refuting Enlightenment
Jul 30, 2017 21:32:32 GMT 10
Post by James on Jul 30, 2017 21:32:32 GMT 10
www.quora.com/What-is-enlightenment-and-how-it-can-be-achieved
I have taken this opportunity to refute this post about Enlightenment. I've been wanting to do this for some time. I think it’s one of the greatest evils preventing people from finding real self-enlightenment of truth through their feelings. I want to scream out: No stop, wrong way, go back - to your feelings, for they are the way to the truth of yourself, the truth of your soul, and to God. Not this dead-end feeling-destroying mind way called Enlightenment.
So there are now two opposing ways we can live being offered on Earth. Either to seek enlightenment using your mind to gain absolute control over your feelings; or, to look to your feelings for the way to the hidden truth of yourself that is within your very own soul.
What is enlightenment and how it can be achieved?
Sean Webb, Host, "Mind Hacking Happiness" Podcast and Blog
Updated Apr 17, 2013
Originally Answered: What is enlightenment?
Spiritual enlightenment is a concept mostly associated with Buddhism and Hinduism, but it also has unrecognized connections into most other religions as well. Enlightenment implies complete understanding of life and the universe, which usually is accompanied by a detachment of all things impermanent and a complete awareness of everything that is, at the moment that it is. The spiritual belief purports that non-enlightened life is full of suffering produced by desire and other emotions that attach the mind to worldly things; suffering is the inevitable result of attachment to these necessarily transitory things. A person thus becomes enlightened when they remain in the world yet becomes free of attachment to it. Enlightenment is considered the end of a being’s spiritual journey, be it within one life or across many.
Me: For me this is perfect, it’s EXACTLY what is wrong with Enlightenment. I couldn’t say it better. It is using one’s mind to deny one’s feelings - Big Time. To deny all the bad feelings, deny all the suffering, by becoming free from such attachments. So, to become free of your suffering, to somehow rise above it so it no longer bothers you, is becoming enlightened. And that is the end of one’s spiritual journey? Which is true, in it is the end of one’s spiritual journey into the darkness. It’s the most evil you can become, the most untrue, the most disconnected from your true feeling self; it’s the most wrong way of living, the most you can achieve by using your mind to control your feelings. It’s the most you can do to blank out your feeling self, to ensure you only feel good, blissful, feelings of nirvana, and NO BAD FEELINGS. And there is no truth involved. The so-called enlightened ones don’t teach or live any truth, because their mind-way is the most anti truth way you can be. It’s just beliefs, knowledge for the mind, nothing coming directly from your soul through your feelings. Kill your feeling expression off and you are devoid of truth, just as the religions and spiritual systems are. So people living such truth-denying ways, die, moving into the mind mansion worlds in spirit there to keep transcending using their mind at the expense of their true feelings, using their mind to shut out all bad feelings and keep only the good ones, contriving a positive, happy, blissful state of mind, ending up not able to go any higher than the sixth mansion world. There to wait until their soul says enough is enough, then to have a massive mental breakdown so as to crack them out of their minds control, forcing them to come back to themselves and their true feelings - all those bad ones, all that suffering and pain they’ve swept under the mat using their mind. All so they can finally see the truth of their wrongness, of how they’ve used their mind to the detriment of their soul, and how they’ve not grown spiritually at all in truth, only deluded themselves that they had ‘found the way’. There is no such thing as your spiritual journey having or coming to an end. This is a classic example of a so-called enlightened person having NO TRUTH, for had they, were they truly enlightened by truth, they’d know we are spiritual beings and there is no such end of our journey, for if there was, then that would be end of ourselves. We are to grow in truth eternally. It is just life, not even so much as a ‘journey’. That is the Truth.
In Buddhism, enlightenment is called nirvana. Nirvana is believed to be a state of peace and unity with the cosmos. Different forms of Buddhism teach different techniques for achieving nirvana. Orthodox Buddhists, for example, try to directly follow Buddha’s teachings: in particular, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Others, such as Zen Buddhists, may use challenging mental exercises, such as koans, which are solutionless riddles designed to jerk one's mind out of conscious thought into enlightenment. Most forms of Buddhism also use regular meditation as a central element of the path to spiritual enlightenment.
These are all ways of using the mind to reach enlightenment, including meditation. It’s all a trap. It’s all harnessing one’s mind to have ever greater control over one’s feelings - one’s bad feelings, the one’s no one wants. And the better you get at it, the better you can apply those mental techniques, the more enlightened and closer to nirvana you become. It’s GOING THE WRONG WAY. STOP, COME BACK TO YOUR BAD FEELINGS, THEY ARE THE WAY TO THE TRUTH OF YOUR SOUL. If you use your mind to deny your feelings, you’re going to make it endlessly harder for yourself to come back to your feelings when the time comes. It’s a very hard road to hoe.
It’s much better to use all that time and effort of trying to use your mind to kill your bad feelings, to instead go with those bad feelings, bringing them up and out of you, no longer stuffing them down deeper within you. And long for the truth of them; and you will see, the truth will come to light and it will be nothing like what these Eastern systems teach, because all they teach is leading you further from your own soul.
Hinduism also uses the concept of nirvana, called moksha, considering it a representation of freedom from desire and other worldly passions. Spiritual enlightenment is also part of the conclusion to the Hindu cycle of reincarnation. In this belief, souls enter many different bodies through the course of their existence. In each of the lives they lead, they develop spiritually. The ultimate goal of this spiritual development is moksha, a liberation from the system of earthly suffering, which includes the idea of spiritual enlightenment.
This is another perfect example of how far AWAY from the truth using one’s mind to seek enlightenment one can become. Because THERE IS NO REINCARNATION, it’s an erroneous belief; yet these people don’t understand this, as they are too caught up in their minds for such truth to come to them through the very feelings they are working so hard to deny.
Reincarnation, as it’s talked about here, is about killing the personality. You Mary, cease to be, becoming Jack or Jill in your next life. So the personality that is Mary, ends, and yet God has bestowed ONLY ONE personality on us, Mary is Mary forevermore. Mary doesn’t suddenly end becoming Jack, a whole new personality. So there is no reincarnation that involves the rebestowal of multiple personalities on each soulmate of a soul.
So once again, the fact that a whole religion can exist built around such untruth is testament to how strong the denial of one’s feelings is, with one’s mind so much in control that such nonsense beliefs can be maintained for eons. Look to your feelings wanting them to show you the truth of your soul, life and God, and very soon you’ll feel the truth that there is no such thing as reincarnation, because you as the personality that you are, is not going to be snuffed out and given a new personality at your next incarnation. You will feel the deep, personal and true connection with your soul, knowing you are in it for the long haul. The name your parents gave you will be replaced by your true personality name (soulname), the one God has given you, but your personality will remain the same forevermore.
It’s using the mind to set you free from ‘human desire and other worldly passions’, which is where the fault occurs. We are to use our feelings to show us the reason why - the truth - we have such desires and worldly passions, not use some mental technique to dismiss them, shut them down, suppress them so heavily that we can believe we’re no longer subject to them.
ONLY when you uncover the truth through your feelings about such desires and passions, about all the bad stuff you feel about yourself, coming to understand how your parents made you feel bad, how they made you adopt such desires and passions, and how you’ve acted them out in your adult life; only when through your feelings have you seen and so felt the whole truth of your unloving state as reflected by all your bad feelings, suffering and pain, will it all leave you, leaving you free to explore a life of love, coming to understand the truth of love through your feelings.
Your mind needs to be kept out of it, using your mind to deny any bad feelings is only hurting yourself more, adding to your suffering. These so-called superior enlightened one’s don’t understand that they have hugely increased their souls suffering, that they are in great soulpain, as they are keeping it all hidden from themselves by using their mind to sustain their blissful state of nirvana.
Such people and spirits should be felt sorry for, that they can deny themselves to such extreme levels, and they should not be worshipped for being such mind controllers. You should not be striving to be like them, because why cause yourself even more pain? To use your mind to go so completely against yourself requires massive sustained almost superhuman effort, all because it’s forcing yourself to go the wrong way. Let go and instead submit to your bad feelings and go with them, longing to see and uncover the truth they are to show you about yourself. And you will see, it’s much easier to go with your bad feelings, although still hard at times because you are then coming up against your controlling mind that doesn’t want to lose such control over your feelings; but still, the truth will liberate you from its clutches, and then you’ll be truly enlightened as to why you were put into such a mind controlling state in the first place.
Christians who have passed through the portal of enlightenment have historically been deemed by the church to be mystics; one who through direct communication with God commands a mystical understanding of God and all things spiritual; one who has a mystical understanding beyond those who have spent a lifetime in religious study and servitude to God. But the two other major Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Islam have enlightened congregants as well. In fact, both religions have subset sects who focus on the attainment of enlightenment as their primary goal. Judaism has Kabballah. In Islam, the Sufis chase the mystical experience. It is because of this non-denominational foundation that enlightenment is generally considered a mystical concept. That is, it contains the promise of a spiritual clarity lying beyond description by words and attainment by action, regardless of religion. For example, one cannot become enlightened by reading, even if one can recite the words of every religious sage. Enlightenment is a potentially universal experience, but each being comes to it through a unique path. Teachers may provide assistance and provocation along the way, but they cannot impose enlightenment on their pupils; one becomes enlightened alone.
All the man-made religions, even when said to be revelations from God, or some angel or whatever, are leading you against yourself, because they are all about denying you the chance to reveal your own truth to yourself through your feelings. It’s the greatest hoodwink of all times. So naturally these other religions all seek enlightenment in their various ways, extolling the virtues of it, giving the mystic and superior one the praise and attention they command, all because they are so wise and all-knowing being so ‘close’ to God, and being so spiritual and understanding what God is really saying and asking one to do. But it’s all rubbish. It’s all anti truth, anti self, because it’s anti bad feelings.
Living a truly spiritual life should be the easiest thing we can do, and everyone should be able to do it, not only the select few. And it can be lived by everyone, for we all have feelings, and we all have all the truth we need to ever know about ourselves and God contained within our souls, put there by God upon the creation of our soul. And we can look to our feelings by continually accepting them, and all the worst ones, all the bad ones, and expressing them, not suppressing or stopping them, and longing hard to know the truth they are to show us about ourselves, life and God. And we can all do it. No one is then more special than anyone else because we all have the same feelings. And we can all use our feelings to uncover our truth.
And that is the NEW WAY, which has eluded humanity for so long. So many people believe the religions and existing spiritual systems are the right way, but they are the WRONG WAY. They are part of the Rebellion and Default. They are a creation of the Evil Ones, all to keep us in our wrongness, all to keep us looking to the false and untrue. Enlightenment is held up the acme of spiritual attainment or achievement, when it’s the WORST thing you can do for yourself because it’s going against yourself to the highest degree. It’s being the most wrong you can be, the most evil. Many people think people like Hitler or Stalin are the most wrong and evil you can be, and would never dream of seeing enlightened Yogi such and such, as being more evil then they are. However, Yogi, Guru or Saint such and such, is on a personal level far more evil then the likes of Hitler, because they are denying their truth to the greatest level possible, they are working the control of their mind far more over themselves by keeping all their bad feelings, suffering and desires buried, even believing they no longer have such things, which is having far more mind control over oneself than Hitler ever had. Hitler or Stalin weren’t enlightened.
To end the evilness, our wrongness, both on a personal and collective level, we need to understand that going this ‘enlightened way’ is the ‘wrongest’ way you can go. You can’t go more against yourself, being more untrue to yourself, being more in denial. Because all those bad feelings that you think you’ve succeeded in getting rid of, of transcending, are still within your soul, just buried deeper, kept more heavily repressed, and waiting, waiting until one day the cracks begin to appear in your mind-imposed enlightenment, and you start to fail. And then to have to use your mind to work that much harder to stop the dam wall from breaking... Yet it’s a losing battle, you will break, must break, because at some point all those repressed bad feelings have to come out.
All the bad feelings you felt as young children but weren’t allowed to express and naturally uncover the truth of, are still contained within your soul, waiting for the day when you want them to come out so as to see what truth they are to show you about yourself.
So to try and pray or meditate or practice your way ‘above’ your bad feeling, using your mind to cancel them out, is only using your mind to cancel more of yourself out. Every feeling you deny is less of your personality you are expressing in Creation. The Enlightened one is expressing so little of their true personality, being as false a person or spirit as can be, being the most contrived a mind can become; whereas to be the whole truth person that your soul is, requires you be free to express ALL your feelings whenever you feel them.
The deception is such Enlightened people are permanently happy, they never feel bad - an envious state indeed; they are blissed out, they don’t suffer at the hand of the lower human who’s beset by desires and worldly passions, only because they’ve ‘risen above them’, have transcended them using their mind. However our souls are ascending souls, and we can only ascend with truth. The mind can transcend gaining knowledge, but that’s not ascending by growing and evolving with truth. And there is a vast difference, two opposite extremes. We are to ascend with truth; not transcend with belief. But when you’re on the side of using your mind to further control over yourself, over your bad feelings, you can’t of course see the other way: the way of using your feelings to evolve your truth. However if you sincerely want out of your yuk, then it’s into your yuk, pain and suffering and all your bad feelings you will need to go, not using your mind to pretend to yourself that you no longer feel such things.
The concept of spiritual enlightenment in Buddhism and Hinduism is related to but distinct from ideas such as salvation and transcendence associated with Christianity. Whereas most versions of Christianity emphasize love of Jesus Christ as a prerequisite to spiritual completeness, enlightenment usually implies liberation from teachers and doctrine—one famous Zen koan suggests: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” Enlightenment also does not involve the existence of a heaven distinct from earth, although it is also noted that even Jesus mentioned there may not be a separation of the two in the Gospel of Thomas and other Gnostic gospels. It places more emphasis on a transformation of the soul’s relationship to the world of objects. The enlightened being continues a corporeal existence after having gained awareness of the illusory nature of reality. There is no separate space to which one ascends.
Enlightenment doesn’t ‘involve the existence of a heaven distinct from earth’, because it’s all about the mind and is devoid of truth. Jesus is wrongly lumped into being a spiritual master or enlightened one the same as Buddha and all the Ascended Ones, the Saints, Yogis, Gurus and so on, which is wrong, because Jesus lived true to his feelings and not against them and the truth they revealed to him. Jesus didn’t seek enlightenment through his mind as he lived with his feelings leading him in the way of truth. He did not advocate using your mind to deny your bad feelings, and so deny yourself the truth your feelings are to show you about yourself. Jesus lived true to his feelings, and unlike all of us, was born perfect and true, so he revealed truths to himself about himself, life and God. He didn’t have to do his Healing, he didn’t have to do any sort of rigorous spiritual practice seeking Enlightenment. Read what he says in the Padgett Messages, and see how enormously different what he says is to anything any so-called enlightened master says. And in these contemporary messages from him, he clearly states how there is a very significant division in the mansion worlds in spirit, showing where spirits looking to their minds and wanting to become enlightened through them end up, as compared to spirits who embrace the Divine Love, do their Healing and enter into the Celestial Heavens - all through their feelings.
The mind makes up whatever it fancies. And all this mumbo jumbo above that the great enlightened one’s say, is nonsense, it’s not based on truth, only belief. The mind is all about beliefs. Set yourself free of your teacher, certainly, because your mind is more than happy enough to be the full controller. Your mind will happily teach you all the rubbish you want to hear, such as there being no separation between heaven and earth, when there are seven mansion worlds for us to live in spirit until we heal our minds control, and then there are masses of Celestial spheres all the way to Paradise that constitute Heaven. But the blissed-out enlightened spiritual teacher is not going to teach you such things because he’s ignorant of them, he’s confined himself to the sixth mansion world and is not allowed to go any higher. He has no idea about the Divine Love and the higher Celestial spheres to Paradise, or the importance of ALL feelings. So being trapped in his little mind-made world, he is free to make up all sorts of spurious nonsense that other lesser/lower people and spirits are free to believe. But it’s all fantasy, nothing is real, it’s all a bubble.
Look to yourself, as the teacher of truths to yourself, through your own feelings, and then you won’t need anyone or your own mind telling you want to do.
As a person who has passed through the portal of enlightenment, I can say that there is a huge difference between simply deciding to reject worldly suffering and attachments... trying intentionally to be enlightened... compared to actually passing through the experience of spiritual awakening that is most commonly called enlightenment. There is an actual experience where you tap into the universal intelligence and energy that transcends our own lives and individual existences. It grants spiritual knowledge, wisdom, and ultimately inner peace. It grants immediate universal understanding of God, the Universe, the meaning of your own existence. Most importantly, it answers the question "why".
And this is where it’s all so seductive and enticing. But it’s going the wrong way because no of these people, like this bloke writing all this, knows any truth. And why he doesn’t is because he’s not revealing it to himself through his feelings. And if he where, he’d not be wanting to continue this way, he’d instead be wanting to have all his feelings and work with them to uncover the truth of himself.
What is ‘universal intelligence’, and, an ‘energy that transcends our own lives and individual experiences’? It’s all nonsense, it’s just tapping into the mind circuits that are available on that level to be tapped into, from which your mind can make up whatever it likes. You suddenly experience an all-knowingness, you seem to be able to know what everyone is thinking and feeling, you feel far beyond the petty fears of everyday life, you no longer feel any bad feelings, it just sweeps over you, your kundalini is fired up, you feel magnificent, and such overwhelming and overpowering love for everyone. You are with God, even at-one, so you believe, you are a part or an extension of God’s Mind, you have at your disposal all knowledge, any subject you turn your mind to you are an instant expert. You are a wonder, you can even work miracles, heal people using your mind, the universal energy pulses through you, you are free from all worldly desires and attachments, you carry no emotional baggage, that all left way behind before you boarded the aeroplane of your mind to Enlightenment. And you are free, oh so free, and you can look down on everyone who is not free; and you have risen above it all, transcended, you’ve dam well made it, YOU ARE IT, one of the CHOSEN OR BLESSED ONES, and... and then what... then what do you do? Well of course you teach others about how to do it for themselves, teaching them about your greatness, showing off how much of a Great Mind you are, oh with so much at your disposal, and to change the world... or no, not change it, hang on a moment, why change it, then everyone would be as you are, and you can’t have that, it’s an exclusive club for us Enlightened Ones!
Puke it out, don’t do it, go the opposite way as fast as you can. Don’t let your mind take you over to that extent. Okay, so you feel fucked and not right, good, work with those bad feelings, don’t push them away, seek and want and long and pray to God to help you uncover the truth of yourself through your feelings, and learn how to do that.
If you swallow the Enlightenment pill, it will sound unbelievably great, an instant end to all your suffering, and a far cry from going into and submitting to your pain and suffering, wanting to feel it all, to be consumed and overwhelmed by it for years on end, as you work through it all uncovering the truth of how you weren’t loved as a young child and how you are consequently not loving. No, you don’t want to acknowledge and go with all your pain, to see why you are in pain; no, you just want to take the Enlightenment pill and that’s it, you’ve moved beyond it all, it’s over, all that bad stuff has gone away, you are FREEEEE!
Free to live at the mercy of your conceited mind.
To answer the question of HOW one achieves enlightenment. the answer is to simply stop all conscious thought in your mind, while listening for God. I say the word "simply" very tongue in cheek, because frankly, it is not a simple task to accomplish at all. But it is the process of stopping conscious thought that allows for the process of enlightenment to occur. You must cease the voice in your head to hear the voice that comes without sound. You must stop thinking about today, tomorrow, yesterday, what you're going to watch on TV, that you're hungry right now, or thirsty, or that there's a dog barking, or that you thought this answer to this question was too ambiguous, or too simple to be plausible. Stop all thoughts of color, of noise, of the fact that you're trying to clear the thoughts in your head. It is only when you silence the sights and sounds within your mind that you will see and hear what exists just beyond your mind's grasp. The Energy, the Intelligence, God.
So what you do is stop yourself from being a feeling, thinking person, and just be a nothing in your conscious mind person, and then it will happen. And what happens is your mind steps right in saying thank you very much, now I have absolute control over all of you, over all those annoying bad feelings you’ve been having, over you being a real feeling fucked up person that you are, and now I will keep all your pain away, and you’ll see, you’ll be eternally happy, in such a blissful and enlightened state of mind, I promise, you just leave it all to me and I’ll see you through.
‘The Energy, the Intelligence, God.’ And here’s another sign that it’s all mind control. The mind can only ‘know’ God impersonally, it can only ‘know’ God through beliefs, it doesn’t personally know God truly through feelings. We can’t actually connect on a heart level with God through our mind, only through our feelings. The way to God through the mind is limited; the way to God through feelings is unlimited. You’ll find God through your feelings, not through your mind. Do you want a close, warm feeling relationship with God; or just a cold, distant one based on thoughts and beliefs? So with the mind, it’s impersonal: The Energy, or the Intelligence; it’s not personal through feelings with your Heavenly Mother and Father who created your soul and love you as your true Parents and are waiting for you to come to Them longing for Their love, so They can fill your soul with Their Divine Love.
Jesus taught us that God is a loving Father, that we are a child of God. And God is also a loving Mother, so we are a child of both our Mother and Father. And if you look to your feelings for the truth of your soul, part of that truth which will naturally come to you as you express all your feelings, will be the truth of yourself being a child of God and having loving Parents, your Mother and Father - you’ll feel it. And you will feel Them with you, loving you, and it feels really nice, and you know you need Them, and want to be with Them, and live and do Their Will. And it’s all so personal, intimate and loving, not unloving and impersonal with God being a Creator, the Source, The Energy, the Intelligence or some such thing you can’t get a handle on.
Your feelings are coming from your heart, so through them you will connect to the heart of Soul, to God, and you will feel God for yourself, and will want to love God and be loved by God, none of which comes to you when you are transcending through your mind to become god - the god of your own mind. It’s the ultimate ego trip, and is the furthest away from being with God and being a true child of God that you can be.
So to move ‘beyond your minds grasp’, only means you’re moving beyond the grasp of your lower mind, yet without knowing it, is putting yourself in the deeper control of your higher mind. And the allusion and belief is, you’re becoming more spiritual; but the truth is, you become less truly spiritual and more of your mind. We are not to become our mind, we are to be the soul that we are by fully expressing forevermore every feeling we have. We are to live a feeling-led life, not a mind-controlled one.
Let me clarify further:
Numerous people globally have found enlightenment in many various ways throughout history... many spontaneously without even searching for the phenomenon. But the one common denominator that has not been noticed (until recently) is that every instance of enlightenment almost always come from a place where the mind has been stilled within the person who has experienced it.
Exactly, which really means: Still the feelings as they are what is disturbing, and so find that ultimate peace of mind; and ‘be in your minds peace’ and so undisturbed, and you become enlightened. And really enlightened to the fact that you are free of your parents, they are no longer disturbing you like they did when you were forming, you seek peace away from their interference, and now you’ve managed somehow to achieve it. So you are free, free of your parents, free of all the bad feelings they made you feel, which you’ve not been able to shut down and get rid of. So now your parents can no longer harm or reach you, you are in your ultimate safe-space, you’ve run off to hide in your mind, put yourself in the closet where it’s all dark, and yet not dark, but light because it’s filled with only good feelings, all the ones your mind allows you to have so as to keep you under its control.
Numerous methods have been the catalyst for the engagement of the enlightenment experience. Meditation, Yoga, Contemplative Prayer, Martial Arts Katas, Fasting, Exhaustion, Sweat Lodges, Psychadelics (LSD, Psilocybin, Mushrooms), Deep Emotional Despair, Near Death Experiences, etc. And in all of these, and all of the others not mentioned, there comes a point when the mind is silenced.
Yes, all ways to kill your bad feelings. To take yourself past them, to push down so hard on them that you no longer feel them, all being done by asserting your minds control over your feelings. It’s a killer, beware, it’s soul-destroying, and not all it’s made out to be. And the trouble is, you have to keep at it, you can’t abandon your practice, because you know what will happen if you do... you’ll fall... and you know what you’ll fall into... all those suppressed bad feelings! And they are waiting for you. Because no matter what you do, you can’t just make them go away, they’ll wait in your soul, and one day you’ll have to deal with them. And then you will learn that they have to be dealt with by going right into them, fully accepting them, letting them make you feel as bad as they will, letting them have their say, liberating them, expressing them out of you, every last one of them, and allowing and wanting their hidden truth to come up within you, all so you can see why you’ve got them and why you’ve been made to be so scared of them, that you’ve had to run away from them into your enlightenment practice.
In meditation, the point of the exercise itself is to silence the mind. In Yoga, you focus on the movements and the breathing, which quiets the mind down to thinking about just a couple things (close to a point of thinking of nothing). In contemplative prayer (Google it), you silence yourself, and listen for God. Through martial arts katas, you learn them so well, you don't have to think about them (reducing conscious thought). In fasting, you deprive your body of nourishment that helps the brain function at a higher level, which clears your mind. Through exhaustion or sweat lodges, you physically stress your mind into shutting down (not recommended). The same is true with the drug induced experiences... they inhibit your brain's ability to operate normally, ceasing conscious thought (however they also inhibit your ability to process and understand the experience when it actually happens - not a preferred method). Some people have found enlightenment through experiencing depression or deep emotional despair... where their mind is so filled with pain, that it snuffs out other conscious thought. Near death of course narrows brain and thought activity. All these have been common catalysts for people attaining enlightenment.
Yes, you have to silence the mind giving our mind complete control over yourself. I know it all sounds nice and a better way to live, and much more inspiring than getting caught up in all the religious rubbish and contradiction. However that’s just how it’s meant to sound, very appealing, the ultimate appeal so people aspire to attain it, all to keep you away from the truth of yourself through your feelings. The Evil Spirits who’ve crafted and subjected humanity to the rebellion against truth we all now live in, knew what they were doing, and what better way to keep people and spirits under their anti truth control than to make the mind be the most appealing spiritual goal. Mind attainment, mind over feelings, silence and still the mind and you shut up all the noise, all the pain, of those terrible bad feelings. And we all want out of our bad feelings, no one wants to feel bad; so silence the mind and you kill the noise of your bad feelings, and then you’ve mastered mind control over yourself. Then you’re a very successful fully paid up member of the Rebellion.
So whatever path you choose, choose one that ceases your mind's activity, and God will then touch you directly, and it is then that you will understand everything there is to know. And you will know it when enlightenment happens, because it will change your life forever. If you think you've had a universal-type "everything is one" experience previously, but aren't sure if you experienced enlightenment, you have NOT passed through the enlightenment portal. You have experienced what is called an "awakening", which is a less dramatic and less profound experience, but one that gives you a peek into the secrets of divinity and the truth about God and all existence.
So don’t jump the gun, what until you go through the enlightenment portal and then you will know all there is to know. And so then what happens... sounds a bit boring to me. I think I’ll opt for going into the bad feelings portal as much as I hate feeling bad, expressing all the pain I feel, giving rise to the truth of why I’m in pain; and then once Healed of all my pain and suffering by seeing whole truth of it, by fully embracing and allowing myself to feel it all, I can go on for the rest of eternity endlessly growing in truth and understanding about myself, life, Creation and my two Heavenly Parents, who I feel do love me because I can feel Their Divine Love flowing into my soul.
In comparison to having an awakening experience, to attain a full enlightenment experience you must clear your mind of all conscious thought, reach out and LISTEN for God without thinking ANYTHING. Then if you're lucky, and can maintain a TOTAL thought void, God will touch you with a drinking-from-a-fire-hydrant experience of pure love, pure spirit, pure intelligence and pure knowledge... that you will never, ever forget. And then you will know everything there is to know.
Yep, the Big One will happen to you, your mind won’t let you down, it has to hook you in completely, so you’ll get the big spiritual blast and you’ll know that you’ve finally made it, you’ve crossed that line and there is no going back. That is until your soul, who is in control of your mind, says, well you’ve had the ultimate mind denial of feelings experience, now how about all those feelings you’ve pushed out of sight - out of mind? How about going that way and seeing what the opposite experience feels like?
Where do people find enlightened teachers? The most popular answer to that question is India. There are tons of Gurus there. But there are also many false Gurus who believe they know the path but don't, or who know they don't know the path and who are intentionally pulling the wool over your eyes for monetary gain. Outside India, more and more of us human beings are becoming enlightened, and some of us are selecting the path to become spiritual guides. In our communication age, you should be able to find an enlightened teacher whom you can connect with intellectually rather easily without leaving your desk.
Yes, we will become spiritual guides because we know everything and so many people need our help. I’m sorry for sounding so cynical, but I hate all this self-aggrandising: I am enlightened, and you are not, but I can help you, I will be your teacher, you need me, and so on. Look to your own feelings for your own way and you don’t need anyone else to guide or teach you. The truth is already within you, you only need to want to let it come out, and it’s relatively easy to do. You might need help to open up and to work through the barriers your mind puts up trying to stop you honouring your feelings and uncovering their truth; and you might need help to express your bad feelings when you don’t want to feel bad and have them; and you might need other people to help you understand about the Feeling Way of life as opposed to the Mind distortion that is being so-called enlightened, yet in the end you’ll still be able to drive your own ongoing spiritual self-revelation. However up until now there has only really been the way of becoming enlightened, the way of living true to your feelings has been withheld from humanity, but things are changing, and the truth about one’s feelings can come up and challenge such erroneous untruths and beliefs of the controlling mind.
For instance (and I'm not fishing for followers here - just as an example), I am currently working on developing a free video podcast series that will answer many questions like these and the others connected to the topic of enlightenment (IAMSpirituality.com). And I hope to do so in no-BS format that speaks plain answers without the typical enigmatic riddles that spiritual guides usually use.
So how do you know when someone is enlightened? Tough one. But I think you will know it when you hear it. But as a warning, you will NOT know how to identify the unenlightened until you hear the messages from one whom is truly enlightened, so I suggest listening to people who are widely accepted as enlightened, such as the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Eckhart Tolle, and to a lesser extent, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, etc. There are also some very good Indian Gurus on YouTube now. Keep searching until you find someone you can connect with who's approach keeps you interested.
Listen to all these people and be led further away from your own feelings. None of them speak about living true to ALL your feelings. They all talk about bad feeling denial, how to ease the pain, how to eradicate all your feelings; and yet you are feeling bad for a reason, you are not happy for a reason, so don’t you want to find out why: What is the reason you are feeling bad; what is the reason you are feeling pain; don’t you want to know the truth of yourself? And none of those so-called leaders, teachers and enlightened one’s will help you understand that all your pain comes from your first moment of conception, and through your time in the womb that was unloving, and as a young child being formed in all the rejection, hurt and feeling unloved and unwanted you suffered; no one wants to look back into their early life to see the horror of their suffering, how unlovingly they were treated, and how they’ve become the false, untrue to themselves and untrue to their feelings, person they are. No, that’s too hard, must easier to become enlightened by stilling all that, silencing the cries of you as the little child that feels so hurt and traumatised by your parents when they didn’t love you.
Stay away from anyone who wants to charge you money for spiritual assistance. I plan that all my stuff will be free, except where there are production costs (like with books, etc.). We may accept donations for bandwidth, but beyond that, information on how to connect with God directly to get your own answer (I think) should be free whenever possible.
It’s all mind controlling: don’t do this, but you can do that; so where’s the true enlightenment, for surely if that was real and true there’d be no: you can and can’t do this with your mind?
For now, I hope this helps answer a few questions on enlightenment.
Peace and Love to you.
Thank you for writing it all out so perfectly for me so I can refute each part of it. The so-called Eastern way, and the Western way, any way that is wholly mind-based, is not going to help you in the long run. It will help you further your wrongness, which many people need to do; yet when you’ve had enough of that and do want to live true to your soul, then your feelings will be there waiting for you; and all you have to do is look to them, embrace them, let them be, feel all they make you feel and bring them out of you, let them be as noisy as they are, express them all, speak them out, yell and cry them out, and long for the truth they are to show you about yourself, want above all else to know the truth of why you’re feeling bad, the truth all your feelings are to help you see about yourself. And that is the true way to grow or ascend in truth, which really is the right way to become enlightened to the truth of yourself, the truth of your own soul.
And so having told you not to seek the way of Enlightenment, and instead, what you are do by looking to your feelings, by rights I hear you exclaiming: but all you’ve said is with the mind, telling us how to use our feelings looking for their truth, just as these people are telling us what to do with their minds. And there’s the rub, it’s true; I am using my mind doing what I am criticising them for doing - their mind talking about enlightenment verses my mind talking about feelings - so what are you going to do?
I have taken this opportunity to refute this post about Enlightenment. I've been wanting to do this for some time. I think it’s one of the greatest evils preventing people from finding real self-enlightenment of truth through their feelings. I want to scream out: No stop, wrong way, go back - to your feelings, for they are the way to the truth of yourself, the truth of your soul, and to God. Not this dead-end feeling-destroying mind way called Enlightenment.
So there are now two opposing ways we can live being offered on Earth. Either to seek enlightenment using your mind to gain absolute control over your feelings; or, to look to your feelings for the way to the hidden truth of yourself that is within your very own soul.
What is enlightenment and how it can be achieved?
Sean Webb, Host, "Mind Hacking Happiness" Podcast and Blog
Updated Apr 17, 2013
Originally Answered: What is enlightenment?
Spiritual enlightenment is a concept mostly associated with Buddhism and Hinduism, but it also has unrecognized connections into most other religions as well. Enlightenment implies complete understanding of life and the universe, which usually is accompanied by a detachment of all things impermanent and a complete awareness of everything that is, at the moment that it is. The spiritual belief purports that non-enlightened life is full of suffering produced by desire and other emotions that attach the mind to worldly things; suffering is the inevitable result of attachment to these necessarily transitory things. A person thus becomes enlightened when they remain in the world yet becomes free of attachment to it. Enlightenment is considered the end of a being’s spiritual journey, be it within one life or across many.
Me: For me this is perfect, it’s EXACTLY what is wrong with Enlightenment. I couldn’t say it better. It is using one’s mind to deny one’s feelings - Big Time. To deny all the bad feelings, deny all the suffering, by becoming free from such attachments. So, to become free of your suffering, to somehow rise above it so it no longer bothers you, is becoming enlightened. And that is the end of one’s spiritual journey? Which is true, in it is the end of one’s spiritual journey into the darkness. It’s the most evil you can become, the most untrue, the most disconnected from your true feeling self; it’s the most wrong way of living, the most you can achieve by using your mind to control your feelings. It’s the most you can do to blank out your feeling self, to ensure you only feel good, blissful, feelings of nirvana, and NO BAD FEELINGS. And there is no truth involved. The so-called enlightened ones don’t teach or live any truth, because their mind-way is the most anti truth way you can be. It’s just beliefs, knowledge for the mind, nothing coming directly from your soul through your feelings. Kill your feeling expression off and you are devoid of truth, just as the religions and spiritual systems are. So people living such truth-denying ways, die, moving into the mind mansion worlds in spirit there to keep transcending using their mind at the expense of their true feelings, using their mind to shut out all bad feelings and keep only the good ones, contriving a positive, happy, blissful state of mind, ending up not able to go any higher than the sixth mansion world. There to wait until their soul says enough is enough, then to have a massive mental breakdown so as to crack them out of their minds control, forcing them to come back to themselves and their true feelings - all those bad ones, all that suffering and pain they’ve swept under the mat using their mind. All so they can finally see the truth of their wrongness, of how they’ve used their mind to the detriment of their soul, and how they’ve not grown spiritually at all in truth, only deluded themselves that they had ‘found the way’. There is no such thing as your spiritual journey having or coming to an end. This is a classic example of a so-called enlightened person having NO TRUTH, for had they, were they truly enlightened by truth, they’d know we are spiritual beings and there is no such end of our journey, for if there was, then that would be end of ourselves. We are to grow in truth eternally. It is just life, not even so much as a ‘journey’. That is the Truth.
In Buddhism, enlightenment is called nirvana. Nirvana is believed to be a state of peace and unity with the cosmos. Different forms of Buddhism teach different techniques for achieving nirvana. Orthodox Buddhists, for example, try to directly follow Buddha’s teachings: in particular, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Others, such as Zen Buddhists, may use challenging mental exercises, such as koans, which are solutionless riddles designed to jerk one's mind out of conscious thought into enlightenment. Most forms of Buddhism also use regular meditation as a central element of the path to spiritual enlightenment.
These are all ways of using the mind to reach enlightenment, including meditation. It’s all a trap. It’s all harnessing one’s mind to have ever greater control over one’s feelings - one’s bad feelings, the one’s no one wants. And the better you get at it, the better you can apply those mental techniques, the more enlightened and closer to nirvana you become. It’s GOING THE WRONG WAY. STOP, COME BACK TO YOUR BAD FEELINGS, THEY ARE THE WAY TO THE TRUTH OF YOUR SOUL. If you use your mind to deny your feelings, you’re going to make it endlessly harder for yourself to come back to your feelings when the time comes. It’s a very hard road to hoe.
It’s much better to use all that time and effort of trying to use your mind to kill your bad feelings, to instead go with those bad feelings, bringing them up and out of you, no longer stuffing them down deeper within you. And long for the truth of them; and you will see, the truth will come to light and it will be nothing like what these Eastern systems teach, because all they teach is leading you further from your own soul.
Hinduism also uses the concept of nirvana, called moksha, considering it a representation of freedom from desire and other worldly passions. Spiritual enlightenment is also part of the conclusion to the Hindu cycle of reincarnation. In this belief, souls enter many different bodies through the course of their existence. In each of the lives they lead, they develop spiritually. The ultimate goal of this spiritual development is moksha, a liberation from the system of earthly suffering, which includes the idea of spiritual enlightenment.
This is another perfect example of how far AWAY from the truth using one’s mind to seek enlightenment one can become. Because THERE IS NO REINCARNATION, it’s an erroneous belief; yet these people don’t understand this, as they are too caught up in their minds for such truth to come to them through the very feelings they are working so hard to deny.
Reincarnation, as it’s talked about here, is about killing the personality. You Mary, cease to be, becoming Jack or Jill in your next life. So the personality that is Mary, ends, and yet God has bestowed ONLY ONE personality on us, Mary is Mary forevermore. Mary doesn’t suddenly end becoming Jack, a whole new personality. So there is no reincarnation that involves the rebestowal of multiple personalities on each soulmate of a soul.
So once again, the fact that a whole religion can exist built around such untruth is testament to how strong the denial of one’s feelings is, with one’s mind so much in control that such nonsense beliefs can be maintained for eons. Look to your feelings wanting them to show you the truth of your soul, life and God, and very soon you’ll feel the truth that there is no such thing as reincarnation, because you as the personality that you are, is not going to be snuffed out and given a new personality at your next incarnation. You will feel the deep, personal and true connection with your soul, knowing you are in it for the long haul. The name your parents gave you will be replaced by your true personality name (soulname), the one God has given you, but your personality will remain the same forevermore.
It’s using the mind to set you free from ‘human desire and other worldly passions’, which is where the fault occurs. We are to use our feelings to show us the reason why - the truth - we have such desires and worldly passions, not use some mental technique to dismiss them, shut them down, suppress them so heavily that we can believe we’re no longer subject to them.
ONLY when you uncover the truth through your feelings about such desires and passions, about all the bad stuff you feel about yourself, coming to understand how your parents made you feel bad, how they made you adopt such desires and passions, and how you’ve acted them out in your adult life; only when through your feelings have you seen and so felt the whole truth of your unloving state as reflected by all your bad feelings, suffering and pain, will it all leave you, leaving you free to explore a life of love, coming to understand the truth of love through your feelings.
Your mind needs to be kept out of it, using your mind to deny any bad feelings is only hurting yourself more, adding to your suffering. These so-called superior enlightened one’s don’t understand that they have hugely increased their souls suffering, that they are in great soulpain, as they are keeping it all hidden from themselves by using their mind to sustain their blissful state of nirvana.
Such people and spirits should be felt sorry for, that they can deny themselves to such extreme levels, and they should not be worshipped for being such mind controllers. You should not be striving to be like them, because why cause yourself even more pain? To use your mind to go so completely against yourself requires massive sustained almost superhuman effort, all because it’s forcing yourself to go the wrong way. Let go and instead submit to your bad feelings and go with them, longing to see and uncover the truth they are to show you about yourself. And you will see, it’s much easier to go with your bad feelings, although still hard at times because you are then coming up against your controlling mind that doesn’t want to lose such control over your feelings; but still, the truth will liberate you from its clutches, and then you’ll be truly enlightened as to why you were put into such a mind controlling state in the first place.
Christians who have passed through the portal of enlightenment have historically been deemed by the church to be mystics; one who through direct communication with God commands a mystical understanding of God and all things spiritual; one who has a mystical understanding beyond those who have spent a lifetime in religious study and servitude to God. But the two other major Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Islam have enlightened congregants as well. In fact, both religions have subset sects who focus on the attainment of enlightenment as their primary goal. Judaism has Kabballah. In Islam, the Sufis chase the mystical experience. It is because of this non-denominational foundation that enlightenment is generally considered a mystical concept. That is, it contains the promise of a spiritual clarity lying beyond description by words and attainment by action, regardless of religion. For example, one cannot become enlightened by reading, even if one can recite the words of every religious sage. Enlightenment is a potentially universal experience, but each being comes to it through a unique path. Teachers may provide assistance and provocation along the way, but they cannot impose enlightenment on their pupils; one becomes enlightened alone.
All the man-made religions, even when said to be revelations from God, or some angel or whatever, are leading you against yourself, because they are all about denying you the chance to reveal your own truth to yourself through your feelings. It’s the greatest hoodwink of all times. So naturally these other religions all seek enlightenment in their various ways, extolling the virtues of it, giving the mystic and superior one the praise and attention they command, all because they are so wise and all-knowing being so ‘close’ to God, and being so spiritual and understanding what God is really saying and asking one to do. But it’s all rubbish. It’s all anti truth, anti self, because it’s anti bad feelings.
Living a truly spiritual life should be the easiest thing we can do, and everyone should be able to do it, not only the select few. And it can be lived by everyone, for we all have feelings, and we all have all the truth we need to ever know about ourselves and God contained within our souls, put there by God upon the creation of our soul. And we can look to our feelings by continually accepting them, and all the worst ones, all the bad ones, and expressing them, not suppressing or stopping them, and longing hard to know the truth they are to show us about ourselves, life and God. And we can all do it. No one is then more special than anyone else because we all have the same feelings. And we can all use our feelings to uncover our truth.
And that is the NEW WAY, which has eluded humanity for so long. So many people believe the religions and existing spiritual systems are the right way, but they are the WRONG WAY. They are part of the Rebellion and Default. They are a creation of the Evil Ones, all to keep us in our wrongness, all to keep us looking to the false and untrue. Enlightenment is held up the acme of spiritual attainment or achievement, when it’s the WORST thing you can do for yourself because it’s going against yourself to the highest degree. It’s being the most wrong you can be, the most evil. Many people think people like Hitler or Stalin are the most wrong and evil you can be, and would never dream of seeing enlightened Yogi such and such, as being more evil then they are. However, Yogi, Guru or Saint such and such, is on a personal level far more evil then the likes of Hitler, because they are denying their truth to the greatest level possible, they are working the control of their mind far more over themselves by keeping all their bad feelings, suffering and desires buried, even believing they no longer have such things, which is having far more mind control over oneself than Hitler ever had. Hitler or Stalin weren’t enlightened.
To end the evilness, our wrongness, both on a personal and collective level, we need to understand that going this ‘enlightened way’ is the ‘wrongest’ way you can go. You can’t go more against yourself, being more untrue to yourself, being more in denial. Because all those bad feelings that you think you’ve succeeded in getting rid of, of transcending, are still within your soul, just buried deeper, kept more heavily repressed, and waiting, waiting until one day the cracks begin to appear in your mind-imposed enlightenment, and you start to fail. And then to have to use your mind to work that much harder to stop the dam wall from breaking... Yet it’s a losing battle, you will break, must break, because at some point all those repressed bad feelings have to come out.
All the bad feelings you felt as young children but weren’t allowed to express and naturally uncover the truth of, are still contained within your soul, waiting for the day when you want them to come out so as to see what truth they are to show you about yourself.
So to try and pray or meditate or practice your way ‘above’ your bad feeling, using your mind to cancel them out, is only using your mind to cancel more of yourself out. Every feeling you deny is less of your personality you are expressing in Creation. The Enlightened one is expressing so little of their true personality, being as false a person or spirit as can be, being the most contrived a mind can become; whereas to be the whole truth person that your soul is, requires you be free to express ALL your feelings whenever you feel them.
The deception is such Enlightened people are permanently happy, they never feel bad - an envious state indeed; they are blissed out, they don’t suffer at the hand of the lower human who’s beset by desires and worldly passions, only because they’ve ‘risen above them’, have transcended them using their mind. However our souls are ascending souls, and we can only ascend with truth. The mind can transcend gaining knowledge, but that’s not ascending by growing and evolving with truth. And there is a vast difference, two opposite extremes. We are to ascend with truth; not transcend with belief. But when you’re on the side of using your mind to further control over yourself, over your bad feelings, you can’t of course see the other way: the way of using your feelings to evolve your truth. However if you sincerely want out of your yuk, then it’s into your yuk, pain and suffering and all your bad feelings you will need to go, not using your mind to pretend to yourself that you no longer feel such things.
The concept of spiritual enlightenment in Buddhism and Hinduism is related to but distinct from ideas such as salvation and transcendence associated with Christianity. Whereas most versions of Christianity emphasize love of Jesus Christ as a prerequisite to spiritual completeness, enlightenment usually implies liberation from teachers and doctrine—one famous Zen koan suggests: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” Enlightenment also does not involve the existence of a heaven distinct from earth, although it is also noted that even Jesus mentioned there may not be a separation of the two in the Gospel of Thomas and other Gnostic gospels. It places more emphasis on a transformation of the soul’s relationship to the world of objects. The enlightened being continues a corporeal existence after having gained awareness of the illusory nature of reality. There is no separate space to which one ascends.
Enlightenment doesn’t ‘involve the existence of a heaven distinct from earth’, because it’s all about the mind and is devoid of truth. Jesus is wrongly lumped into being a spiritual master or enlightened one the same as Buddha and all the Ascended Ones, the Saints, Yogis, Gurus and so on, which is wrong, because Jesus lived true to his feelings and not against them and the truth they revealed to him. Jesus didn’t seek enlightenment through his mind as he lived with his feelings leading him in the way of truth. He did not advocate using your mind to deny your bad feelings, and so deny yourself the truth your feelings are to show you about yourself. Jesus lived true to his feelings, and unlike all of us, was born perfect and true, so he revealed truths to himself about himself, life and God. He didn’t have to do his Healing, he didn’t have to do any sort of rigorous spiritual practice seeking Enlightenment. Read what he says in the Padgett Messages, and see how enormously different what he says is to anything any so-called enlightened master says. And in these contemporary messages from him, he clearly states how there is a very significant division in the mansion worlds in spirit, showing where spirits looking to their minds and wanting to become enlightened through them end up, as compared to spirits who embrace the Divine Love, do their Healing and enter into the Celestial Heavens - all through their feelings.
The mind makes up whatever it fancies. And all this mumbo jumbo above that the great enlightened one’s say, is nonsense, it’s not based on truth, only belief. The mind is all about beliefs. Set yourself free of your teacher, certainly, because your mind is more than happy enough to be the full controller. Your mind will happily teach you all the rubbish you want to hear, such as there being no separation between heaven and earth, when there are seven mansion worlds for us to live in spirit until we heal our minds control, and then there are masses of Celestial spheres all the way to Paradise that constitute Heaven. But the blissed-out enlightened spiritual teacher is not going to teach you such things because he’s ignorant of them, he’s confined himself to the sixth mansion world and is not allowed to go any higher. He has no idea about the Divine Love and the higher Celestial spheres to Paradise, or the importance of ALL feelings. So being trapped in his little mind-made world, he is free to make up all sorts of spurious nonsense that other lesser/lower people and spirits are free to believe. But it’s all fantasy, nothing is real, it’s all a bubble.
Look to yourself, as the teacher of truths to yourself, through your own feelings, and then you won’t need anyone or your own mind telling you want to do.
As a person who has passed through the portal of enlightenment, I can say that there is a huge difference between simply deciding to reject worldly suffering and attachments... trying intentionally to be enlightened... compared to actually passing through the experience of spiritual awakening that is most commonly called enlightenment. There is an actual experience where you tap into the universal intelligence and energy that transcends our own lives and individual existences. It grants spiritual knowledge, wisdom, and ultimately inner peace. It grants immediate universal understanding of God, the Universe, the meaning of your own existence. Most importantly, it answers the question "why".
And this is where it’s all so seductive and enticing. But it’s going the wrong way because no of these people, like this bloke writing all this, knows any truth. And why he doesn’t is because he’s not revealing it to himself through his feelings. And if he where, he’d not be wanting to continue this way, he’d instead be wanting to have all his feelings and work with them to uncover the truth of himself.
What is ‘universal intelligence’, and, an ‘energy that transcends our own lives and individual experiences’? It’s all nonsense, it’s just tapping into the mind circuits that are available on that level to be tapped into, from which your mind can make up whatever it likes. You suddenly experience an all-knowingness, you seem to be able to know what everyone is thinking and feeling, you feel far beyond the petty fears of everyday life, you no longer feel any bad feelings, it just sweeps over you, your kundalini is fired up, you feel magnificent, and such overwhelming and overpowering love for everyone. You are with God, even at-one, so you believe, you are a part or an extension of God’s Mind, you have at your disposal all knowledge, any subject you turn your mind to you are an instant expert. You are a wonder, you can even work miracles, heal people using your mind, the universal energy pulses through you, you are free from all worldly desires and attachments, you carry no emotional baggage, that all left way behind before you boarded the aeroplane of your mind to Enlightenment. And you are free, oh so free, and you can look down on everyone who is not free; and you have risen above it all, transcended, you’ve dam well made it, YOU ARE IT, one of the CHOSEN OR BLESSED ONES, and... and then what... then what do you do? Well of course you teach others about how to do it for themselves, teaching them about your greatness, showing off how much of a Great Mind you are, oh with so much at your disposal, and to change the world... or no, not change it, hang on a moment, why change it, then everyone would be as you are, and you can’t have that, it’s an exclusive club for us Enlightened Ones!
Puke it out, don’t do it, go the opposite way as fast as you can. Don’t let your mind take you over to that extent. Okay, so you feel fucked and not right, good, work with those bad feelings, don’t push them away, seek and want and long and pray to God to help you uncover the truth of yourself through your feelings, and learn how to do that.
If you swallow the Enlightenment pill, it will sound unbelievably great, an instant end to all your suffering, and a far cry from going into and submitting to your pain and suffering, wanting to feel it all, to be consumed and overwhelmed by it for years on end, as you work through it all uncovering the truth of how you weren’t loved as a young child and how you are consequently not loving. No, you don’t want to acknowledge and go with all your pain, to see why you are in pain; no, you just want to take the Enlightenment pill and that’s it, you’ve moved beyond it all, it’s over, all that bad stuff has gone away, you are FREEEEE!
Free to live at the mercy of your conceited mind.
To answer the question of HOW one achieves enlightenment. the answer is to simply stop all conscious thought in your mind, while listening for God. I say the word "simply" very tongue in cheek, because frankly, it is not a simple task to accomplish at all. But it is the process of stopping conscious thought that allows for the process of enlightenment to occur. You must cease the voice in your head to hear the voice that comes without sound. You must stop thinking about today, tomorrow, yesterday, what you're going to watch on TV, that you're hungry right now, or thirsty, or that there's a dog barking, or that you thought this answer to this question was too ambiguous, or too simple to be plausible. Stop all thoughts of color, of noise, of the fact that you're trying to clear the thoughts in your head. It is only when you silence the sights and sounds within your mind that you will see and hear what exists just beyond your mind's grasp. The Energy, the Intelligence, God.
So what you do is stop yourself from being a feeling, thinking person, and just be a nothing in your conscious mind person, and then it will happen. And what happens is your mind steps right in saying thank you very much, now I have absolute control over all of you, over all those annoying bad feelings you’ve been having, over you being a real feeling fucked up person that you are, and now I will keep all your pain away, and you’ll see, you’ll be eternally happy, in such a blissful and enlightened state of mind, I promise, you just leave it all to me and I’ll see you through.
‘The Energy, the Intelligence, God.’ And here’s another sign that it’s all mind control. The mind can only ‘know’ God impersonally, it can only ‘know’ God through beliefs, it doesn’t personally know God truly through feelings. We can’t actually connect on a heart level with God through our mind, only through our feelings. The way to God through the mind is limited; the way to God through feelings is unlimited. You’ll find God through your feelings, not through your mind. Do you want a close, warm feeling relationship with God; or just a cold, distant one based on thoughts and beliefs? So with the mind, it’s impersonal: The Energy, or the Intelligence; it’s not personal through feelings with your Heavenly Mother and Father who created your soul and love you as your true Parents and are waiting for you to come to Them longing for Their love, so They can fill your soul with Their Divine Love.
Jesus taught us that God is a loving Father, that we are a child of God. And God is also a loving Mother, so we are a child of both our Mother and Father. And if you look to your feelings for the truth of your soul, part of that truth which will naturally come to you as you express all your feelings, will be the truth of yourself being a child of God and having loving Parents, your Mother and Father - you’ll feel it. And you will feel Them with you, loving you, and it feels really nice, and you know you need Them, and want to be with Them, and live and do Their Will. And it’s all so personal, intimate and loving, not unloving and impersonal with God being a Creator, the Source, The Energy, the Intelligence or some such thing you can’t get a handle on.
Your feelings are coming from your heart, so through them you will connect to the heart of Soul, to God, and you will feel God for yourself, and will want to love God and be loved by God, none of which comes to you when you are transcending through your mind to become god - the god of your own mind. It’s the ultimate ego trip, and is the furthest away from being with God and being a true child of God that you can be.
So to move ‘beyond your minds grasp’, only means you’re moving beyond the grasp of your lower mind, yet without knowing it, is putting yourself in the deeper control of your higher mind. And the allusion and belief is, you’re becoming more spiritual; but the truth is, you become less truly spiritual and more of your mind. We are not to become our mind, we are to be the soul that we are by fully expressing forevermore every feeling we have. We are to live a feeling-led life, not a mind-controlled one.
Let me clarify further:
Numerous people globally have found enlightenment in many various ways throughout history... many spontaneously without even searching for the phenomenon. But the one common denominator that has not been noticed (until recently) is that every instance of enlightenment almost always come from a place where the mind has been stilled within the person who has experienced it.
Exactly, which really means: Still the feelings as they are what is disturbing, and so find that ultimate peace of mind; and ‘be in your minds peace’ and so undisturbed, and you become enlightened. And really enlightened to the fact that you are free of your parents, they are no longer disturbing you like they did when you were forming, you seek peace away from their interference, and now you’ve managed somehow to achieve it. So you are free, free of your parents, free of all the bad feelings they made you feel, which you’ve not been able to shut down and get rid of. So now your parents can no longer harm or reach you, you are in your ultimate safe-space, you’ve run off to hide in your mind, put yourself in the closet where it’s all dark, and yet not dark, but light because it’s filled with only good feelings, all the ones your mind allows you to have so as to keep you under its control.
Numerous methods have been the catalyst for the engagement of the enlightenment experience. Meditation, Yoga, Contemplative Prayer, Martial Arts Katas, Fasting, Exhaustion, Sweat Lodges, Psychadelics (LSD, Psilocybin, Mushrooms), Deep Emotional Despair, Near Death Experiences, etc. And in all of these, and all of the others not mentioned, there comes a point when the mind is silenced.
Yes, all ways to kill your bad feelings. To take yourself past them, to push down so hard on them that you no longer feel them, all being done by asserting your minds control over your feelings. It’s a killer, beware, it’s soul-destroying, and not all it’s made out to be. And the trouble is, you have to keep at it, you can’t abandon your practice, because you know what will happen if you do... you’ll fall... and you know what you’ll fall into... all those suppressed bad feelings! And they are waiting for you. Because no matter what you do, you can’t just make them go away, they’ll wait in your soul, and one day you’ll have to deal with them. And then you will learn that they have to be dealt with by going right into them, fully accepting them, letting them make you feel as bad as they will, letting them have their say, liberating them, expressing them out of you, every last one of them, and allowing and wanting their hidden truth to come up within you, all so you can see why you’ve got them and why you’ve been made to be so scared of them, that you’ve had to run away from them into your enlightenment practice.
In meditation, the point of the exercise itself is to silence the mind. In Yoga, you focus on the movements and the breathing, which quiets the mind down to thinking about just a couple things (close to a point of thinking of nothing). In contemplative prayer (Google it), you silence yourself, and listen for God. Through martial arts katas, you learn them so well, you don't have to think about them (reducing conscious thought). In fasting, you deprive your body of nourishment that helps the brain function at a higher level, which clears your mind. Through exhaustion or sweat lodges, you physically stress your mind into shutting down (not recommended). The same is true with the drug induced experiences... they inhibit your brain's ability to operate normally, ceasing conscious thought (however they also inhibit your ability to process and understand the experience when it actually happens - not a preferred method). Some people have found enlightenment through experiencing depression or deep emotional despair... where their mind is so filled with pain, that it snuffs out other conscious thought. Near death of course narrows brain and thought activity. All these have been common catalysts for people attaining enlightenment.
Yes, you have to silence the mind giving our mind complete control over yourself. I know it all sounds nice and a better way to live, and much more inspiring than getting caught up in all the religious rubbish and contradiction. However that’s just how it’s meant to sound, very appealing, the ultimate appeal so people aspire to attain it, all to keep you away from the truth of yourself through your feelings. The Evil Spirits who’ve crafted and subjected humanity to the rebellion against truth we all now live in, knew what they were doing, and what better way to keep people and spirits under their anti truth control than to make the mind be the most appealing spiritual goal. Mind attainment, mind over feelings, silence and still the mind and you shut up all the noise, all the pain, of those terrible bad feelings. And we all want out of our bad feelings, no one wants to feel bad; so silence the mind and you kill the noise of your bad feelings, and then you’ve mastered mind control over yourself. Then you’re a very successful fully paid up member of the Rebellion.
So whatever path you choose, choose one that ceases your mind's activity, and God will then touch you directly, and it is then that you will understand everything there is to know. And you will know it when enlightenment happens, because it will change your life forever. If you think you've had a universal-type "everything is one" experience previously, but aren't sure if you experienced enlightenment, you have NOT passed through the enlightenment portal. You have experienced what is called an "awakening", which is a less dramatic and less profound experience, but one that gives you a peek into the secrets of divinity and the truth about God and all existence.
So don’t jump the gun, what until you go through the enlightenment portal and then you will know all there is to know. And so then what happens... sounds a bit boring to me. I think I’ll opt for going into the bad feelings portal as much as I hate feeling bad, expressing all the pain I feel, giving rise to the truth of why I’m in pain; and then once Healed of all my pain and suffering by seeing whole truth of it, by fully embracing and allowing myself to feel it all, I can go on for the rest of eternity endlessly growing in truth and understanding about myself, life, Creation and my two Heavenly Parents, who I feel do love me because I can feel Their Divine Love flowing into my soul.
In comparison to having an awakening experience, to attain a full enlightenment experience you must clear your mind of all conscious thought, reach out and LISTEN for God without thinking ANYTHING. Then if you're lucky, and can maintain a TOTAL thought void, God will touch you with a drinking-from-a-fire-hydrant experience of pure love, pure spirit, pure intelligence and pure knowledge... that you will never, ever forget. And then you will know everything there is to know.
Yep, the Big One will happen to you, your mind won’t let you down, it has to hook you in completely, so you’ll get the big spiritual blast and you’ll know that you’ve finally made it, you’ve crossed that line and there is no going back. That is until your soul, who is in control of your mind, says, well you’ve had the ultimate mind denial of feelings experience, now how about all those feelings you’ve pushed out of sight - out of mind? How about going that way and seeing what the opposite experience feels like?
Where do people find enlightened teachers? The most popular answer to that question is India. There are tons of Gurus there. But there are also many false Gurus who believe they know the path but don't, or who know they don't know the path and who are intentionally pulling the wool over your eyes for monetary gain. Outside India, more and more of us human beings are becoming enlightened, and some of us are selecting the path to become spiritual guides. In our communication age, you should be able to find an enlightened teacher whom you can connect with intellectually rather easily without leaving your desk.
Yes, we will become spiritual guides because we know everything and so many people need our help. I’m sorry for sounding so cynical, but I hate all this self-aggrandising: I am enlightened, and you are not, but I can help you, I will be your teacher, you need me, and so on. Look to your own feelings for your own way and you don’t need anyone else to guide or teach you. The truth is already within you, you only need to want to let it come out, and it’s relatively easy to do. You might need help to open up and to work through the barriers your mind puts up trying to stop you honouring your feelings and uncovering their truth; and you might need help to express your bad feelings when you don’t want to feel bad and have them; and you might need other people to help you understand about the Feeling Way of life as opposed to the Mind distortion that is being so-called enlightened, yet in the end you’ll still be able to drive your own ongoing spiritual self-revelation. However up until now there has only really been the way of becoming enlightened, the way of living true to your feelings has been withheld from humanity, but things are changing, and the truth about one’s feelings can come up and challenge such erroneous untruths and beliefs of the controlling mind.
For instance (and I'm not fishing for followers here - just as an example), I am currently working on developing a free video podcast series that will answer many questions like these and the others connected to the topic of enlightenment (IAMSpirituality.com). And I hope to do so in no-BS format that speaks plain answers without the typical enigmatic riddles that spiritual guides usually use.
So how do you know when someone is enlightened? Tough one. But I think you will know it when you hear it. But as a warning, you will NOT know how to identify the unenlightened until you hear the messages from one whom is truly enlightened, so I suggest listening to people who are widely accepted as enlightened, such as the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Eckhart Tolle, and to a lesser extent, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, etc. There are also some very good Indian Gurus on YouTube now. Keep searching until you find someone you can connect with who's approach keeps you interested.
Listen to all these people and be led further away from your own feelings. None of them speak about living true to ALL your feelings. They all talk about bad feeling denial, how to ease the pain, how to eradicate all your feelings; and yet you are feeling bad for a reason, you are not happy for a reason, so don’t you want to find out why: What is the reason you are feeling bad; what is the reason you are feeling pain; don’t you want to know the truth of yourself? And none of those so-called leaders, teachers and enlightened one’s will help you understand that all your pain comes from your first moment of conception, and through your time in the womb that was unloving, and as a young child being formed in all the rejection, hurt and feeling unloved and unwanted you suffered; no one wants to look back into their early life to see the horror of their suffering, how unlovingly they were treated, and how they’ve become the false, untrue to themselves and untrue to their feelings, person they are. No, that’s too hard, must easier to become enlightened by stilling all that, silencing the cries of you as the little child that feels so hurt and traumatised by your parents when they didn’t love you.
Stay away from anyone who wants to charge you money for spiritual assistance. I plan that all my stuff will be free, except where there are production costs (like with books, etc.). We may accept donations for bandwidth, but beyond that, information on how to connect with God directly to get your own answer (I think) should be free whenever possible.
It’s all mind controlling: don’t do this, but you can do that; so where’s the true enlightenment, for surely if that was real and true there’d be no: you can and can’t do this with your mind?
For now, I hope this helps answer a few questions on enlightenment.
Peace and Love to you.
Thank you for writing it all out so perfectly for me so I can refute each part of it. The so-called Eastern way, and the Western way, any way that is wholly mind-based, is not going to help you in the long run. It will help you further your wrongness, which many people need to do; yet when you’ve had enough of that and do want to live true to your soul, then your feelings will be there waiting for you; and all you have to do is look to them, embrace them, let them be, feel all they make you feel and bring them out of you, let them be as noisy as they are, express them all, speak them out, yell and cry them out, and long for the truth they are to show you about yourself, want above all else to know the truth of why you’re feeling bad, the truth all your feelings are to help you see about yourself. And that is the true way to grow or ascend in truth, which really is the right way to become enlightened to the truth of yourself, the truth of your own soul.
And so having told you not to seek the way of Enlightenment, and instead, what you are do by looking to your feelings, by rights I hear you exclaiming: but all you’ve said is with the mind, telling us how to use our feelings looking for their truth, just as these people are telling us what to do with their minds. And there’s the rub, it’s true; I am using my mind doing what I am criticising them for doing - their mind talking about enlightenment verses my mind talking about feelings - so what are you going to do?