TA Q
Points. was such a powerful and important question for all of Quora’s “enlightenment “ seekers, he should post it as it’s own question.
The reason it may be the most powerful and important question to ask in the Enlightenment category is because so many people on Quora are looking to enlightenment as their ticket out of all of life’s unpleasantness and unbearableness, as this “experience” that will usher them into a state of continuous Elysian bliss, far from this life’s suffering and death. By doing so, they have made enlightenment into just one more of the ego’s desires and cravings, and as such, one more part of their dream world, not True Reality.
True enlightenment to true Reality requires purchasing the ticket in, not the ticket out. It requires seeing everything as it really is, and allowing everything to be as it really is, and that requires ceasing to construct a false dream of a life to avoid all that and avoid the Void - which is what almost everyone does all the time.
So it requires sitting and listening, then more sitting and listening, in the deepest Silence. Asking What I Am, really, and then waiting and waiting for the answers (which is mostly what we’re not.) And not jumping up after a short while, to get a latte or dive into our work or worries or daily agenda.
We jump up because we feel, “This is just mindless sitting, it isn’t going anywhere…I gotta get stuff done.” But who said that?
We jump up because something actually did happen. We started to see all we’re not and then felt this vast emptiness and it scared the crap out of us, to be Nothing, so we felt, “I better jump up and do something, to reassert that I am something! (Instead of just I Am.) But who said all that?
The ego said all that. The same illusory ego that’s scared of life, scared of non-acceptance and abandonment, scared of pain and death, that’s constructing this dream world to keep itself from feeling all that. The same ego that, if we could cease identifying with it, will drop away, revealing that Who we Really Are is so much vaster than anything that could ever get lost in non-acceptance or abandonment or suffering, and literally can only be alive, never die.
But to get that, to awaken or “get enlightened,” we have to be willing to just be still, feel that emptiness, feel that unpleasantness, feel that empty Void that seems to be behind it, but is actually the fullest Void anyone will ever experience. Most people are not willing to do this, so they leave Being and go quickly back to doing, to fill the Void. This is why it’s so difficult for unawakened people to do nothing, and why as a result, they will never awaken (at least not until their “death,” when we will all return the Void we Are.)
I understand we all need to do things; to work, make a living, eat, clean our house, be social and in love, etc. I’m not saying sit forever in Silence until you know the Truth. By all means, live your life. Krishna talked about “seeing the action in inaction and the inaction in action.” Just set aside a bit of time every day to be still, quiet and in touch with your core being. And when you go out and do whatever you do, check and see, as often as you can, “Am I doing this because this is what is, my current embodied Reality, with no avoidance of that Reality or conjuring up false airs to get me accepted or get me through? Or am I creating this whole dream world that doesn’t even exist, then making every move in that dream as a way to avoid feeling pain or suffering or fear of death.
Look at the animals. They just be, When they need to eat, they eat. When they need to move or sleep, they move or sleep. If a predator enters and comes after them, do they do everything to avoid pain and suffering, and do they fear death. You bet they do! But once the threat is gone and that moment is over, they do not run around worrying about the next encounter, or covering over their feelings by overindulging on food or entertainment. They at once go back to Being, Silence, Reality.
As my friend Artem says, “How can you love yourself if you can’t even be with yourself, just be?” Wise words. Don’t run from the emptiness. Stay with it, if you can. Stay with your fear, your suffering, the supposed Void in the supposed death beyond our lives. You will awaken to just. Being. Here.
