12-24-2010, 12:00 AM
from http://www.realitysandwic...why_i_am_not_enlightened
It's the perennial paradox. There are many spiritual teachers and
schools of thought who remind us continuously that, "this is it,"
that we are, each of us, always already
enlightened. That it is impossible to be otherwise, and any effort
whatsoever in the direction of enlightenment can only, by definition, be a
journey further from it, since it is where, unbeknownst to us, we are starting
out from. A religious way of stating this would be to say that we are always already in the Presence of God.
If God is Omnipresent, the Source and Substance of Everything/Everywhere, (and
for the non-dual people, also the Non-Source and Non-Substance of
Nothing/Nowhere, and really neither of those two, nor both; confused yet?) then
there is absolutely nothing any of us could do, obviously, to either bring in
or remove God from the scene.
Our True Nature is who
we already are, not something we can become or attain in the future. The
paradox becomes that we somehow don't recognize this fact and spend years
searching for something that was never lost, and if we're fortunate, we'll run
into a teacher along the way who will simply, as the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition
puts it, "point out" what is perfectly obvious. Jed McKenna calls it
"opening your eyes," Gurdjieff and many others refer to it as
"waking up." It has been called God-Realization, Self-Realization,
Enlightenment, Liberation, or simply being real and authentic, resting in the
center of our original, True Nature and living life from that place rather than looking for it.
So
those seem to be our two main choices: Either we're presently, already
enlightened and simply don't know it, and there may or may not be teachers or
methods that can help us achieve the recognition that there is nothing to
achieve; or, we're clearly very far from enlightenment and we need to be
willing to sacrifice our very lives to get to the Truth, and there may or may
not be teachers or methods that will help us achieve that. In either case, good
luck! In the meantime, it seems to me that it behooves us spiritual seekers to get on with our day.
It's the perennial paradox. There are many spiritual teachers and
schools of thought who remind us continuously that, "this is it,"
that we are, each of us, always already
enlightened. That it is impossible to be otherwise, and any effort
whatsoever in the direction of enlightenment can only, by definition, be a
journey further from it, since it is where, unbeknownst to us, we are starting
out from. A religious way of stating this would be to say that we are always already in the Presence of God.
If God is Omnipresent, the Source and Substance of Everything/Everywhere, (and
for the non-dual people, also the Non-Source and Non-Substance of
Nothing/Nowhere, and really neither of those two, nor both; confused yet?) then
there is absolutely nothing any of us could do, obviously, to either bring in
or remove God from the scene.
Our True Nature is who
we already are, not something we can become or attain in the future. The
paradox becomes that we somehow don't recognize this fact and spend years
searching for something that was never lost, and if we're fortunate, we'll run
into a teacher along the way who will simply, as the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition
puts it, "point out" what is perfectly obvious. Jed McKenna calls it
"opening your eyes," Gurdjieff and many others refer to it as
"waking up." It has been called God-Realization, Self-Realization,
Enlightenment, Liberation, or simply being real and authentic, resting in the
center of our original, True Nature and living life from that place rather than looking for it.
So
those seem to be our two main choices: Either we're presently, already
enlightened and simply don't know it, and there may or may not be teachers or
methods that can help us achieve the recognition that there is nothing to
achieve; or, we're clearly very far from enlightenment and we need to be
willing to sacrifice our very lives to get to the Truth, and there may or may
not be teachers or methods that will help us achieve that. In either case, good
luck! In the meantime, it seems to me that it behooves us spiritual seekers to get on with our day.