So, enlightenment encompasses following one's intuition and acknowledging that
we are all One.
--- On Sun, 6/26/11, Xenophaneros Anartaxius <anartax...@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius <anartax...@yahoo.com>
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: 'Enlightenment is not a function of the Mind'
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, June 26, 2011, 8:50 PM
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robert" <babajii_99@...> wrote:
> Enlightenment is not of the Rational Mind...
Enlightnement, if it includes anything, it includes everything. It doesn't
change anything, but it includes all in its perspective. It includes the
rational mind, but as the rational mind is a subset of all that can be included
in a definition of mind, the rational mind cannot quite grasp the whole of
experience.
> It is an intuitive reality...
Yes, but we would never hear about enlightenment if the rational mind did not
make up material to explain the experience.
> Ego is a funtion of the rational mind...
I think ego is more primitive than that, the rational mind provides a story or
justification for the experience of ego. I think you meant 'function' here. I
am not sure what a 'funtion' is; maybe it is what Barry does when he tells me
to go suck on eggs: 'Funtion off Xeno, I am not interested in your pompous
s**t'.
> Ego is what divides us all...
I would say yes and no here. Ego gets people together too. It is an aspect of
falling in love, or being in a group that has particular ideals. The greatest
highs and lows in life are a function of ego. But ego does result in suffering,
but also elation. Enlightenment kind of damps out the amplitude somewhat.
> Human Being are the only beings on the planet that have developed Ego...
This might not be true. Chimpanzee's may have something like ego, though I am
not sure about this. Expeimentally they seem to show a certain amount of
self-relfection and an ability to conceptualize.
> Human Beings are the only beings on the planet that have created war, greed,
> lust and all the rest of it...
Chimpanzees go to war against their own kind. I once saw an eerie documentary
showing male chimps moving out of their camp, single file and completely silent
to go attack another group. They also use weapons. Genetically we are 99%
chimp. (If my percent is in error, Judy will make the proper correction.)
> Developing the mind and the intellect has gotten humanity where it is
> today...on the brink of collapse...
Of course. No other animal or plant has restructured the world as we have. You
would still be in the forest or scavenging for food on the Savannah if it were
not for this. Or not exist at all.
> The only way to save this planet from Destruction is to form some kind of
> Intuition that we are all One...
That might work, but historically no one has been able to get humanity to
uniformly agree to such a high degree of conformity, to get everyone to buy
into the idea. And those that have the experience also do not seem to display a
high degree of conformity anyway.
> This was Jesus' essential teaching also...
Look where he ended up, and what happened to the organisations that have risen
in his name.
> Don't be deluded by the ego...in whatever form it takes...
This is what enlightenment is for, but there is still going to be some shadow
of it there as long as there is a body that localises experience to a specific
location.
> And especially by one's whose egos have gotten beyond the brink..
In terms of enlightenment, the brink is the ego, the fragmentation of
experience into parts without seeing the whole. By the time everyone is five
years old, they are beyond the brink.
> Hitler was also a teacher of seperation...
Hitler, however one may dislike what he did, was strangely brilliant. The
political system in Germany had dozens of parties, which he sarcastically
mocked. He focused the population on a single enemy to unify them, by creating
a single separation to focus on instead of many. Perverted, sure, but it
worked, for a while. And it helped to unify many other countries against him.
It also resulted in creating a considerably greater solidarity among the Jews
than existed before World War II, and a greater appreciation in the West of the
dangers of genocide. Separation and Unity are strange bedfellows, they are each
others whore, neither can exist as an idea without the other.
> The South still wants to be seperate from the Union...
The Union, the 'united STATES' (this is how it was capitalized in the final
parchment of the Declaration of Independence) was initially conceived as a
federation of independent states. You see something similar in the European
Union, and similar problems, currently for example with the financial problems
of Greece. Greece might have to temporarily drop out of the union if it fails
to get its financial house in order.
> Seperateness breeds contempt...
Yes, and everything else that exists, as long as you see separate things. Even
if you experience the whole, you still can see separate things. And some of
those separate things appear as great beauty, which attracts and can inspire.
The concept of god consciousness depends on separateness for it to have any
significance. The concept of unity also depends on separateness similarly.
> Seperateness breeds death...
And its opposite life. Division creates opposites, opposition, conflict, and
the concept that there can be something that connects them as well.
> Seperateness is not the ultimate reality, period.
Yes, but the ultimate reality would not be experienced as something that can be
known without it (separateness). In order to pursue the idea of ultimate
reality, it is necessary to have the experience that ultimate reality is
something separate from oneself. The term ultimate reality would have no
significance without separateness. Separateness is a part of ultimate reality.
But ultimate reality is just plain reality. It is not a big deal. Quite a few
on this forum have seen this, that reality is not a big deal - it is just
there, or here, whatever you want to call it or say what or where it is; they
express it in various ways, and grapple with its rational significance to
themselves in various ways, and this comes through in the way they express
themselves.
I am not sure I agree with you on this post. This is simplistic. I understand
what you are saying, it is just not practical in this form.
In the words of a great religious leader, Bokonon, 'All mankind is divided into
teams, and these teams do God's will, without ever discovering what it is they
are doing.' See, there are teams which unify the members of the team. But then
there are separate teams. The universe has an unruly lumpiness to it, but that
keeps things going. To make good corn muffins, e.g., it is necessary for the
batter to be slightly lumpy, not uniform, and this separation makes for a more
enjoyable texture in the final result.
'Enlightenment is not a function of the Mind' sounds cool, but without the Mind
there would be no such thing as Enlightenment, or enlightenment with a
lower-case 'e'. Or corn muffins.
If this post refers to maskedzebra in some way, he is grappling with what many
of us are grappling with, in his own way; give him some space to grow through
the contradictions in his life. Avoiding contradictions does not work, you have
to hit them head on, until you intuitively see through them to a greater
connexion. The name 'maskedzebra' is interesting. A mask hides something. A
zebra has a mass of alternating black and white stripes all over its body,
maybe a visual symbolism for massive contradictions nesting side by side.
