ENLIGHTENMENT
IN OUR
TIME
by Lonny J.
Brown, Ph.D.
Don't
believe your eyes, until you open them.
At this very moment, stuck onto a whirling little
orb, hooked into an average-looking solar system on the outer spiral of
the diaphanous cloud of dusty radiance we call the Milky Way, you are
hurtling through space at an unimaginably enormous velocity.
Yet you feel that you are stationary... that the
world is always "under" you, the sky is the very definition of
"up." The ever-exploding heavens appear a motionless canopy. We
call this non-sense "common sense.”
You look up at the stars and assume that they are all
"there" at once, namely "now." Yet each star/image
streaming into your eyes comes from a different time, numerous billions of
years ago. Not only are you literally looking into the past, but you
are actually beholding a multitude of pasts in one enormous starry
vista. Many of the celestial bodies you believe to be "there"
are "now" long dead and gone. Our beloved, ever-so-reliable
night sky, by which we have navigated for thousands of years, is really an
antique apparition.
Your Brain Filters Your Mind.
Common misperceptions are caused by the limitations
and reality-filtering properties of your brain, which in effect allows you
to be somewhere specific and get something done. You sense your body as
solid, though you intellectually admit that it is in reality mostly fluid,
held in trillions of gelatinous cells, all made of molecules, themselves
clever arrangements of atoms which are primarily empty space encapsulated
by energy clouds so ephemeral and transient that brilliant nuclear
physicists can only say they have a tendency
to exist.
Even when the rational scientific intellect proves
beyond a shadow of a doubt that ours is a body of light, we still feel
like meat and bones, so persuasive is the testimony of the lying senses.
Then too, I instinctively "know" I am
someone specific, definable as distinct from all other instances of
sentient awareness there are, or ever were or will exist. Indeed, the most
fundamental assumption and basis for all my other beliefs is the
unquestionable "fact" of my own individuality. So persuasive is
this presumption of the primacy of my identity, that I actually (if
secretly) experience myself as the center of the universe.
What is the meaning of these perceptual hoaxes? Why
do we persist in acting as if we are so special; that our beliefs are the most valuable; that our world is more
consequential than all others? Could it be that we fear that the only
alternative is to forever feel stupid and small in the face of the
infinite?
Where does one turn between solipsism ("I'm IT") and the awful realization of our fleeting
insignificance in a vast impersonal cosmos (“I’m
no one.”)? How can we find a satisfactory Truth behind the mistakes
and mysteries of our lives? The answer may be closer than you think..
-*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*---
Ultimate Questions
Who
am I? Why am I here? What should I do? Is there true wisdom to be found,
or are there limits to knowledge? Is happiness possible? At what price?
Try as we might to push them aside, the eternal
cosmic questions continue to haunt us, late at night when sleep won't
come.. or when tragedy strikes and shakes up our complacent routine. No
matter how sophisticated or busy our lives, that existential itch still
demands scratching:
What's it all
about? Why all this suffering? Who needs the aggravation? What's the use
of trying? Is there a way out? WHAT'S WRONG WITH US? How could we have
degenerated so far? Is this sorry world salvageable? Should we even try,
or must we resign ourselves to reaping our just desserts?
God has concealed the wind and
shown you the dust.
- Rumi
Is "reality" real? And if so, so what? Are
we doomed to ride the highs and lows of blind fate until the inevitable
end, when we take that terrible plunge into the boundless black hole of
final extinction?
Consciously or otherwise, your own coping mechanisms
lead you to seek or synthesize some explanation for IT ALL, if only to
help endure the torments and uncertainties of this earthly existence.
However myopic or approximate, your personal working view of life is an
attempt to make sense of an impersonal world in an overwhelmingly huge
universe. Your attraction to reading these words is evidence of this
ongoing quest. It has to do with what we could call your larger sense of
direction.. the persistent, inner yearning to find your way Home.. to be
free, Enlightened.
Be As Children
You
don't have to rehearse to be yourself.
- Stewart Emary
How can Enlightenment be cultivated in an age of
deception, greed, distraction and info-glut? Where can The Living Truth be
discovered in a cynical and shallow culture so obsessed with desire and
power? Can Enlightenment be transmitted in school?.. in a book?.. on TV?
On the Internet? In a dream?
Practice having no
opinions.
- Elam
Our everyday knowledge comes from a language-base of
complex, learned facts, composed of all the information you've ever
received. But MIND is much bigger than what we merely retain and remember.
Consciousness contains - but is not defined by - the sum total of all
experience, knowledge, ideas, memories, instincts, and perceptions,
including the subconscious and super-conscious. Mind engenders
all the rest.
Imagine the intrinsic experience of eliminating all
interpretive filters, all evaluation and categorizing. Imagine the mind of
the newborn: Language-free, non-comparing, non-judging, non-egoic,
non-formed.
Be
empty, that is all.
The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror -
going after nothing.
- Master Chuang
Wisdom Beyond Words
The very act of conceptualizing and discussing the
illusive prize of Enlightenment is full of traps and pitfalls. We
over-intellectualized humans are prone to mistake words for reality -
concepts for knowledge - which is dangerous folly.
Yet there is no stopping the attempt at using
symbolic language in our search for Truth and understanding. Our only hope
as communicating beings lies in acknowledging the limitations of labels,
even as we enlist them in the attempt to express the ineffable.
Enlightenment is not what you think, no matter how
much you think about it. "It" is real, but intangible. It is the
most valuable "thing" in the world, but it exists nowhere, and
cannot be owned, kept, bought or sold. Its realization is both simple and
utterly profound. It is not an object of striving, but rather an innate
state of being which can only be recognized.
It is closer than your own breath, yet it may take ten thousand
lifetimes to discover. Once realized, it transforms you, though few casual
observers may notice the difference. It will save your life and release
you from it at the same time.
The great teachers spoke of its virtues. Every
religion promises it. The mystics sing its praises. Deep down in your
heart of hearts, you know it's True. Enlightenment is possible. This very
suspicion - hardly justified by our everyday experience - indicates that
what we seek is intrinsic, innate, inborn,. To look elsewhere amounts to
what Ken Wilber calls "wave-jumping in search of wetness." All
we really need is a way to truly know ourselves.
Enlightenment In Our Time
It's the perennial wisdom. The ancient knowledge. The
Single Truth with ten thousand names. Buried and rediscovered yet again,
when the hearts of people yearn for the cessation of their needless
anguish.
A tidal wave of spirit is moving across the
subconscious landscape of the modern world, and emerging in every region.
Could this be IT? How may I best become receptive and participate?
The world is shrinking, and The Word is out once
more, and - you might say - not a moment too soon. In the soul of a whole
generation of new seekers and celebrators; in a wave of enlightening
teachers from every culture; in the eyes of wise old souls, and highly
evolved newborn messengers; in the pure, channeled wisdom teachings; in
the council circles and sweat lodges and witches covens.. It is the source
of the sacred in every culture and conviction: the timeless, elusive,
powerful true spirit emerges and reveals itself in a new way, on a new
day, for a new age: Eclectic. Electronic. Iconoclastic. Trans-cultural.
Universal.
Now is the time to spiritualize the pulsing global
electromagnetic nerve network of our intelligence, and realize our
essential Godhead, individually, and collectively. It's time to become an
enlightened citizen of an enlightened world civilization. And there's no
time to waste, for Mankind and the remaining creatures and the Earth
Herself are in immanent peril.
Enlightenment
Is Practical.
Christ said we could do what he did, and showed the
way. The last words of the Buddha were, "Work
out your own salvation." The
Sufis say you are God playing hide and seek with yourself. There's really
nowhere to go but here.
And there's no time like now. Enlightenment is a real
present-time option, and it may just save you a whole lot of trouble
(including the destruction of the world). It only requires your complete
commitment to awakening yourself to the Truth, about yourself, the world,
the universe.
Enlightenment
Is Radical
Enlightenment is meta-real: It encompasses both what
you know and what you don't know, and embraces all relative levels of
reality. It is Transpersonal.
Super-conscious. Omnipresent. Non-temporal. Unpredicted. Non-Conceptual.
Non-Dualistic. Boundless. Non-conforming. Self-evident. Self-validating.
Enlightenment
Is Not
Enlightenment
is not an achievement. It is not a reward at the end of the rainbow of all
your hard work and self-sacrifice. Enlightenment is the immediate radical
realization of your very nature, unfiltered, stripped of delusion and
pretense and all mental limitations. Actually, there is nothing you can do
about Enlightenment except be it. Enlightenment is the original native
state and ground of all being. It engenders and includes you, but the
"you" which you customarily identify with cannot begin to grasp
it.
You
Name It, We Need It.
Spontaneous Wisdom
Unshakable knowledge
Conscious Deep Peace, born of pervasive understanding of nature's ways
Global insight
Wholeness
Unconditional Equanimity
Today, there are thousands, and there may soon be
millions of fully conscious beings among us. The very survival of the
planet requires that the influence of enlightened people everywhere reach
a certain critical mass. Won't you help? Your mission - should you decide
to accept - is to become enlightened, and save the world.
"From
"Meditation - Beginner's Questions & Answers," by Lonny J.
Brown,
Ph.D., (www.SelfHelpGuides.com,)
Lonny Brown also wrote "Enlightenment In
Our Time" (www.BookLocker.com/LonnyBrown),
and "Self-Actuated Healing"
(www.Amazon.com).
Visit www.holistic.com/lonny
or contact lonny@holistic.com."
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