The Dichotomy of Enlightenment

FEAL | 27 Mar 2008

It has been a many years since I listened to or read any discussion and information pertaining to the contemporary notion of Enlightenment. It is a topic I explored extensively as a teenager and a little in my early 20’s. After that, well what can I say, it just hasn’t interested me in the same way as it use to.

Yesterday I was reminded of one of the reasons why modern information pertaining to the topic of Enlightenment I not something I am attracted to. What I have found is that nearly every spiritual teacher I have come across, and particular those teachers who claim they are Enlightened, is that their teaching establishes a situation that is both impractical and impassable to a human being seeking freedom. The aspirant is told he or she must transcend his or her current experience of reality as if to step over it or around it. On the one hand the aspirant is told he is imperfect and unenlightened as he is and thus must strive toward his enlightenment, and on the other hand he is told that Enlightenment is the end of all striving. You must seek a state of non-seeking. You must search for a state of non-searching. How is the aspirant ever meant to reconcile this dichotomy?

What I also find is that time and time again enlightenment related teachings come across as being so anti-life. They consistently manage to dismiss the magnificence of life and the perfection of all that is. It is as if life here on Earth was one massive mistake that we must now figure out way out of. This again sets up the aspirant with an impossible situation. On the one hand she experiences her emotions, her challenges, her personality complexes and so forth, yet on the other hand she is instructed to go beyond these things. But who is it that is going beyond them? It’s as if to say, "Get over yourself."

I find this approach lofty and ungrounded. I don’t know what the word is to describe the opposite of pragmatic, but this approach is just that.

The Path of Freedom as I experience it is an approach to reality that fully embraces life. It fully embraces the aspirant’s experience in every regard. Nothing is brushed aside, nothing is ignore, and nothing is seen as anything less than the means to that person’s liberation and total empowerment right now. It uses the combination of the aspirants total experience and their total innate awareness to bring about a shift in perception. This shift in perception results in Inner Peace.

The book I am about to publish will explore this topic in full.

  • jesse
    i get what youre talking about, there is an apparent paradox in the teachings regarding the quest for enlightenment. ramana maharshi, i feel, cleared this matter up nicely by claiming that we already are enlightened , liberated , and perfect at all times, its merely our perception that we're not that keeps us from 'realizing' this. and at the same time anything that can be realized or remembered can be forgotten and lost. he had an interesting analogy that involved the story of a lady who frantically tried to find a pearl necklace that was around her neck the entire time. she was miserable that she lost it, and when she finally "found" it she was overjoyed. i myself get dismayed at the apparent paradoxes and double-talk that comes with the territory of the pursuit of the highest truth/enlightenment/liberation. but it should be thoroughly understood that the same longing for this state of liberation is exactly what keeps you imprisoned. so essentially nothing need be done to claim a state that already belongs to you, only stop imagining that youre without it. this is where meditation and self-enquiry come in to play, its not infact doing anything, its UN-doing, and although still paradoxical in nature, the logic is sound and crystal clear - language and concepts will only take you so far, for the next part of the journey they will need to be given up and identity with them tossed aside. and perhaps ask the question..."who" wants liberation? jesus is a perfect example of someone who was spoke intentionally in paradoxes and brain-teasers, ie - "..i am the alpha and the omega..", "i am that i am" , and my personal favorite "blessed is he whom came into being before he came into being". nisargadatta maharaj and ramana maharshi are masters at unraveling the mystery of enlightenment. i suggest everyone read these guys and discover where wayne dyer, eckhart tolle and the rest of these new agers stole their material. not to say i dont like them but if you want the industrial-strength stuff you gotta go east. theres my view ! good day !
  • Christopher Evatt
    Spot on!.

    Its all one with no here or there. Its now. There's no leaving or arriving. This point, this life is it. There is no need to search.
    It is here. Be fully here and you awake...you lighten your load of unconsciousness to be light. Accept the load. Accept the light.
    It is all one. Enjoy all there is because it is you.

    Love

    Dad
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