Comment below: **
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > **snip** > And for me. As you might have gathered, even though > I don't study with any teacher and am not part of any > spiritual organization, I'm still a bit of an enlight- > enment freak. And I've found that one of the things > that has been the most encouraging to me *as* an > enlightenment freak is this process of viewing the > teachers I've worked with as regular guys. I still > think that many of them were pretty high dudes, with > a great deal going for them. If not fully enlightened, > then at the very least they were enlightened from time > to time. > > And yet, they were *also* regular guys. They had faults, > just like mine. They made mistakes, just like I do. They > did really stupid shit from time to time, just like I do. > And yet they might have been doing all this stupid shit > while being enlightened. > > I may be weird, but that just inspires the hell outa me. > If these guys could be human and have human faults and, > at the same time, be enlightened (or as close to it as > I've ever encountered) then so can I. > > Do you stop loving your parents because you grow up > and realize that they were human, with human faults > and frailties? Of course not. You love them more. > They're closer to you, down off that pedestal. Same > with spiritual teachers, in my opinion. > **end** This is right on, IMO, particularly the realization of the ordinariness of Realization and how truly inspiring that is. It feels great to be free of a belief system that divides the world into one thing and the other; with the enlightened few on the mountaintop and the ignorant masses in the mud; with "our" spiritual movement providing world peace and "their" spirtual movement leading everyone astray. I've no quarrel with anyone pursuing the path (or the person) to whom they are attracted; that's just natural affinity. And I can understand and accept that someone might sorta like and sorta dislike certain things about this person or that movement or this teaching or that technique. It's all stylistic and not substance. And what one has affinity for changes over time; at least it has for me. One thing that always stuck with me was something that Ram Das wrote in "More Grist For The Mill" which I can only paraphrase here: "trust yourself to make the necessary mistakes in your life." You really can't go wrong because you are only pretending to be lost and ignorant to begin with.
