‘Know Thyself’ : words over the Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi

I suppose the best place to start is to suggest that becoming aware that one is a spiritual being, is not the same as becoming enlightened. The latter is something few people ever achieve in a lifetime. The former is the first step of a long walk.

The question we might ask is ‘who is enlightened?’ There are many historical figures such as Guatama Buddha and Jesus the Christ who would qualify as ‘enlightened’, but surely enlightenment is not so rare that we have to look back two thousand years or more?

In modern times, spiritually aware people do not stand out. They are generally modest and seek actively not be achieve ‘celebrity’ status. They will not perform miracles, but if they did they would allow or manipulate things such that another takes the credit. An enlightened person does not dress up in old fashioned clothes or clothes from another culture. They are not in the game of impressing others.

There is an useful expression today known as ‘virtue signalling’. It explains that the signal is not proof of the integrity of the thing that is signalled. The performance of ‘good deeds’ is something many regard as having a spiritual benefit, but as certain stories in the Holy Quran demonstrate, harmful actions can appear to be good and good deeds can appear to be harmful. Explore this excerpt from Wikipedia;

Surah Al Kahf

• 60-65 Moses and Joshua visit Khidr
• 66 Moses desires to be taught by Khidr
• 66-69 Khidr, knowing Moses’s inability to receive his wisdom, yields to his importunity
• 71-77 He scuttles a boat, kills a boy, and rebuilds a collapsing wall
• 78-82 Khidr refuses to communicate further with Moses on account of his protests against his conduct, but condescends to explain his conduct.

You may look up these stories that (and it is worth repeating), when examined in detail, in context, over a period of time and without bias…apparently harmful deeds can be good and good deeds can have unintended harmful consequences. It’s a possibility that needs to be explored vigorously because ignoring invites ignorance. Today, ignoring complexity is a primary tool of those who wish to deceive. The present president of the United States, who enjoys global power, promised Americans he would stop the war between Russia and Ukraine within twenty-four hours. He failed but was elected on this false promise. Since then, he has brokered several ‘peace deals’ around the world, several which, when examined in detail, are no more than temporary ‘cease fires’. He was surprised when he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize, which one might allege is because he is not aware of himself. We have to leave him to shine that inward looking light.

Ultimately, the only person whom you have a duty to judge is yourself. Hence, the gnostic practice echoed by Jesus the Christ in his words;

“Know what is before thy face and what is hidden from thee shall be revealed unto thee; for there is nothing hidden which shall not be made manifest.”

The Gospel of Thomas Verse 5

But can a mirror reflect it’s own image? Can an eye examine an eye? Have you ever seen the back of your head?

Becoming self-aware requires considerable skill and perseverance in observation. The ‘inner eye’ has to be turned upon one’s own thoughts. This is the first step in meditation where thoughts are likened to passing clouds. Eventually it is hoped the sky clears. It rarely does because there is work to be done, not just sitting.

We have a skill where we can control and create our thoughts. When we are not doing that, control and creation of thoughts does not cease, it becomes automatic. It is like breathing, which is either intended or automatic.

Awareness is similar. Thoughts that ‘come to us’ without our deliberate intent to create them originate in the unconscious part of the individual mind or the collective unconscious. These are largely unresolved and repressed, events and emotional disturbances in our or society’s past.

Pieces of music can replay themselves in our heads for which an apt metaphor is a ‘mind worm’. Unresolved encounters with others or other sections of society in the collective mind can become loops that replay themselves. Politicians use these triggers ruthlessly to distract and ultimately control others. In the UK, the cry is ‘stop the boats’ without really understanding the causes and solutions, just reacting emotionally to whatever people imagine ‘immigration’ is and does. The dumb are leading the blind.

Becoming ‘self-aware’ is, therefore, in my view, far more complicated than sitting in meditation. Become awake in a physical world surrounded by other cognisant beings with whom we have relationships, is a vital focus for our mind’s eye. It has to be done with the concentration of a meditator, or as is said, like a cat watching a mouse hole.

We have one brief but exciting lifetime to encounter all kinds of situations and deal with them skillfully, instantly and with joy, just as a tennis player learns how to deal with the ball when it comes from any probable or possible direction; plus any other ‘wild card’ life may deal!

I was once asked if I meditated and I replied that I meditate all the time. Whilst I may not achieve this of course, it’s an intention I try to fulfil. I was taught to become an observer of myself by being one step removed. An example of this was given as being able to hold honey in one hand and dog faeces in the other, and lick the honey.

All phobias are clear examples of how our unconscious holds us back from participating in life fully. But we can overcome the dark spaces in our minds and emotions by shining a penetrating light of consciousness into those spaces. This is the process of making the unconscious, conscious…like a baby, breaking the waters and breathing it’s first breath.

“I tell you the truth, unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

John 3:5

The metaphor used by Jesus the Christ was being ‘reborn’ which he meant as complete self realisation and, at another rarely realised level, as re-incarnation.

Enlightenment can only be achieved by opening one’s eyes and taking deep breaths and observing the world as if for the first time.

In Zen Buddhism this practice is known as ‘astonishment’. It is a principle trigger to ‘realisation’ in the same way that a joke operates mentally as ‘getting it’.

“The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, but raise not dust”

This essay is intended to be complimentary to the previous one entitled ‘physical enlightenment’. To be a fully realised human being, I believe there must be a playful balance in oneself between the physical world and the spiritual. People, we, usually list towards one or the other.

Becoming an observer of the physical world and one’s inner world and the interplay between them, as if you were in no way involved in either, is in my view, the most important technique for self realisation.

An enlightened person never sleeps. There are many statues of Guatama Buddha where he is sitting upright with one hand resting on a knee and apparently sleeping. But there is only partial rest required for the mind; most is for the body. Being fully conscious in daytime will empower being similarly awake whilst sleeping. We all experience this to some degree as dreams when we sleep, because our unconscious is unrealised and, in effect, has a mind of its own. We generally find dreams confusing. A good dream interpreter can assist in the process of ‘observing’ and understanding what the unconscious is processing because it speaks using symbols, as described in the works of the psychologist C.G. Jung.

An advanced stage of dreaming is becoming conscious whilst asleep, known as lucid dreaming. Some hallucinogenic drugs achieve this same effect although if the conscious mind is not trained in detached observation, the effect can be a ‘bad trip’; a roller coaster ride through the ghost train of the unconscious.

There is also another level of dreaming, in which one’s spirit leaves the body at night and travels through physical reality. This once happened to me whilst sleeping in my car and I moved out through some woods to a statue in the middle of the woods. In the morning, I took a walk into the woods and found the same statue.

People who have had ‘near death experiences’ report similarly leaving the body and observing the room in which there body is, such as a hospital operating theatre.

None of these experiences are ‘enlightenment’. Rather I have tried to describe a few of the curious and infinite depths of the mind. As an analogy, not many of us of us explore the internet in a way that is possible. Instead, we revert to our favourite places again and again. The internet and our mental world become like a cage made from iron bars constructed and installed by ourselves.

Leaving the cage, whether it is the physical cage we leave to go ‘on holiday’ or whether it is a mental cage, is enlightenment. I call holidays, ‘environmental enlightenment’. They are a short lived state of mind and heart, but there is a sense of ‘new world’ in a vacation which excites us before, like Cinderella at the ball, a pumpkin pulled by rats returns us to captivity.

We live in ‘rat runs’ imagining ourselves having god-like freewill, but in fact, we are just repeating repeat. The same applies to every place and connection in the universe of our mind; a state the most imprisoned declare as ‘boring’.

The only constant is observing perpetual change. By being fully aware, we are able to deal with all encounters in any situation, physical and mental. The constantly changing point of Universal consciousness which we contain and describe as ‘the-all-knowing-Creator’ or a thousand other names survives and surpasses this temporary sorjourn in the physical world.

The Enlightened One’s will pass you in the street and you will never notice them, not unless you are also, one of Them.

“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!

Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment.”                                

     Rumi