“It just doesn’t happen, in any enlightenment method, that a person will directly experience the true self as flawed, crimped, half-baked, or somehow in need of “growth.” Eventually, the whole idea that the true self might “grow” or “evolve” becomes laughable. What, then, gets transformed? If we are perfect in our nature before enlightenment, during enlightenment, and afterwards, what changes? It is subjectively clear that something evolved, but what is it, if not me? What evolves and transforms in the process and non-process of enlightenment is the state of our relationship with the way things actually are.”
- The Enlightenment Intensive
One of the main reasons I’m unconditionally drawn to the process/non-process labeled enlightenment is my awareness of and relationship to truth. I’ve never been able to abide with non-truth, and I’ve known for quite some time that my perception of reality and my own existence within it is not true.
I can’t fully recognize truth, but I can recognize non-truth.
Words like “true” and “truth” have this objective, almost final characterization to them that isn’t quite right for me. It’s all probabilities. I mostly mean less wrong in the sense of obvious noise mistaken for signal. If we’re convinced 1+1=2 (or even 1+1=3) but our understanding of the symbols of 1, 2, 3, +, and = is all confused, our convictions are misplaced.
I have a hunch I’ll experience this thing called enlightenment someday, and I’ll be all happy and blissed out and such with a “Guys, guys, it happened! Let me tell you my story!” and I’ll most likely go through my old posts and chuckle at how much noise was there. I’m okay with that. It’s all part of the journey. My main hope is that my experience doesn’t turn into a “and you should do this too!” thing. That’s how religions and spiritual teachings and cults get made which often just distract people more than they help. What I do feel fairly confident in suggesting is that you don’t avoid. Dive right in to whatever you intuitively know you have to dive into and can’t effectively avoid long term anyway.
Peace and love in abundance. I don’t know much, but I know that can and will be and is... true.