Q; What is awakening?
Q; What is enlightenment?
A; i have no idea.
Actually, enlightenment is a word that i prefer not to use, as it means different things to different people.
For me, it is a mystery. It serves as a description of experience, but it lacks a physical presence as a concrete noun.
i prefer to use the word “awakening” or “liberation” as they describe something that is tangible for those no longer seeking.
First a caveat…
Everything that i say is from the perspective of this organism (with the vince label)
So, what is enlightenment?
It’s An idea. A story.
There are many variations of it, especially in the pop zen genre, but I have to say that I have no idea if any of them are accurate.
What I can talk to, is the experiencing that I call ‘waking up’, or ‘liberation’.
These terms obviously come from the analogy of being asleep or sleepwalking, and the analogy of being captive or being a prisoner.
What is sleepwalking?
It can be described from two perspectives.
The first from the perspective of doing it.
The second from the perspective of observing it.
From the first perspective there is no alternative. If you are doing it, then you probably don’t know that you are.
From the second there appears to be options.
To be able to observe it there has been a shift. A recognition of an alternative.
From this perspective what occurs is that a realization that sleepwalking was happening. That realization usually happens after the event.
If we go to a movie knowing that the story is fictional, we voluntarily suspend disbelief in order to share emotions with the plot. Here there is the option to do this or not. (to varying degrees)
A sleepwalker doesn’t have these options. They believe the plot to be real (actual) They are a prisoner to their beliefs. They take their beliefs to be facts.
The most glaring example of this is the belief that what we observe in ‘the world’ or ‘other’ people, is what is actual.
This, in spite of science of the brain/mind telling us that we really relate to an image that form in our brain rather than what is actual. This happens because the brain is predictive in the way it works. It takes the least amount of information (from sense input - including mind) that it can to predict an outcome.
“It’s really important to understand we’re not seeing reality,” says neuroscientist Patrick Cavanagh, a research professor at Dartmouth College and a senior fellow at Glendon College in Canada. “We’re seeing a story that’s being created for us.”
Most of the time, the story our brains generate matches the real, physical world — but not always. Our brains also unconsciously bend our perception of reality to meet our desires or expectations. And they fill in gaps using our past experiences.”
Just as we only know that we have been asleep when we wake up, we only know that we have been a prisoner of our beliefs when we are no longer captive.
When this happens we have the option to voluntarily suspend our disbelief for practical purposes, such as communicating.
So, the question is “Why wake up?” Isn’t the world ok with 99.9% of the population sleepwalking?
Over at LiberationUnleashed, there have been 2952 ex prisoners in the past 10 years. So if we say that there might be 10,000 awake being at the moment, then it is .1% of the population that isn’t deluded by beliefs. No wonder that there is so much shit happening.
Here is a link to a great description of what waking up is.
It is my mate Paul at a zoom meetup of seekers and guides.