Saturday, April 30, 2011

Experiences Are Never Settled

Enlightenment or the dispelling of Ignorance is not an act of the intellect, but the transforming or remodeling of one’s whole being through the exercise of the most fundamental faculty innate in every one of us. Mere understanding has something foreign in it and does not seem to come intimately in life. Enlightenment, which is born of the will, wants to see itself and to be in itself.

D.T. Suzuki in his 1927 essay, Enlightenment and Ignorance adds a bit of spice to our so called “normal,” thoughts about enlightenment and the path it follows. Experiences are never settled. Every road in life has another avenue or street to explore. Enlightenment is always present on our journey. We just have to read the signs that point us in the right direction. We try to read the signs using our ego, but the ego has nothing to do with triggering enlightenment. We know it when we feel it and then the ego catalogues it in our book of experiences. There is a foreign element in enlightenment that does not conform to accepted beliefs, and that element is the conscious mind that is not attached to the brain.

Perhaps the best way to identify enlightenment is to watch new flowers bloom every spring. We believe those flowers are the same every spring, but each spring brings another element of the consciousness of the flower to bloom. Flowers don't need to find enlightenment they are always enlightened. Flowers express the essence of their interior physically. Our belief structure restricts the flow of our innate enlightenment.

Individual reality sits on a platform of beliefs. The conscious mind is like a flower with no blooms. We create buds of awareness using a creative mixture of our core beliefs. But, our unconscious thoughts are the fertilizer that instigates the unending blossoms of enlightenment.

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