The concept of an ultimate truth that explains all the happenings in our world and more importantly in our lives is a very intriguing possibility. Its existence is a mythology to most, but some few get so caught up in this intrigue that they spend their whole lives in search of this wonderful possibility.
In eastern culture, there is a very specific concept for which there was no direct parallel in western culture. This concept is the belief that there exists a state of human consciousness that transcends suffering and longing and enables the liberation from the cycle of rebirth and death of the individual who attains this level of consciousness.
Eastern cultures have words like nirvana, moksha, or satori that accurately expressed this concept. In the English, language this concept was initially translated to the word enlightenment. Today, nirvana has been assimilated into the English lexicon, but the earlier association of this concept to the English word enlightenment has stuck.
This association by translation has over time actually endowed the word enlightenment with all these higher meanings from these eastern words to the point that it is frequently used to denote these spiritual concepts without further qualification. In the context of this discussion, enlightenment is considered very specifically to be the development of a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of one’s Self (i.e. who/what you are) and the reality surrounding that Self (i.e. what it is and how you relate to it) to the point that one attains this liberation.
As human beings, we are self-awareness and have the ability to think, reason, and feel great passion about things. By virtue of these two things, we are able to experience great pleasure and happiness, or conversely, they can also cause us to feel great pain and sorrow. In our lives, we attempt to string together a series of events that optimizes the pleasure and happiness experiences over those that bring pain and sorrow, but this simple life mission proves to be extremely difficult for most of us.
Most would agree that the gift of life is a great blessing. It is also a compelling mystery whose true meaning appears to be very difficult to understand, but the meaning of life is not really hidden from us. We make it difficult to understand by virtue of the many veils of illusion that we create for ourselves in the form of the many things that we choose to believe about our individual reality.
We have no choice in this matter of belief. Everyone has to believe some things, but this simple process of believing is a lot harder than it seems. A belief that is assumed correctly with all due diligence and care will eventually evolve into something that is known dispelling the illusion of mystery, but much more commonly an incorrect belief is casually adopted that only creates illusion and the appearance of greater mystery.
It takes great patience and much thought to decipher the real truth about life from the information that is available to us, but it is worth the effort for it is this Truth that will truly set you free. This collection of thoughts across these blog posts offers some critical observations relevant to some key questions in the life experience. These thoughts are being humbly offered to all fellow seekers of this ultimate Truth for their consideration and independent verification as we are all here just looking for something credible to believe.
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