Every spiritual happening is a picture and an imagination; were this not so, there

 could be no consciousness and no phenomenality of the occurrence.

The imagination itself is a psychic occurrence, and therefore whether enlightenment is

called real or imaginary is quite immaterial. The man who has enlightenment, or alleges that he has it, thinks in any case he is enlightened. What others think about it can determine nothing whatever for him with regard to his experience.

Even if he were to lie, his lie would be a spiritual fact. Yes, even if all religious reports were nothing but conscious inventions and falsifications, a very interesting psychological treatise could still be written on the fact of such lies, with the same scientific treatment with which the psychopathology of delusions is presented.

Carl Jung the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytic psychology wrote that in the foreword of D.T.Suzuki book: An Introduction to Zen Buddhism in 1964.

Carl spent most of his physical life exploring a number of topics and was deeply involved in bringing an awareness to the collective consciousness and to synchronicity of thought. He emphasized balance and harmony and urged us not to just rely on science and logic but to integrate our spiritual and unconscious realms into our everyday life.

What Jung is saying is enlightenment is what I think it is. Physical life is not only ego based thought; it is also a mixture of spiritual and imagined realities. Each individual chooses what he believes is real regardless of what others may belief and express. I can live in a dream based reality and calls it enlightenment and has a sense of balance and synchronicity within me. I then live those dreams and create a life that is fulfilling to me.

That does change the way I think and what I have been taught to understand about reality and enlightenment. Jung explains even if I lie to my self, it's a spiritual fact in the sense that the ego creates the lies but my inner consciousness is the foundation for the ego and is part of the process, although another aspect of it is doing the lying. Science and religion could establish a whole system based on the lie and it would then become fact in the physical world of ego. I would then live that belief or lie and be called enlightened in my delusion. That does make things interesting. It appears that my beliefs could be based on lies, and by believing those lies I am enlightened.

 The collective consciousness can develop a whole system of beliefs based on lies and still be enlightened in those beliefs. That would mean that judgment has no place in the understanding of enlightenment. It occurs in the mind of the entity that believes it to be his truth. All these beliefs are connected in the sense that enlightenment is the ultimate goal. It is my responsibility to find the path that holds my truth and experience it. The choice I make is: do I connect and believe in my inner consciousness and express it physically or do I allow my ego to choose the path that feels right based on collective beliefs and misconceptions? Either way I will be enlightened but the question is how do I express my own state of mind.

The journey of enlightenment is an individual experience. I choose what to believe and how to express those beliefs. I can lie to my self and continue on my journey living in the world of science and logic; or I can express my inner consciousness and remember I am its manifestation. That choice is filled with imagination, dreams and prayers. Its foundation is my connection to the source of all enlightenment. It is more than the word;

it is the journey. I have always been enlightened; there is no need to establish a cult to gather around the word. I am the cult, I am the word and my consciousness is the root that expands into a tree of enlightenment where all life is aware, connected and free.

What is recovery if not the return to health after sickness, the return to strength after weakness, a regaining of balance after imbalance, a return to wholeness after impairment, the return of a possession after a loss, the return of love after a time of its absence, the return of joy after sorrow.

That thought was written by Wu Wei in his 1996 book, I Ching Life. Recovery is an experience that represents change. Physical life is a series of recoveries. From one choice to another I focus on recovering something I think is important to my sense of being; whether it is material or spiritual I am in a constant state of recovery. I jump from one rock of recovery to the next, trying to remember which rock is the best and which one is right for me, based on my beliefs about the rocks, not about my self.

Recovery is the return of something that is lost and it seems I find my self lost in a world that is searching for itself and is not sure where to look, or even what it is it wants to find. I fill this lost experience with substitutions to gain and to lose, so I maintain a sense of being and a feeling of accomplishment. I can then associate and judge my self and others by forming an order of importance for the unimportant. I climb the ladder with no legs expecting to find the rooftop of happiness, but find the basement of another empty building with no foundation. Lost, I struggle to recover what I had before I found what I didn't want to find. On and on I move in circles and call it a line and convince my self that life is difficult and a demanding reality.

 Relief comes when some external force saves me from my self. Then I think I will finally recover; although I'm not sure I'll be good enough to fully recover, so I continue to search for that one thing that completes my circle of recoveries.

What if there was no need to recover anything? What if loss and recovery were simultaneous occurrences? What if physical life was just one flutter of an eyelash that flutters continuously? What if I remember why I choose to flutter in the first place?

My consciousness is never lost and never needs to recover. It is action that is constantly expanding in value fulfillment. Everything I experience is part of that fulfillment. When I accept my self as consciousness that is in the act of expressing a desire to fulfill another aspect of it self, I don't need to recover from anything. I am always in a state of discovery not recovery, which means I am experiencing what I choose to experience using my freedom to express and become. Every choice is a conscious one, so whether I judge it by loss or gain it is still my choice. My beliefs create the association and judgment and my ego initiates a recovery when none is needed.

When I consider my self a quality of consciousness that is a whole drop in a stream of consciousness, awareness replaces recovery. My actions are thoughts manifested and each one has a place and serves my intention to expand. I find not one self but a plethora of selves waiting to assist in my expansion. Awareness of my multiplicity eliminates the desire to search and recover, I express and becomes in the art of acceptance and appreciation. Accepting the essence of my connection to the universal consciousness of love, I find my ego self and blend it into a flutter of an eyelash.

http://www.shortsleeves.net/

http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Canada in 1934. He is a singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. He published his first book of poetry in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. Leonard has a point; there is a crack in everything. Whatever I do and whatever I say comes from a crack in consciousness that is like a bell that keeps ringing and I am the sound of that bell that expresses itself in vibrations. The bell keeps ringing and I keep vibrating along with the energy that surrounds me. When the energy that touches the bell changes, my vibrations change and the energy around me changes, and light begins to shine around me.

That all sounds very metaphoric and poetic and it is, because that's what physical life is; it is a metaphor that is expressing the vibrations of my inner bell. There are no words to describe my bell that rings or the energy that rings it, but I can describe how I believe and perceive it to be in its state of ringing. My friend Rainer Maria Rilke describes it this way:

Ich bin, du Angstlicher. Horst du mich nicht

I am, you anxious one.

Don't you sense me, ready to break

Into being at your touch?

My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.

Can't you see me standing before you

cloaked in stillness?

Hasn't my longing ripened in you

From the beginning

As fruit ripens on a branch?

I am the dream you are dreaming

When you want to awaken, I am the wanting:

I grow strong in the beauty you behold.

And with the silence of stars I enfold

Your cities made by time.

Rilke explains the bell using other words that ripen with time. When he wrote them in 1903 I was not physical, perhaps I did sense his longing and I wanted to experience that longing and wanting, in another dream; the dream of being physical where I could separate my self from the bell and become its vibration and vibrate with Rilke in the silence of the stars.

How wonderful it is to murmur as a vibration of the cracked bell and feel the light that glows around me. I am the dream of another dream and when I awake, I grab the ripening fruit of non-perfection and taste it again and I sense the energy of the bell becoming the fruit. This is my time to grow strong in beauty and remember that I am the longing, the stillness of perfection, the bell, the silence of the stars and shadowy wings that create; so the light gets in.

http://www.shortsleeves.net/

http://halmanogue.blogspot.com/