Hi Everyone,
As usual with this forum, a very interesting thread. It does seem to come down to perceptions of what enlightenment actually means to different people. It's at times like these that I always fall back on the same old chestnut - all discussions of these matters include inherent paradoxes. Such as the whole notion of striving for enlightenment - searching for "truth", when according to many philosophies, this enlightened "higher self" is already here, within, it's just that we can't see it. No real searching needs to be done fundamentally - perhaps we just need to switch channels, change our spectacles... The dream analogy is always a good one. Is enlightenment the state we achieve when we have woken up, or does it represent a lucid dreaming state? If we're busy lliving in ignorance in the dream, what motivations and actions can we take in the dream world to help kick start the lucid or awakened state? How do we prod the sleeping person - our "real self" - into awakening when we're still stuck in the dream? Perhaps that is where the act of grace you speak about might come in, Faune. At the same time, it is clear that some dreamers have had glimpses of awakening while others have heard about it and strive for it. Does this act of striving keep us within the dream? Is it just another facet of the dream state? Does it in fact prevent us from waking up by binding us to desires (albeit desires which aspire to transcendence and awakening)?
I totally appreciate the tendency for enlightenment aspiration to become another rat race. I also appreciate how the very nature of our existence at present seems to require at least some sense of purpose - or at least that's what I have been indoctrinated into thinking and believing. Without sounding woolly, and it has been mentioned already, I do also feel that presence, awareness and the current moment, each moment, moment by moment, is where the answers lie. Or rather where the questions and answers co-exist in harmony. I suppose if we manage to tune in to that fine line, that balance, that harmony, we will realise "we" don't really exist in the way that we think we do. "We" therefore can't really strive or reach a concept of enlightenment. Perhaps the only conclusion we will come to is "I AM" or "BEING".
All the rest, including the concepts, motivations, desires, experiences, everything is perhaps then simply absorbed or subsumed into that.
best wishes
Ingrid
