MUSING ON THE MEANING AND APPLICATION OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Bruce Lee said that martial arts is “honestly expressing yourself”. He believed in “Using no way as way and having no limitation as limitation.”
Krishnamurti said that you must “be a light unto yourself”, and also stressed spiritual ‘Self Reliance’.
For a long time I have thought that practicing yoga would sort of free one from doing things, even free one from the drudgery of life in some magical way. Now I am thinking that if anything, yoga frees your mind to react differently to life itself, and in this way you can transcend it and attain liberation.
I am starting to think it is more about adapting to anything that life gives you, with this adaptation requiring a mode of living which has no preset patterns of action, favoring a mode of chaos instead. This chaotic approach is at odds with the way most people behave, which is like pre-programmed robots.
It appears as if Enlightenment seen from a certain perspective is nothing more than the removal of all set programmed behaviors in favor of total openness to a chaotic and neutral way of life, ever changing one’s actions according to the ever changing reality we sense around us.
But how to apply this to life itself? What happens when all pre-programmed behaviors are removed, which can also be seen as all programmed attachments? What then? How does one live? What does one do? Is it really as simple as just doing what inspires you, as the Himalayan Yogavatar Babaji said? And doing what you must according to the changing conditions around you, in addition to doing what inspires you?
It just seems too silly to think that achieving enlightenment results in you doing what the hell you always wanted to do anyway. That smacks of selfishness. What does one know before enlightenment anyway except that you are a collection of reactions and selfishness?
But rather I think that enlightenment is a matter of doing what one is meant to do, all that you can do, all in accordance with your natural abilities as dictated by your natal chart as well as doing whatever little things need to be done along the way, all the while being ever mindful of being selfless, of projecting outward from oneself, giving forth thru the channel that is your soul as expressed by your natal. This, as far as I can tell is doing your True Will as Crowley taught.
