Enlightenment Training 17 December 2023

Meditate with HRV monitor for 10 minutes

Write for 10 minutes

The question is enlightenment

1

Wisdom is the what. Enlightenment is the why.

Wisdom is what to do

Enlightenment is why, and hence how to feel.

Being wise, is knowing what do to do

Being enlightened is being able to see how things are

And how are things?

Everything is connected

Time flows through all and everything

Everyone one is connected

Everything has an arc, and those arcs are ebbs and flows in the river of all existence

This gives me calmness

This gives me how to feel

This is the feeling I can trust to guide my decisions

This is the feeling that gives me wisdom

I looked for wisdom because I asked myself how I can "solve" bad behaviours

Carving the groove of enlightenment into my brain feels like a good way.

Because the other side of seeing the world through enlightened eyes is seeing the wonder of it all.

And the wonder of it all hits my pleasure zone. And gives me a hit, a rush, and release.

And so perhaps I can let bad behaviours go. See them for what they are, which is shortcuts to a cheap imitation of the highest feelings we can feel.

Bad habits are bad because they are shortcuts to emptiness that masquerades as satisfaction.

Shortcuts to emptiness, instead of paths to satisfaction.

2

Forgiveness. I feel I need to ask forgiveness for people I haven't treated well. Actually, to be more specific, its people I use for my own pleasure.

Because I know that some people I treat roughly, but I do not feel bad about that. I feel it is instructive. It feels like I am a person in their life that guides them, but not with kindness and smiles, but with sternness and distance. Standards are set, and if you do not meet them, your path must go elsewhere.

Is this an enlightened way to think? What is my role in this world? What is my role in other people's lives?

Is my role sometimes to ask of people, and if they rise to the standard, to celebrate, but if they do not rise, then they move in a different direction?

How I treat people is a natural extension of the question of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not about yourself alone in isolation, because it is necessarily seeing how all things are connected.

It is seeing the past and the present and future flowing together. Sometimes, my role is difficult in other peoples lives, but in their future they thank me. Everyone can thrive. Most people don't.

Thriving is understanding the world in a way in which you move through it and are good to yourself, to others and to the future.

Am I making excuses for not being smiling and kind to all people all the time?

3

It's not about me. The universe is not about me.

All of existence and everything, everywhere, all flowing together, is not about me.

I get to see it, wonder at it, and live my own small existence.

And that is amazing. There are gifts I will be given in my existence, both good and bad, and I can do my best to roll with them, doing better if I expect them. And I can have a wondrous life. But it is fleeting and so small. And that is ok, because I am grateful for all of existence, and that I, this moment of consciousness get to see it. Even if I flit out again, over, ever so briefly, I will have given life to other consciousnesses that can see the wonder of life themselves. And I will have pointed it out to other consciousnesses, and we will have marveled at existence.

Existence, a flowing river of light and dark and everything of all time.

It is wondrous and amazing, and I am here, in it, now.

4

What groove do I want to carve into my mind today? What is the thought I want to have?

Everything is all connected. But you don't know how it is all connected, and when connections might become clear.