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Amazon
Category:
Spirituality
Publisher: Metolius Press
ISBN-10: 0983749507
Pages: 250
Copyright: July 4, 2011
ISBN-13: 9780983749509
A remarkably quick guide to awakening and enlightenment beginning today, a jumpstart to your destiny
Each of us is a living miracle, the inheritor of a tremendous fortune and witness to the greatest spectacle in the universe, yet most of us sleep-walk through life, bored, angry, frustrated and never in control. If we do awaken to the purpose and meaning of our lives, it is often during a crisis or at the end of our lives.
Sustainable Enlightenment shows how to begin with the simplest of steps, the senses, and build a world of thoughts, expressions and actions to arrive at a personal destiny, free of hype and false promises. Your birthright and your destiny is literally within sight (and smell and hearing and taste), and actually at your fingertips. All you need to do is sense the universe, and then follow the other simple steps to claim your birthright.
Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Late September, 2006 in Eugene, Oregon still feels like summer. The sunny, brilliant days are getting shorter, but the rain for which the state is famous is still several weeks away. The clay soil in the hills is cracked and dry, unwatered lawns turned to straw on rock-hard ground weeks ago.
"Dad, why don't you write this down?"
Son is on the phone. He has just begun his last year at Swarthmore and we are discussing some of the things he had learned during two years away from his college, one to study Chinese in Beijing and another to study Chinese and Japanese at Harvard. In Cambridge, he happened upon the "happiness" course and, despite my misgivings, had taken it and profited from it greatly. I am all for happiness and fulfillment, of course, I just thought maybe this course was a “gut” offering. I was just explaining "Karma" to him (see Chapter Nine, "Splitting the Mind"), a usable method for the oddball idea of Karma.
"Write this down? Well, I'm pretty much done, you have it now. That's all there is to Karma."
"No, Dad, I mean this stuff you say. About happiness, how to be aware of the world. You know. It's really good stuff."
"You think so?"
"Yeah, I really do. I'd like to have it to read. Seriously."
After raising two children who, during their teen years, often looked at me as if I possessed only the sense God gave to the lawn chair, this is quite a compliment. And so the idea stays with me for a gestation period of several years, and this book is the result. A simplified path to enlightenment during this life, provable and testable, a personal guide to awakening and Destiny.
* * *
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. ~ Albert Camus
You are a living miracle, but are you living a miracle? Your life story is a key chapter in an incredible chronicle of heroism and derring-do, an epic adventure filled with chance meetings and love and lust and hairbreadth escapes, but are you sometimes paralyzed with fear, or bored to distraction with your own existence? You don’t need to be perfect or fearless, or physically powerful or saintly, or popular or charismatic, to receive your birthright now of a miraculous life, but you will have to change the way you see the world and how you think about things. You will have to spend some time and effort, but no money, really. Perhaps the entire process will take a few weeks. It's not much of a price to pay for awakening and enlightenment. You have a purpose in this life, you have a calling in this world and you have a destiny on this earth. It won’t seek you out, but you can awaken to it, and you can start now.
So, what must you do?
You must first come to your senses. Literally. If you can gaze at a field of wildflowers and perceive their different colors and shapes, and open a jar of cinnamon sticks and inhale the spice's fragrance, then you have the innate ability to connect, completely, to the universe. Once you understand and practice this sensory connection, you are well on your way to enlightenment. You can take the next steps to think, express yourself, take action, find a deep peacefulness inside you, work at a true vocation (and not just a job) and achieve true, personal greatness. This last, your personal significance and splendor, may eventually become known to the world at large or be revealed to only to a few, and it will not matter one whit either way, because in finding and fulfilling your greatness you will create the true meaning of your life, and you will fulfill your destiny. It all starts, however, each moment, with a sensation: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch.
This book is not only a simple guide to personal enlightenment written in response to Son’s request and with my children in mind, but also my thank-you note to Life itself. Or perhaps it is more of a love letter. In a sense, enlightenment, gratitude and love are all the same thing, or parts of the same thing. When I think about enlightenment—and not what is widely promoted as such, either on the internet or through various institutions—I am really thinking of how enthusiastic I am about my experience on the planet and how much I am in love with life, and how grateful I am for having a place here, even for a short while. Somehow, like any true enthusiast, I think everyone should feel the same way. As is the case with all of us, I could so easily have never been conceived or born, and Destiny might have snuffed out my candle quite effortlessly at any number of points in my life. We are so lucky, you and I, to be here at all. Like you and everyone else, I am living in this green and blue palace called earth, participating in this grand banquet I call “my life,” on borrowed time. Knowing this makes existence all the sweeter and richer, and it makes it even more important that we taste and experience all that life has to offer us during the short time we are allotted.
But it is not just tasting and experiencing life that counts, it is not just perception, as you will see. Of course, perception is the major share of enlightenment, and once you get that right, you are doing, practically speaking, the lion’s share of the work of awakening. Isn't that odd? Opening up your five senses to this reality in each unfolding moment, and practicing at getting that right, is the heavy lifting, so to speak, of becoming enlightened. After the perception, the full perception, of our beautiful world and all its manifestations and creatures, including ourselves, we now get the absolute privilege to take that perception—our own particular perception—and apply it through our thoughts, expressions and actions, and become the persons we were meant to be since birth. It is all free, too; all this will cost you is the effort it takes to change the way you think about things.
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