Shift.

Greg Goode has given about as fine an explanation of enlightenment as I have ever come across. Which I will now promptly screw up, through paraphrasing. In essence, enlightenment is establishing the non-difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment.

Now this might seem like semantic chuff, but it actually encapsulates the whole enchilada from a non-dual perspective. To whit:

Wanting to be enlightened presupposes that you are not. Two states. You are unenlightened, and somebody else is enlightened. You want to move from your state to their state. Thing is, there is only one state.

This can be realized through the realization of truth through pointers:

-You are not your body (you exist in sleep without bodily perceptions per se)
-You are not your mind (you exist in dreamless sleep without mind perceptions)
- All non (non-dual) experiences revolve around self and an other:

This can manifest in happiness (feeling of non separation) and unhappiness (feeling of separation). In either case, there is a subtle duality, which will inevitably lead to suffering. (Happiness based on duality is set-up to fail by its very nature; unhappiness based on duality is, well, suffering and unhappiness).

In duality:

When you are depressed, you want to feel a different way (duality).
When you are angry, you are propelled to feel another way (duality)
When you are happy, you have moved from one feeling to another (duality)

So it can all be boiled down to this: realize what you are not. when it is seen, then realized, that there is no separation, all relative happiness and unhappiness dissolves. you are left as that which is. Awareness, the big fabric without thread count or edge, out of which everything arises from and fades back into.

Which is why Yogananda's prayer of a multi-jetted flame (one flame, split into hundreds of little flames through a stove burner) was such an affecting metaphor.

Which is why the picture I have of space reversed is such an affecting metaphor. (No space between individuals. Negative space, like in drawing. Draw what is not, and the picture appears. See the space between individuals as non-space, and you have a connectedness that we all poke up through. My picture, however weak, is like an eternally large piece of dental-dam, with shapes appearing in and then returning to it).

So. That is enlightenment. Initially you are motivated to find out what is 'wrong' - which points to a world of duality, which needs to be integrated. Non-dual realization identifies this seeming duality, and integrates them. Thing is, after integration, a survey indicates that they were never separated in the first place. Thus, it is seen that there is no difference between enlightenment and non-enlightenment. When this seeing becomes a realization, one is rooted in the absolute, and free. Which was the case all along, right?

God's Underlay

Happy and free, for the moment. Here's why: identifying as awareness.

to whit:

• I can only know externals through senses (touch, hearing, taste, sight) and thinking.
• All of these can be reduced to ideas.
• Something sees the ideas.
  
• Something that is NOT the ideas sees the ideas
• That, is the non-locatable awareness.
• Awareness contains me, I do not contain awareness.

Exercises to solidify this:

1. Read Berkeley many times to get the fact that nothing exists outside of experience
2. Use Greg Goode's pointer to identify where I think I am (above or below the waste - above. above or below the shoulders - above. Within the head - yes. Where abouts - a small marble shape behind the third eye. 'So you are a small marble shape object behind your eyes. That object is seen. Are you on the seen side or teh seeing side? The seeing side. And that brings you back to...non locatable awareness)

I finished reading Standing as Awareness last night. Working on Gladwell's Outliers, and the two have a common thread... people don't progress succesfully in isolation from A to Z. They need effort, talent, gumption, drive etc, but they also need context. Two acorns of equal genetic predisposition dropped in fertile soil and clay-sand-hell respectively will have two very different outcomes.

I was lucky enough to get to this point - getting pointers from Greg that turned a light on - due to MY context, which has had all kinds of ups and downs over the years.

If I hadn't grown up where I did, I wouldn't have put so much weight in realtionships.
If I hadn't put so much weight in relationships, I wouldn't have been so wounded.
If I wasn't so wounded, I wouldn't have looked for the unchanging.

So here I am, having been covered with a soft blanket of lightness from Greg's pointers. And whenever, WHATever comes up, i can look beneath, pull the carpet up, and look for the underlay, which is what I am. Awareness from which things arise. I don't contain awareness, I AM awareness.

namaste