[thoughts of ~a burning woman~]

By way of intro, the first nice thing about being your own contractor on your own house is... you make your own hours and choose what comes first in order of priorities.  The second nice thing is, you take a break when you feel like it.  And that's what I feel like right now.  Actually, I'm practicing the art of retirement.  I don't want to put if off any longer: I only have three years to get it right.

Going out on another limb here, I've been playing with the question, 'What is Satori?' (Zen Buddhism for sudden spiritual enlightenment).  That there is such a thing as 'spiritual enlightenment' cannot be denied.  But Satori?  'THE' and SUDDEN state of enlightenment?  Too subjective to be very meaningful.  One person's enlightenment may well translate as another's downfall, or despair.  There are so many paths in enlightenment.  Still it's certainly good to think upon such things, the younger one begins the better, but certainly, when they're carving your sarcophagus or checking the heat settings on the furnace it's high time to give it serious consideration. 

As a young person I had expectations of adults around me.  I expected them to relentlessly share every bit of knowledge they had garnered, to encourage me along the more esoteric and difficult paths of 'spirit' and meaningful morality.  By default, they were my teachers: there was no one else, or so I thought.  I remember my biological father's last years upon this world.  We had many hours, he sitting in a hospital bed and I, sitting on a straight backed chair beside him.  I helped him eat, cut his finger and toe nails, brought him books to read until the day came when he could read the same book over and over -- he could not remember any of it after he put it down.  At the beginning I sought to draw information from him: thoughts on the past, the future; some personal philosophy; always hoping for a break-through where he'd begin to talk about HIS future.  Never happened.  That was a closed door.  He really had no idea.  So much emphasis is put upon the material/physical during one's 'life' that when that aspect fails, the mental and spiritual person is effectively as dead as the physical body.  My father died and whatever he had been died with his body.  Oh sure, he's probably out there, somewhere, getting ready to return for another kick at the can.  But without any memory of the past, how can one build anything really new, or better?  The old people owe one legacy, one heritance, to the young, and that is their acquired wisdom.  That is all that most will ever have to build on, and what has been our inheritance.  For that matter, what inheritance are we giving our own children?  I shudder to think for I see only too well.

I wasn't about to waste my whole life in the swamps of society's disempowerment, false beliefs and lusts.  Eventually, thoroughly disillusioned by these brainwashed, weak, confused, angry or unwise people, I let them go to wherever they may be headed if they even knew they should have a destination, and I found my own teachers. 

The first teacher was nature.  Nature cannot be brainwashed by the System.  She doesn't seem to care what people do with their religions, their political agendas, their technology.  She absorbs as long as she can and when she no longer can, creates conditions so that whatever refuses to adapt is simply sloughed off.  Then she carries on, destroying all vestiges of the un-adapted; healing and sitting back with a contented sigh.  Nature taught me that 'man' or in this case Earthians were, by ignorance and choice, basically beyond the range of probable error in design.  They were an anachronistic creation programmed to 'love it that way' unto death.  They refuse to consider natural forces, events, needs as having a right to affect their lifestyle.  Unbalanced, unjust, immoral, they find any reason a good enough one to indulge destructive and murderous ways.  What they do build from their massive onslaught upon the environment and destruction of pre-existing societies has no lasting value.  She indicated to me that she is not a 'God' type.  She wouldn't attempt to redeem, or save, these creatures.  In time she would cease to tolerate them and unload that burden.  And I walked both sides of that awareness all my life.

The second teacher was what I've dubbed 'the Teachers'.  The ones I chose to interact with were, without exception, entities of high moral fiber and deep wisdom, some expressing through humor but all very serious of intent.  These explained to me where man's concepts of moral and spiritual understanding, such as it appears, comes from and why these concepts otherwise considered superior to other human achievements, carry so little practical weight here.  When they do it is only after they have been deformed and twisted into oppressive forces (usually against identifiable or target groups) for power, profit or sadistic pleasure. 

I think that spiritual enlightenment, which must of necessity translate as greater mental empowerment and understanding of 'conditions' as they are found, comes in stages as we deliberately, even forcefully, seek to break out of the long sleep of repetitive Earthian involvement to find something better.  This super-human effort attracts energies, entities, spirit and mental beings who in their own time, their own way, transcended their lower physical forms to become universal and cosmic beings.  I also suspect that not all these 'great' beings are automatically 'good' or benevolent.  In all likelihood there is a balance of good and evil among them and the awakening one had better be on guard because if you show promise you will be wooed by both sides. 

Everybody has an agenda and everybody needs something.  Earthians did not invent the concept of the highest bidder -- as below, so above.  Certainly true for me when I look back at what I could have accomplished in areas that opened up for me: the law, real estate, politics... and religion!  I passed  but not without seriously questioning my choices later -- it would have been easy to use one or all of the above to make money and gain notoriety!   But where would I be today?  Trying to whack a little white ball into a dirt hole on a grassy field that should be growing fresh vegetables.  Now there's Satori: you 'work' your whole life so you can get a hole in one before you die.

I think that those who coined the word Satori thinking it was sudden enlightenment, must be shaking their heads now upon looking back.  One day, you take a step up the ladder, you stretch your neck to see over a wall and your view of the world is altered forever.  Now you want to continue climbing that ladder, wondering what else you may encounter, or see, and if there is another 'wall' or veil erected to stop you from seeing.  Enlightenment is a calling to enter upon an infinite quest; it is not a state of being.  It is a verb, an action.  No one is ever enlightened case closed.  It's an awakening and no one who awakens in bed in the morning just lies there waiting for night to return so they can go back to sleep.  You get up, you do something, even if nominally so.

Of course there is another problem with enlightenment.  The higher you climb the more difficult and dangerous it becomes.  Ladders are known to become unstable the higher they stretch and the farther you climb on them.  Also it's a longer way back down with each step up and  the 'enlightened' cannot live on the ladder.  You have to come back down and live your relatively 'normal' life between each climb.  You need to eat, to rest, to do normal labor for your own sustenance and that of those who depend on you.  Also enlightenment isn't just for the seeker.  The findings and results must be shared with those who have yet to find their ladder and start climbing.  Who else will give them the encouragement needed; who will tell them the stories; who will make them curious about what lies beyond the tick tock world of their physical senses?  Their teachers?  Their bankers?  Their bosses?  Their government representatives?  Their preachers?  Their TV?  Their entertainers?  Their parents?  Their friends? 

"Institutions create certainties and, taken seriously, certainties deaden the heart and shackle the imagination." - Ivan Illich