The video of your lord and master, FOAMY is at the bottom explaining this in a way even the greatest and most stubborn cynics, egotists, and self-proclaimed intellectuals can understand. If you do not wish to read my long but somewhat expansive explanation of my ideas on enlightenment as many of us call it, please feel free to skip to the video at the bottom.
So many people here claim to be enlightened and then you hear them say all this bullshit about how they're beyond religion, or how they had an experience that awoke them. Balderdash. While there's nothing wrong with being 'beyond religion' or too smart to believe in god (i think the same thing), Bragging about it as if you've achieved some life goal all but completely disproves you've been enlightened because in almost every case you start trying to force someone to understand your point of view. If truly enlightened, would you not understand, due to it being a journey within the self, that you can not convince someone into being enlightened. You can convince them of their enlightenment, but that only means that they think they are, not that they truly are. I don't claim to be.
I have much to learn, but those who claim they have awakened or are enlightened and then try to force others to becoming enlightened are, obviously, not enlightened. It is a journey into the self to see what makes you you. If believing in and using religion to bring happiness or consolation into others lives, even briefly, is what gives you purpose, they could be just as fully awakened as the guy who claims he doesn't believe in god because his inner self is all that he needs. Disagree? Well, feel free. To discount what the self of another individual may be is only to prove a lack of 'enlightenment'. If you say that we are all one but of different bodies, that means we are still different. While we may all be part of something, part of a whole, we are still only pieces to that whole. A body is made up of many parts, the hand is very different from the foot, but that does not mean that the foot is a hand in disguise. With that logic, now you subject yourself to the questioning of whether the religious are the enlightened and the atheist are on the opposite end of that spectrum.
The only one who can say for certain you are enlightened is yourself and one who is truly enlightened. Even then some of you will claim if he is depressed or shows signs of mental ineptitude, he cannot be enlightened. It is as if being enlightened makes you all knowing instead of wise. You wouldn't tell a person who couldn't read that he couldn't become enlightened, reading is not required. Being incapable of putting together an organized thought is not a sign of not being enlightened, but a sign of a lack of motor skills or reasoning skills as well as problem solving skills. This is something not necessary for knowing yourself. To be enlightened, you do not need to express yourself to others, but to simply be able to understand yourself. To be intelligent, that is a different story, but I am not speaking of that.
Depression doesn't mean that you are not enlightened. It is a chemical imbalance. It is possible to fight against it, but if it is a genetic disorder, it will be nearly impossible to completely rid yourself of it. It is not a sign of not being enlightened, but rather, one who can live with it and still find happiness is, in my opinion, far more enlightened than those without it who find just as much happiness. Instead of trying to get rid of it, he has accepted it as part of himself and works to live with it instead of bear it like a weight. Instead of carrying it on his shoulders, he's learned to use his own mind to make it round and roll it. It is still a burden he must carry, but we all have a burden one way or another, some of us learn to live with it, some of us cave in. It is not the annihilation of these qualities that makes one enlightened in any way, but rather the ability to accept and find happiness with it, regardless of the hardships. It is no different for one with a mental disorder to be enlightened than it is for one with a physical disorder like something as serious as AIDS or as easily treatable as Diabetes (in most cases). In fact, one may even find their enlightenment within their flaws, possibly, this may be the only way to truly become enlightened. To find what those flaws have made you instead of what they have made you not. I hope that makes sense.
As said before, it has come to my attention that many are against religion as it is "crap". But when you talk about the self, you claim it to be something that is nearly as solid as proven fact. Your arguments is that god is intangible, improvable, yet you still believe in yourself, not the physical self, but the spiritual or metaphysical self. It is also not tangible. You can not actually hear, taste, feel, smell, or see that self. You can do so with your physical body, the culmination of what your spiritual self has created with the influence of others of course. So why do you so readily dismiss religion when you yourself, without even knowing it, have suckered yourself into believing the very thing you so despise? You assume religion is bad because of the mistakes of man instead of focusing on the points that make it good. This is a chronic disease rampaging through society today. We only see the bad in something and even when we claim something is good, we spend either so little time proving it, it becomes doubt-able, or so much time proving it, that it's portrayed perfection leads to suspicion.
We all understand that flaws exist, so why is it that we refuse to acknowledge those flaws as simply that. Flaws. A single flaw does not mean there is no good within the object in question. A scratch on a disk decreases its value, but it can still function as a game. Too many scratches and it no longer functions, but what it once was remains as it once was, and its functionality can not be denied at least in that it once had a purpose. While in its current state it may be useless, to simply throw it out and destroy it would be a waste. It can be recycled into something new. Even if thrown away, nature itself will make it into something useful. In this way you can not simply dismiss something like religion as being useless. It may be flawed beyond repair, but there are still parts of it, the very core teachings, like the material the disk is made out of, that can prove to be useful. We look at the bible and focus on the 'scratches' (the incessant need for a divine being or creator) while we ignore all the teachings the author, whomever it may have truly been, left behind.
With this we come to the ten commandments. Oh how i hate this argument "oh but that's just common sense". Is it really? Can you explain the rash outbreak of murders, rape, fraud, deceit, hatred, divorce, discrimination, irresponsibility, lack of morals, etc. If it were just common sense, would we really have these? You focus on the ten commandments, not only that, you focus on the bible, or perhaps the quran. You focus on the actions of the extremists while ignoring the actions of the calm observers and quiet believers. You forget that the bible is greatly figurative and instead look at it face value and see it as absurd. It's like looking at the game disk, seeing all the scratches, and even though it's a megaman game, now the scratches have made it pokemon black, a childrens game (note: gen 1-3 are not childrens games as they were geared for a teen and young adult player base as well as a child player base). Anyway... You see the absurdity in your own logic?
An example of a verse that sounds "godly" and somewhat delusional, but can be made into something logical is John 3:16. This is really the epitome of these kinds of verses. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whomever believes in him will not perish, but gain eternal life." We look at this and see first 'god'. Immediately we allow this to discredit the verse. what if we replaced god with the self? One who is enlightened loves the world not because of its perfection, but because he understands and tolerates its flaws, is this not what love is usually defined as anyway? So, now, it still doesn't make perfect sense, so lets move on to "whomever believes in him". Often god, who is 3 in 1 so believing in the son is believing in the whole as well as a single part, states that his name is I Am. If we replace him with I Am, you can see how this can start to make sense, can you not? All of this withing the parameters of the bibles own words. The last bit is the part that people get stumped on. "shall not perish, but gain eternal life", what does this mean? Does it point to the existence of heaven? No, it simply refers to one who has lived a life fulfilled and is content with dying, knowing he has done all he wanted, a complete life is equivalent to an eternal life. One who no longer requires life has gained eternal life. This does not mean they do not desire life by any means, but simply that they have accomplished all they wished to and their life's end was not the end of their life, but the fulfillment was. Simply put, even with eternal life, one may never feel as though his life has been fulfilled. One who has completed all his goals in life has had more life than that of an immortal, and thus, has gained, through himself, eternal life. Not that he lived forever, but simply that he lived a life most could never live.
If you look at the bible this way, it may take a while to fully be able to comprehend it, but it starts to make much more sense. When you look at other religious texts such as the quran you must also read it in a similar fashion to get the true meaning out of it. But you must also account for the 'scratches'. The quran, while written with similar meaning as the bible, was corrupt with a need to force laws onto a group of people in order to control them. You must understand this as being a human flaw, not something that discredits the rest of the book. Most all religious texts (not all but most) have this basic design behind them. An obvious exception is scientology.
If you claim one is not aware, you most likely are not aware yourself. I have yet to see someone here, including myself, that can truly claim to be enlightened, but as i said before, the only one who can tell is one who is enlightened and the person themselves. Even then, if it is not yourself, even a fully enlightened person may not be able to tell for sure. So please do not discredit someones ideas simply by calling it crap, bullshit, ludicrous, absurd, retarded, or delusional. These things are simply your opinion and observation. Think instead of simply acting upon others thoughts. Do not use quotes from another to validate your own opinion on a topic that is not factual yet improvable. Thought is what is used to discern the reality of your observations from the lies your mind morphs them into. Circular reasoning i know, but it will expand your view far more than simply assigning one idea to yourself as fact without caring to learn more about an opposing sides ideas.
Now that my rant/explanation is over. The video link.
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There's a reason the word is trip, it's a journey, you should explore while your there instead of sitting in the backseat waiting to get to the end.
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