<Snip> I think the term enlightenment is misunderstood. People think of it as something one acquires by doing certain things. But because it is about what we intrinsically are, this cannot be revealed by doing anything, because that value is already there. It is a tautology. We are what we are. Techniques are for the removal of psychological garbage.
Me: I am not sure the word refers to anything more than a cluster of beliefs about someone's perspective on life. Although I have experienced fundamental shifts of my internal experience, I am not convinced that they represent anything close to how it gets hyped. It may not be realization of any reality other than something our brains can do if you think about things in a certain way or cultivate the altered states of consciousness from excessive meditation practice. I am not convinced that we all have psychological garbage that we need to remove. What some might view as garbage, I might view as a critical aspect of what makes me an individual. If an empty glass represents what we are, then all the stuff that prevents us seeing the empty glass is like water in the glass. Nobody really wants an empty glass, so they look elsewhere. A glass of clear water captures the attention more than an empty glass. The technique of enlightenment is like this: The glass with the water just sits still. The water slowly evaporates. When all the water has evaporated, voilà, the empty glass appears. Throughout all this, the glass did not change, nothing was gained as far as what we are, but the process we subjected ourselves to, shifted the perceptions. For those with mental impairments, this is a simple-minded analogy, not a truth; it might work for some, not others. Pursued to extreme, analogies break down. Me: Proof by analogy aside, I am not sure anyone has made a case for the need for such a concept concerning people who claim to be in such a state where they experience "whatever". Enlightenment is one of those words like "God" where the belief system it is embedded in needs to be evaluated together with the term. It is highly context dependent. I am interested in the belief systems that surround such terms to the extent that it helps me understand how people participate in shaping their conceptions of reality. So far, for me, I think it refers to a lot of mental states and perspectives that require a boatload of assumptions to be presupposed to exist. Even to evaluate one's mental state through such parameters is a filter choice on perception. I am not against someone believing this about themselves per se (must be Judy's influence) but I do object to any claim that these states somehow reveal the reality of life. To my profound disappointment Sam Harris seems to have absorbed this assumption also. But then I am the first to say that whatever enlightenment is, I am pretty sure I am not in it. So there is that. There may be a bit of Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" in play and I would never know it!
