--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "jim_flanegin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Agreed. The point I enjoy making over and over here on FFL is > Enlightenment is available to all of us, not just the members > of some spiritual orthodoxy that we invent for ourselves. We > are neither higher nor lower than any of the Enlightened beings > out there.
Exactly. In my opinion, those who place some supposedly enlightened person on a pedestal are doing themselves (not to mention themSelves) a disservice. The higher the pedestal we place the supposedly enlightened on, the further the imagined "distance" between them and us is, and the further away enlightenment seems. As a friend pointed out recently, this tendency to glorify the enlightened and make them somehow "special" is in reality a self-defense mechanism. The more "special" the supposedly enlightened are, the more different they are from us, and so the less bad we have to feel if we're not experiencing the same things they experienced after 20 or 30 years of seeking. But in my opinion this is a pretty Self-defeating self-defence mechanism, because almost none of the people who portray the people they consider enlightened as "special" consider themselves equally "special." So they keep making excuses for why they haven't realized their own enlightenment. "It's because my life is full of stress and his/hers wasn't." "It's because he/she was a tulku, the reincaration of someone previously enlight- ened and I'm not." "It's because he/she is more pure than I am." All of these are really good excuses if what you're looking for are good excuses, but I'm not convinced that they assist one in the realization of one's own enlight- enment, if what you're looking for is your own enlightenment. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Protect your PC from spy ware with award winning anti spy technology. It's free. http://us.click.yahoo.com/97bhrC/LGxNAA/yQLSAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
