A few thoughts for you on the matter of enlightenment that will hopefully give you starting points for reflection... Enlightenment liberates us from the tyranny of petty things. It frees us from binding opinion, false judgments, and the confines of the material world. Enlightenment is the direct result of connection with truth, of personal communion …
"There is but one quality necessary for the perfect understanding of character, one quality that, if man have it, he may dare to judge—that is, omniscience. Most people study character as a proofreader pores over a great poem: his ears are dulled to the majesty and music of the lines, his eyes are darkened to …
Whether or not you are religiously inclined, the statement purportedly spoken 2,000 years ago by a man whose worldview spawned a number of organized religions including Christianity - "Judge not that ye be not judged" - is worthy of deep consideration. Judgment, the arch-rival of empathy, is an insidious and pernicious human invention. The millennium-and-a-half …
If you inadvertantly brushed up against a thorny bush while walking on a path in the woods - whether you put the bush there or not - you would probably move swiftly to extract yourself from the bush and move on. You think that people would do the same with the emotional and mental thorns encountered in the path of life, but do they? In my observation the greater tendency is to wrestle with the bush, roll around in it, jump in it, jump on it, walk away and leap back onto it just when it looked like they were clear of it...anything but get away from it! It just doesn't make any sense.
Gregory Hake 