TAT Forum

A reader wrote that what would make the Forum more interesting would be:

Hearing from people who are searching—and have questions instead of those providing endless advice and "answers." What challenges they are facing. What their doubts and questions are. How they perceive their path is going. What they are doing in their lives. Where they think they will end up. Etc., etc.

Can you help make the Forum more interesting?

The Reader Commentary question for the January TAT Forum:

What does the term “enlightenment” mean to you?

Responses follow.

From Dan G:
General enlightenment: when I think there is a problem. Then new information shows me I was wrong, and there isn’t a problem.

Upper-case-E Enlightenment: when I think I and the world need saving. Thus, I then realize I was wrong, that I and the world don’t need saving at all.

From Paul Rezendes:
It seems to me we need to understand what Awakening is, then we can possibly understand what Enlightenment is. I am not referring to what the thinker thinks it understands. As I try to articulate this, and as you are reading it, your mind might want to try and understand what it is that I am saying or pointing to. Might I suggest your mind is not going to understand this. It seems to me that the mind is just getting in the way.

First of all, most of us have this notion, this idea, an image of ourselves as a thinker thinking the thoughts. We also believe that this self we think ourselves to be has Awareness, and possesses intelligence. At some point, whether it is gradual or all of a sudden, there may be a realization as Awareness/Intelligence reveals that none of this is true. There is no self, no thinker, that has Awareness. That whole structure is put in its place and seen for what it is. Awakening is the experience of a blind nonexistent self that never existed. There is no experience of the Awareness. Although the experience is "I am blind, I have no awareness," Awareness cannot be denied. Awareness in itself is not an experience. Experience is appearing in Awareness. Awareness is being the experience. Awareness has made itself known by putting thought in its place. The experience of "I have Awareness" is being revealed by Awareness, is appearing in Awareness. No one has Awareness. Now we might say that there is Awakeness. A door has opened and there is Openness. Now that the door is open, new revelations and clarity can come in, although at this point it doesn't seem to me that one is Enlightened. The whole structure of self is still in the tissue of the brain. That whole structure is still in the body and may respond in different ways. But when it responds, it comes into the Light of Openness or Awareness and is seen for its limitations and conditioned responses. As this muscle in the brain reacts and is not engaged, it can atrophy. As one resides in this Openness and Clarity, one is at peace with whatever comes into view. Some teachers have explained it this way: the mind, ego, self-concern, is like a big fan turning thousands of RPMs a minute. Awakening is when the plug is pulled out of the wall. The fan starts to slow down, and when the fan stops, there is Enlightenment.

We are enlightened of the false idea that we are a thinker separate from the thoughts, a thinker who has Awareness. As the fan slows down, all that is coming into view in Awareness and understood by Awareness and not by the thinker. What we see in action here is non-action, Wei Wu Wei. There is no doer here. Seeing the truth is its own action with no one doing the Seeing. No one has accomplished anything, which results in true humility. And one way to say this is that no one actually stopped the fan. It just ran out of energy, because no one was giving it energy.

*

See Paul's website, Paul Rezendes Photography.

From Richard G:
Enlightenment is a post hoc experience with understandings, thoughts, changes in perspective, etc. occurring after “the fact”. One knows intuitively that they have experienced the Enlightenment, that it wasn't a dream, play of imagination, or dissociative episode. Enlightenment is not and cannot be relegated to an experience, replete with an experiencer. There is no “I” or “me” in Enlightenment. There is no experience or experiencer. An experiencer or aware-er of awareness implies an I (sense of I-ness).

In enlightenment, one discovers or recognizes that the mind, self-image, or self-esteem does not exist. We think the mind exists and pretend that Reasoning is the golden calf to be reified and deified. One cannot reason their way to Enlightenment. How can one reason their "way" to a goal they cannot conceptualize. One can only do away with, challenge, dispute, or deconstruct the things that seem to get in the way. That is the entymological derivative of Enightenment, "aufklarung" (should be an umlaut a), i.e., clear up or clear out.

I found these quotes that seem to encapsulate not only Enlightenment but the process as well:

Ephesians 5: 11-14 (The Harper Collins Study Bible, pg. 1988) “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.

Beyond Relativity: Transcending the Split Between Knower & Known, (pg. 161) Art Ticknor. “What you really are knows itself. The problem is only at the mind level. So, enlightenment is really the mind’s becoming consciously aware of what you are.”

From Len S:
i do not like to think/use the "enlightenment" concept/word...
- * i feel quite ok with the "retreating from untruth" concept/phrase.
- * if i was "enlightened" i don't think i would be answering this in this way.

my thoughts about "enlightenment":
Becoming Absolute by Subtraction:
If we subtract All & Everything ... we will be:
-> Prior to Duality = 1 without a 2nd - exists, no wave, Universal Consciousness (Ocean), Conscious Awareness, god's left foot is in existence, Samahdi.
-> Prior to "The 1" = Nothing - exists, prior to Consciousness (The Ocean), Awareness without consciousness, prior to prior, god's right foot is outside of existence, Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
-> Prior to Nothing = "Absolute" - does not exist, "prior" to existence, "prior" to God, Sahaja Nirvikalpa Samadhi - "enlightenment."

From Tim H:
Enlightenment is being or seeing from what we are seeing from. The one conscious awareness we all have. Where nothing is added and what resides as us unchanged, unmodified.

From Shawn Nevins:
Union with the Absolute—which is not holding hands and skipping through eternity together, but a "union" best expressed by Ramana Maharshi as "like a river discharged into the ocean and its identity lost."

*

Editor's comment: TAT Foundation Press publishes Shawn's Passages: An Introduction and Commentary on Richard Rose’s Albigen System co-authored by Mike Gegenheimer, Hydroglyphics: Reflections on the Sacred with photos by Phaedra Greenwood, Subtraction: The Simple Math of Enlightenment, Images of Essence with photos by Bob Fergeson, and The Celibate Seeker. Shawn also authors the SpiritualTeachers.org website featuring recommendations of teachers, movies and books along with "The Journals of Spiritual Discovery" podcasts.

From Isaac H:
Simply, as somebody who is not "enlightened," the word symbolizes for me the Realization of that part of myself which is Eternal, if there is such a part of myself which is Eternal, and thus beyond Time, Death, and Impermanence.

From Bob H:
I'm not crazy about the word "enlightenment" because it carries a lot of baggage, but here are my thoughts about what the word points to:

There are at least four fundamental realizations that seem minimally necessary for someone to be considered Self-realized or enlightened: (1) seeing through the illusion of separate things and realizing that all apparent boundaries are imaginary (Zen calls this realization "passing through the gateless gate"); (2) seeing through the illusion of selfhood and realizing that there is no separate volitional entity (no "me") at the center of whatever is happening; (3) realizing that everything and everyone is one-with the Infinite, and that the Infinite, alone, is all there is; and (4) realizing the limits of the intellect and attaining non-abidance in mind.

The result of seeing through the illusion of twoness and becoming free from the dominance of mind, is freedom, equanimity, acceptance, humility, gratitude, clarity, and unshakability.

*

Editor's comment: Bob's book Pouring Concrete: A Zen Path to the Kingdom of God is available on Amazon.

From Anima Pundeer:
Enlightenment: When the boundary between personal consciousness and Universal-consciousness dissolves. The individual self gets absorbed into its Source.

*

TAT Press publishes Always Right Behind You: Parables & Poems of Love & Completion co-authored by Anima and Art Ticknor.

From Tyler Matthew:
The actual seeing there has only ever been enlightenment. Everything else is/was just attachment to concepts/thoughts.

From Art Ticknor:
Our normal state of existence is experiencing a body-mind creation and identifying with the body-mind as self. We call the experience living. The situation is elegantly represented by the Egyptian Aten symbol, where each of us is a hand at the end of a ray from the sun.

Life-experience erodes our beliefs about what we are. If we’re fortunate, those beliefs become loosened to the point where the keystone in the arch of faulty identity-beliefs drops out ... and we find ourselves back Home, discovering our true identity ... what we are before birth, after death, eternally.

If our focus then rides the ray of creation back down into body-mind experience, we discover that our true identity can’t be understood by the limited body-mind computer, and we bow to the absolute truth of Self-Realization. Since we then know that what we are is not affected in any way by what we experience, existential angst/suffering is gone.

----------------------------------------------------------------

normal: as in it’s normal for a dog to have fleas :-)
existence: from Latin ex + sistere, to stand outside of
Aten:

From Sergio F:
To me it points to the idea that most people don't see clearly what they are and what the universe is, but that there's the possibility of clearing the obstacles that prevent us from seeing it clearly and recognizing the Truth about ourselves and existence.

I believe it's not about acquiring something new but about letting go/surrendering/discarding false concepts we hold.

From Tara S:
My current definition of enlightenment is to arrive at a point of certainty regarding the nature of being. This may result in the ability to know, within myself, where I came from, what I am and what happens when I die. Perhaps a more concise way to say it would be “to know unconditionally.”

From Patrick K:
I intuit enlightenment is becoming one with the source of all existence, through identifying/knowing/seeing that source by some cosmic accident of grace. Franklin Merrell-Wolff called his practice “introception”, meaning “knowledge through identity”. So that is the practice I would intuit is the most amenable to this search for Self. It is the same as Richard Rose's practice of Self-definition. Rose also points out to back into Definition by dropping all the less likely beliefs about who/what I am. “Cosmic Consciousness”, which gets billed as enlightenment, may only be what Rose refers to as a “state of betweeness”. But it may be this “state of betweeness” that is the most amenable mood/state to be in, when meditating on the “who am I?” question, the state that makes a seeker most accident prone for grace to visit.

From Anonymous:
We seek to know the truth of our deeper self, the place of true wisdom and love. We set upon a journey of seeking truth. We look to religion, science, art, great writers with great words, spiritual teachers, rituals and practises like meditation, prayer, mindfulness, yoga and so on, in our efforts to reside in or attain a higher or deeper state. Enlightenment and awakened states to be attained like a new car or a holiday home. In the name of making us feel better about ourselves, ‘us’ being our ordinary self.

All of this is seeking to have what we already have, A line we have heard so often from so many spiritual teachers and correctly so, as I heard Paul Hedderman say, teaching students about enlightenment is like charging fish to attend a workshop on wetness. Wetness being an experience fish have never not known but have been so immersed in wetness they are unaware of its presence, how it feels, the qualities of water, its fluid adaptive nature, strength, beauty, vastness and wholesomeness, all forgotten.

This is the same conundrum we human beings are faced with. We have buried our awareness of our deeper self, our direct experience of living reality. There is an invisible psychic film that separates us from our deeper self, it is our ordinary self. It is also known by many other terms such as ego, persona, personality and more. This ordinary self is the container for all our Me-ness. This is our personally charged reactivity to reality which keeps us from direct experience of living as it is while on this deeper self level, we are always living it as it is, just like the fish and wetness we may be ignorant of the qualities of experience of our deeper self but that experience is always here. The reality of living life will continue with or without our reactive me-ness, what the reactivity does to our experience of life is it adds a layer of psychological interference which we know as suffering in its many manifestations.

The term enlightenment means very little to me and it is just another powerful distraction. The concept of enlightenment is held in the ordinary self, just like any other obstacle to our deeper state of presence. The experience of presence holds infinitely more value than the term enlightenment.

From Vince L:
In my current state of understanding, the term "enlightenment" means a recognition, beyond all doubt and fear, of my ultimate fate as the creature "me." This recognition is my spiritual goal. What is there when the creature "me" is gone? Of course, I know the creature "me" will not get out of here alive. But yet, in my current state of understanding, the creature "me" is all I have. Or so I think. But I've got a hunch I'm fooling myself, and that what I'm seeking is right in front of "me." Or better yet, it's already there and is the "eternal life" that Christ mentioned in the gospels. It has always lived in me, but I don't "recognize" it. So, I ask myself "what are the obstacles to recognizing my ultimate fate?" Am I still attached to the creature "me" with all my doubts and fears, even though these are transient? I suppose I'm articulating what I see as my current dilemma.

From Ben R:
Coming to see the Reality of the totality of existence, including what that means about our identity, our relation to life/being, to apparent others, and to death.

From Rob-In Leeds:
My seeking continues to prompt occasional questions from my wife, such as: "What is it you are hoping to find? If there is no you, who's bothered? And do you have to be so serious about it all? Just enlighten up!"

Enlightenment is a word with baggage, in my experience like God and Love.

On some days enlightenment is a goal worth seeking. On other days enlightenment is seen as marketing jargon for the spiritual snake oil gurus to squeeze another cent or penny from the addicted seeker to continue to pursue seeking....

It seems now as we approach 2023 that the end of ego-mind may equate to enlightenment, but enlightenment is not a thing to be obtained, attained or understood....

So, what does "enlightenment" mean to me?
A possible end to the hamster wheel of seeking, the relief of knowing and being confounded by The Truth, by Reality....

From Chris L:
It’s occurred to me recently (as a sort of factual lost cause) that no matter what situation or circumstance I may find myself in, however seemingly prosperous or unfortunate (because life has taught that I never really know how to discern which is which ultimately), satisfaction is somehow always a new problem’s length out of reach. Some new apparent need to gain or remove something to make things better or right always presents itself as an obstacle.

So how do I treat this stark observation? The problem is there’s always a problem ... with the added problem that I don’t know what ultimately constitutes a benefit or detriment as life plays out.

It's usually here that I remember the most basic of 12-step suggestions, which is to pray for guidance ... most notably personal for me is the 11th step that reads as follows:

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” ... or in other words, “HELP ... for I am ignorant and helpless.”

The current iteration of this for me is a compact version stolen from Bart, “God guide my step, show me the Truth.”

So what is Enlightenment? I’m getting to that....

Chris's complete response.

From Mark W:
To me enlightenment is synonymous with self-realization, defining my True Self, becoming my Absolute Self and many more examples. I take it to mean even if I'm already doing the best I can, perhaps I can still in effect, turn my head toward doing something different and more productive to indirectly increase my chances of developing intuition, and becoming vulnerable to receive grace and go Home to what I really want ... Enlightenment.

From Bill K:
The movie 2001 A Space Odyssey was way over my head at the time, and probably still is. I had left Catholicism and was deep into science, probably the only one in my school to have avidly read Isaac Asimov. Why would scientists send a bunch of guys to land on Jupiter if it was just a big ball of gas? Anyway, I really liked the spaceships. But the ending was enchanting to me, in that they got what they didn't expect, nor could they ever expect. Just that there was something really, really big out there and, like the monkeys in an earlier age, there was a homing signal to go to it: "we have to go there." I thing if you are reading this, then you too may have been caught by a whiff of something really really big "out there."

From JK:
I can only write about awakening from the place of a seeker presenting an intellectual understanding of what I think it means and from moments of intuitive knowing which have aided shifts in perception, causing a loosening and dismantling of the idea of what I perceive that I am.

In the pursuit of who I am or what can it mean to just be and abide in one’s true nature, the questioning of my conditioning and how I operate as a person through the five senses in the world had to be looked at closely....

JK's complete response.

Q: What are your thoughts on this month's reader commentary? Please your feedback.

Richard Rose described a spiritual path as living one's life aimed at finding the meaning of that life. Did you find anything relevant to your life or search in this month's TAT Forum?

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Founder's Wisdom

Richard Rose (1917-2005) established the TAT Foundation
in 1973 to encourage people to work together on what
he considered to be the "grand project" of spiritual work.

Jacob's Ladder © 2001 Richard Rose. See this transcript of a talk on the topic by Rose.

Homing Ground Update … A spot on earth where people can do retreats and hold meetings; where the emphasis is on friendship and the search. January 2023: We ended 2022 meeting a respectable 67.9% ($26,489) of our $39,000 fundraising goal. Significantly, the debt incurred from the purchase of the TAT Center three years ago has now been entirely retired! Congratulations to all of you who helped make that happen. Future donations can now go 100% to maintaining and improving the property for meetings and retreats.  Next month, we'll complete a list of 2023 needs and goals for the Center. Thanks to all of you for making TAT the extraordinary organization it is. Sincerely, Shawn Nevins PS: Monthly contributions are a great way to support the TAT Center if making a larger one-time donation seems too much. If you're so inspired, click the Donate button below, then check the box for "Make this a monthly donation" as in the example below: Let's bring this to life! "The job is upon us," Richard Rose said, "and it is worthwhile." To contribute to the TAT Center, mail a check made out to the TAT Foundation to: TAT Foundation PO Box 3402 Roxboro, NC 27573 Big checks, little checks, all are welcome. Or use the PayPal link above (though we lose 2.2% of your donation to PayPal fees). * See photos and more on the Homing Ground page. * In friendship, Shawn Nevins on behalf of the TAT Trustees

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