What is enlightenment?

Give me a dooobie about two foot long
not too mild and not too strong
If all goes right and nofin goes wrong
no matter what you meant
I'll show you enlightenment.

It seems to me to be too subjective and personal to define for another. I am by no means enlightened so I speak from ignorance. If I were enlightened I wouldn't be wasting time on this silly website.

What if enlightenment, like misery, loves company???

I would imagine enlightenment is where one allows emotion to replace sense and reason when seeking the answers to his questions.

Have you ever had a moment of such clarity that it just makes you want to laugh? Have you ever had sudden understanding come to you regarding issues that have troubled you in such a way that you see a clear perspective which enables you to find your way? Most people have experienced such moments, and they are moments of enlightenment. They don't last long though, and we are invariably sucked back into our subjective experiences of perception. This is the same kind of enlightenmnet that buddhism, for instance, speaks of. But to master one's own perception in such a way that this enlightenment can be experienced continuously is no easy task, and most spend their lives in this pursuit without reaching the end of it. But that doesn't mean we should not try.

Being enlightened means no longer being in the dark about something. You see the light... you UNDERSTAND.

It is impossible to be enlightened about everything. Buddha was enlightened about the mind. He was not enlightened about electricity or mechanics-- it took men like James Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Isaac Newton to shed some light on those topics.

The popular, religious view of enlightenment which culminates in Nirvana is the understanding of personal identity. Essentially, it is the same which has been 'proven' by science, namely that we transcend the body and mind. We come from the mysterious start of the universe known as the Big Bang and have reached the end of it which is identity of an invisible, not-knowable entity which can be described as Awareness. Before the Big Bang was Awareness or Suchness or Absolute Existence. We have come full circle. Having knowledge of this is not enough to be enlightened. It takes full understanding and beyond complete conviction of belief (IT IS so therefore it doesn't have to be believed because you KNOW it is true).

One might argue that the mind is everything...

The gist of what Buddhists call enlightenment is to experience Nirvana, a state in which one no longer is concerned with selfish desires. No anger, hatred, or desire. It is a state where one has allegedly escaped any and all suffering that exists in the world. They are supposed to achieve this by meditating on Buddhist concepts like "impermanence," going beyond the mind to experience the Buddha awareness that has no ego. Also, they consider knowledge about reality to be necessary in achieving this state.
The internet is full of many pretentious "enlightened" people who are more than happy to tell you they have no ego. That is sort of why I don't believe in enlightenment myself. Or at least that if anyone were enlightened, they would probably not need the validation of people on internet forums.
Some of the best Buddhist teaching are really about realizing that anger and greed only hurt ourselves. A hardcore Buddhist will say that this is a stepping stone to the enlightenment experience, but I think they are good things to strive for whether one believes in enlightenment or not.

Yes, i have achieved enlightenment, I am enlightened now as I have been in many other lifetimes i remember.
To answer the question to those that are "un-enlightened" or in the spiritual sleep requires a structural overhaul of what you "think" life is. Because life will be a result of your thoughts.
What is enlightenment. Well, firstly we only need to ask this question at all because we have moved away from the enlightened state, which is the natural state that we come her with at birth.
Humanity chose a long time ago - whilst in a higher enlightened state - to descend into illusion - namely the illusion that this experience is real, and that creation is something you do in the external world. Creation is done within, then we see the manifestation occur outwardly. Enlightenment occurs when we grasp this and allow a point of observation to grow. the point of observation is the awareness between your thoughts. the trilogy of creation is thought-word-deed. we cannot have any real power outside ourselves - it is an illusion.
Ok, but what is enlightenment. Well enlightenment is to make more light - so there are ongoing ascending levels of enlightenemnt. I am more enlightened every time i meditate, and if my mind kicks in during or after meditation i will become less enlightened through my identification with thought - i will think i am my thoughts. i am not my thoughts.
think about a coke bottle full of muddy water. let it sit long enough and it will be clear water with a muddy collection at the bottom. the issue is that we are all one, so when only one of us clears their coke bottle, others will seek to bring us back into the groove as it were - your clarity causes discomfort to their state - it starts to break down the illusion, so they and their mind and their collective thoughts, fears etc work to bring the balance back.
patience, timing and readiness must be respected, and have patience even with impatience itself.
know who you truly are and you will not lose this constant too and fro.
allow yourself to be battered on the rocks enough times and you'll realise the truth that nothing matters at all - no judgement. this will allow to to let go - death is no boundary, despelling fears of death.
Enlightenment is the constant rise above fear, and clarity comes more and more the more you stick with it.
Much of our societies habits and ways of being are in taking people in the other direction, into unconsciousness.
Enlightenment allows you to see beyond the fact that the masses want to be asleep becuase they think it is easier than taking responsibility for the fact that they/we create all of it.
Enlightenment is the natural state, before thought, it is connection with your oneness. Enlightenment is the falling away of our minds electromagnetic association with form, thought, and pretty much everything you take for granted - it is losing your mind and realising you are all that exists beyond mind - and you are here experiencing yourself as form (with a body/physical).
You realise and remember where you came from, and that even time is an experiential layer for us to utilise like a tool - not a state to belive in and give your power away to. it's like a photoshop layer used to give a certain experiential interface so we may "experience" ourselves - we cannot do this in spirit because we are all - being all - as humans we are all being human - the challenge is to remember.
many of us believe it is all BS as you said - becuase that is the role of the ego, to keep you in that state - to name enlightenment is to seek to own the concept - when you are enlightened you are the state, there is no name beyond mind.
Yes, you are already enlightened - you just have many lifetimes of karma and thought forms - yours, your firends, your parents, govt - go beyond it all.

Good post, horus.

I like to think of enlightenment as being the master of one's ego rather than being a slave to it.

I rather liked your post, though I have a few thoughts to add to certain comments .


And yet powerful people demonstrate time and again that real power over others does exist. The illusory nature of it can be irrelevant, for so long as people believe in it – it is real. A man with food would have power over the starving man (if the man with food chose to have it) – but only so long as the starving man didn’t realise that he has the choice to obey the man with food or not...the alternatives he can choose from are : 1. starve to death (which is still a choice -though not much of one); or 2. find another way to convince the man with food to give him some food.

Dogs seem to accept just about any circumstance and are just themselves...so going by many definitions of enlightenment, they are arguably quite enlightened beings – yet even they bow to the power of other dogs in the accepted social structure.

Reality is made in our heads, and yet that doesn’t change the power of your boss. There is a trade that goes on here. And while trade itself can be easily argued as illusory, that illusion is what has allowed for the building of cities. Without that illusion, the ‘reality’ (in this case meaning 'existance') of cities would cease.


I prefer to think of ‘rising above fear’ rather as ‘the dissolving of fear’. ‘Rising above’ infers to me that the fear still exists but you’ve ‘logicked’ your way above it, rather than dissolved the fear connection from your mind, realising that it no longer serves you.

But there is a reason we do use the phrase 'rising up above fear' as our logical mind is located at front top of our brain, while our emotional/instinctual mind is rear bottom of our brain - so litterally the logical reason for bypassing fear occurs 'above' the fear in our mind.