criticize freely, if you so desire .... ;)
Cold Concepts
When is that moment in time that an individual reaches enlightenment? For some, a moment of enlightenment is reached when there is a total breakdown of one’s belief systems, often brought on by a traumatic event. For others, perhaps years of spiritual study, meditation in isolation, or other practices may eventually bring about enlightenment. But in either of these cases, the prognosis doesn’t look good for the average Joe being able to reach enlightenment. In the case of trauma induced enlightenment, it is often just a temporary glimpse of what it feels to be enlightened, without knowing at all what it is that is actually bringing it about. Many people experience this at some point in their lives and are always waiting that that point may come again, somehow. A few individuals have reached enlightenment through intense isolation, meditation and study of advanced spiritual concepts, but this often takes many, many years, and in the end, if enlightenment is reached, what good is it to the world if you must hide from the world to maintain your enlightenment?
So where do you find enlightenment? How do you get there? How long will it take? What do I need to do? These questions cannot be answered accurately from a conventional point of view, and it is this fact that gives us a glimpse into finding the answer. Why can’t these questions be accurately answered? If there were answers to these questions then that’s what they would be, the answers, and everyone would have enlightenment at their fingertips. But imagine asking 30 leaders from all walks of life to answer these questions. You can well imagine that every one of them would likely have a completely different answer (“on top of a mountain . . .”, “after 30 years of church . . .”, “you must look within . . .” etc). There are two reasonable explanations for this; they, themselves are not enlightened, and so are relying on what they think or have been taught leads to enlightenment, rather than speaking from experience, and two, asserting my statement that these questions cannot be answered accurately, the next best thing is to describe things that are positive, or have had positive effects on life, because they honestly just don’t have the answer, but still want to help in some way.
So far, we have ascertained that the road to enlightenment seems, for the most part, impossible to quantify based on any conventional description. So, what comes to my mind at this point is the question “is there currently anything that we can acknowledge that is impossible to quantify, inside our convention of understanding that can be possibly used as a reference to help us understand this concept?” There are few examples, but there is one that I can think of that everyone is familiar with. Although I hate to use this example for this, it will help explain a few things. Cold is a concept that is completely unquantifiable. You cannot measure cold, and cold does not really exist. It is something that exists only as a concept and nothing else. You might say, “of course you can measure cold, use a thermometer, idiot!” But is it the cold that the thermometer is measuring? A thermometer only has one purpose – to measure heat. Even if the object to be measured is 10 degrees K (nearly absolute zero), the thermometer can only measure the level of heat that exists in the object. At absolute zero (0 degrees K or -273.15 degrees C), molecules stop vibrating as there is a complete absence of heat, but still, cold is nowhere to be found. Cold is the concept of the absence of heat. Could the concept of enlightenment be an absence of something as opposed to something in and of itself?
UnGodly Time
For a moment, let’s entertain the idea that enlightenment is an absence of something. The thing that would jump into most people’s minds at this point would be that enlightenment is an absence of evil. I heard someone once once use my previous example of cold to define evil as the absence of God – that evil in itself does not exist, but rather, it is what is perceived in the absence of God. While this is one of the better definitions I have heard, it still doesn’t help us out much in determining what may lead to enlightenment. But, if we were to entertain that definition, then the absence of the absence of God leads to enlightenment (the double negative cancels itself out leaving the common cliché ‘God leads to enlightenment’), leaving us no further ahead without an accurate definition of God. I believe God cannot really be accurately conveyed using human terms so we’ll just leave this one completely alone. However, if we use deduction at this point, we can assume that anything that is not of God, leads away from enlightenment, and anything that is of God, leads to enlightenment. So let us categorize things as of God, and not of God. Anything that is of God has to share the qualities of God, and anything not of God must have no qualities of God. One of a few agreed upon qualities of God is timelessness. So everything in our world that is timeless should be able to provide insight to help lead us to enlightenment; the problem is, nothing in this physical universe is timeless. Everything has a start point, exists for time, and an end point. It appears that anything that can be physically measured is not of God, does not share God’s qualities, and therefore leads away from enlightenment. We can roughly conclude that anything affected by time is in the category of things wherein their absence leads to enlightenment. But is it the absence of all physical things? Or, perhaps it’s not the absence of the things affected by time, but the absence of time itself, considering that time is the actual causal factor at work here.
Let us now explore the possibility of the absence of time leading towards enlightenment. First of all, what is time? This question has challenged even the most advanced minds throughout history. We can all visualize a timeline with a start point, and an end point. But this is a useless reference unless you associate it with a “present moment”, which could be represented as a single point on the timeline. Now, let’s create the absence of time by simply removing the timeline altogether. In doing this we have also removed everything that is affected by time. What is left is the single point that represents “present moment.” In this way I have avoided trying to use conventional means to describe time, which is valid, as what we are really after is the absence of time. The “present moment” is the absence of time. Thus, we may conclude that the “present moment” leads to enlightenment. When the mind is only concerned with a state of "being" in the Present Moment, the majority of its fears are relinquished - as almost all of them are based outside of the present moment. We fear the future, want for the future, fear our pasts, feel guilt or wish for things to be different (not accepting the past - a trickledown state of fear, as is guilt, judgments, etc) - thousands of hidden fears that are below your level of awareness. With no reference to time, these fears cannot exist, and besides, you can't predict the future nor change the past - because they don't exist - why does every single human spend all their time focusing on the Illusion of past and future? The only reality is the present moment. The relinquishing of these time-based illusional fears, through the ease of practicing being in the present moment - only focusing on what is in your "now" until you can align with it is all you ever need. And, the amount of time you do or don't spend wallowing in the past or wanting from the future, will let you know where you are, on the path of enlightenment. After-all we are human "Beings", but only if we are "Being" --in the present moment, that is.
Discuss, praise and criticize freely, if you so desire .... ;)
Cold Concepts
When is that moment in time that an individual reaches enlightenment? For some, a moment of enlightenment is reached when there is a total breakdown of one’s belief systems, often brought on by a traumatic event. For others, perhaps years of spiritual study, meditation in isolation, or other practices may eventually bring about enlightenment. But in either of these cases, the prognosis doesn’t look good for the average Joe being able to reach enlightenment. In the case of trauma induced enlightenment, it is often just a temporary glimpse of what it feels to be enlightened, without knowing at all what it is that is actually bringing it about. Many people experience this at some point in their lives and are always waiting that that point may come again, somehow. A few individuals have reached enlightenment through intense isolation, meditation and study of advanced spiritual concepts, but this often takes many, many years, and in the end, if enlightenment is reached, what good is it to the world if you must hide from the world to maintain your enlightenment?
So where do you find enlightenment? How do you get there? How long will it take? What do I need to do? These questions cannot be answered accurately from a conventional point of view, and it is this fact that gives us a glimpse into finding the answer. Why can’t these questions be accurately answered? If there were answers to these questions then that’s what they would be, the answers, and everyone would have enlightenment at their fingertips. But imagine asking 30 leaders from all walks of life to answer these questions. You can well imagine that every one of them would likely have a completely different answer (“on top of a mountain . . .”, “after 30 years of church . . .”, “you must look within . . .” etc). There are two reasonable explanations for this; they, themselves are not enlightened, and so are relying on what they think or have been taught leads to enlightenment, rather than speaking from experience, and two, asserting my statement that these questions cannot be answered accurately, the next best thing is to describe things that are positive, or have had positive effects on life, because they honestly just don’t have the answer, but still want to help in some way.
So far, we have ascertained that the road to enlightenment seems, for the most part, impossible to quantify based on any conventional description. So, what comes to my mind at this point is the question “is there currently anything that we can acknowledge that is impossible to quantify, inside our convention of understanding that can be possibly used as a reference to help us understand this concept?” There are few examples, but there is one that I can think of that everyone is familiar with. Although I hate to use this example for this, it will help explain a few things. Cold is a concept that is completely unquantifiable. You cannot measure cold, and cold does not really exist. It is something that exists only as a concept and nothing else. You might say, “of course you can measure cold, use a thermometer, idiot!” But is it the cold that the thermometer is measuring? A thermometer only has one purpose – to measure heat. Even if the object to be measured is 10 degrees K (nearly absolute zero), the thermometer can only measure the level of heat that exists in the object. At absolute zero (0 degrees K or -273.15 degrees C), molecules stop vibrating as there is a complete absence of heat, but still, cold is nowhere to be found. Cold is the concept of the absence of heat. Could the concept of enlightenment be an absence of something as opposed to something in and of itself?
UnGodly Time
For a moment, let’s entertain the idea that enlightenment is an absence of something. The thing that would jump into most people’s minds at this point would be that enlightenment is an absence of evil. I heard someone once once use my previous example of cold to define evil as the absence of God – that evil in itself does not exist, but rather, it is what is perceived in the absence of God. While this is one of the better definitions I have heard, it still doesn’t help us out much in determining what may lead to enlightenment. But, if we were to entertain that definition, then the absence of the absence of God leads to enlightenment (the double negative cancels itself out leaving the common cliché ‘God leads to enlightenment’), leaving us no further ahead without an accurate definition of God. I believe God cannot really be accurately conveyed using human terms so we’ll just leave this one completely alone. However, if we use deduction at this point, we can assume that anything that is not of God, leads away from enlightenment, and anything that is of God, leads to enlightenment. So let us categorize things as of God, and not of God. Anything that is of God has to share the qualities of God, and anything not of God must have no qualities of God. One of a few agreed upon qualities of God is timelessness. So everything in our world that is timeless should be able to provide insight to help lead us to enlightenment; the problem is, nothing in this physical universe is timeless. Everything has a start point, exists for time, and an end point. It appears that anything that can be physically measured is not of God, does not share God’s qualities, and therefore leads away from enlightenment. We can roughly conclude that anything affected by time is in the category of things wherein their absence leads to enlightenment. But is it the absence of all physical things? Or, perhaps it’s not the absence of the things affected by time, but the absence of time itself, considering that time is the actual causal factor at work here.
Let us now explore the possibility of the absence of time leading towards enlightenment. First of all, what is time? This question has challenged even the most advanced minds throughout history. We can all visualize a timeline with a start point, and an end point. But this is a useless reference unless you associate it with a “present moment”, which could be represented as a single point on the timeline. Now, let’s create the absence of time by simply removing the timeline altogether. In doing this we have also removed everything that is affected by time. What is left is the single point that represents “present moment.” In this way I have avoided trying to use conventional means to describe time, which is valid, as what we are really after is the absence of time. The “present moment” is the absence of time. Thus, we may conclude that the “present moment” leads to enlightenment. When the mind is only concerned with a state of "being" in the Present Moment, the majority of its fears are relinquished - as almost all of them are based outside of the present moment. We fear the future, want for the future, fear our pasts, feel guilt or wish for things to be different (not accepting the past - a trickledown state of fear, as is guilt, judgments, etc) - thousands of hidden fears that are below your level of awareness. With no reference to time, these fears cannot exist, and besides, you can't predict the future nor change the past - because they don't exist - why does every single human spend all their time focusing on the Illusion of past and future? The only reality is the present moment. The relinquishing of these time-based illusional fears, through the ease of practicing being in the present moment - only focusing on what is in your "now" until you can align with it is all you ever need. And, the amount of time you do or don't spend wallowing in the past or wanting from the future, will let you know where you are, on the path of enlightenment. After-all we are human "Beings", but only if we are "Being" --in the present moment, that is.