Re: Enlightment
Originally Posted by
CFTraveler
That's why most mystical experiences turn into religions, because followers don't have them, they just hear about them and don't understand.
Yes. This.
Originally Posted by
CFTraveler
I suppose it's part of the experience, the 'not being able to express it' adequately.
Indeed. And an extremely frustrating part of it, too. Words are entirely inadequate, often confusing, and incredibly clumsy.
The fact that all great spiritual masters speak using metaphor, analogy, koan, parable, paradox/riddle, and so on is a very good example of this. There are things which are simply not things that can be explained, translated, transliterated, whatever. If you're good at metaphor, you might be able to make one up that kind of conveys the idea, but unless someone has actually had the experience (or some approximation of it), they won't understand.
I've been having mystical experiences, some of them profound, since I was a young child, and for what it's worth, I've had the experience you're describing. I don't know that I'd call that "enlightenment", but you can if you want to (I don't think the words matter, particularly; as I mentioned, they're inadequate, confusing, and clumsy). I can't write down or otherwise communicate what I knew and understood in that state, and I never could have, but the experience (which I seem to recall having had more than once, actually) did contribute to a permanent shift in my perception of reality. Along with other events, some mundane, some mystical, things got shifted and shifted and moved and removed and so forth until a permanent level of awareness was present all the time, a kind of lucidity, for lack of a better term.
Don't worry that it didn't stay with you. It will have left its mark, and that's enough. Remember, though, that this isn't really about "you", it's about Awareness becoming aware of Itself, through you. These experiences are just experiences, and it's best not to get too hung up on them and what they mean or don't mean, etc. Their purpose is to get "you" out of the way enough that Awareness can eventually have some degree of Self-awareness.
May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.
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