What Is The Meaning of . . .

Enlightenment, Liberation, Freedom & Salvation.

 What exactly is the meaning of the word enlightenment, is it the same as liberation or freedom, do you need to be saved and if so are you aware of anything you may need saving from? 

The Natural State of Life on Earth is the Enlightened State of Being. The most important thing to grasp at this moment is the meaning of the word enlightenment. In the enlightened state ‘I’ (the reader) am Free from the Normal but False Condition of Living in the World. This is a very Liberating experience because in this state ‘I’ am no longer carrying around the baggage of past conditioning consisting of:

·          Aimless, willful and problematic thinking.

·          The accumulated & hardened layers of thought such as your attitudes, beliefs and opinions

·         All psychological and emotional feelings of pain, misery, suffering and unhappiness.

To be ENLIGHTENED means to be Free from all conditioning. If you go for a walk with a heavy rucksack on your back and after several hours you get the opportunity to remove it the chances are that you’ll find it a very enlightening and liberating experience. It is the removal of a burden.

Your conditioning is a very heavy load that you are lugging around with you throughout your lifetime and only when you do the necessary work to remove it will you be free from its effects.

The En-light-ened State is also akin to turning on a “light.” Most people are stumbling around in the dark, unable to clearly perceive the purpose of life and their place in existence.

If you walk into a room at night and need to find an item urgently would you stumble around in the darkness or simply flick on the light switch?

I’m asking you to turn on your own Inner Light, the light of “Pure Intellect.” In doing so you’ll never again be controlled by the normal condition of living in the world, unlike the majority of the earth’s population, who are.

Before you can experience the enlightened state you will need to become aware of ALL the conditioning within your ‘self’. You do this by becoming an observer of yourself. By “yourself” I mean your thoughts, speech, emotions and actions.

As you observe “yourself,” on a moment to moment basis, you will begin to separate from your false conditioning. The more you observe the false conditioning in action within yourself, the more you will begin to naturally separate from it, until all that is false becomes dissolved through the process. What is actually happening is you, your evolving intelligence, is observing and separating from what is not you, your false condition.    

It is the “light” of “Pure Intellect” shining down onto the ignorant condition that dissolves and dissipates all the false conditioning within you. You just have to be aware of the process.

There is only one FREEDOM and that can only be experienced when you remove The Normal Condition of Living in the World.

Liberation, in the dictionary, means to be free from foreign occupation and that is exactly what I mean when I use the word; to be liberated from the foreign or alien occupation, of your mind and psyche, by a condition that has been imposed upon you. Yes, the condition is an alien thing, meaning something that is not meant to be there. 

Something that should not be there, and that is the normal, but false conditioning, consisting of aimless thinking, beliefs, opinions, attachments, and psychological and emotional misery, has occupied the space of your mind and is pretending to be you! Could that “something” be evil?

Salvation, in Christian terms, is you being saved from evil. I am speaking of the evil of a conditioned mind that is creating unhappiness on earth through individuals who are possessed by that very conditioning: Literally possessed by unhappiness.

The conditioned thinking mind is a d-evil to deal with, an alien thing that has only one way to enter existence and that is through you, your mind, as your conditioning and it creates havoc on the earth through its creation; man’s world.

Man’s World now sits on top of the earth, suffocating it, just as your normal conditioning is suffocating your natural state. The result is an unhappy world full of unhappy people who are all attempting to impose their own unhappy conditioning upon one another.

So, salvation is you, free from the normal condition of living in the world and returning to the original and natural state of life on earth: Eden, heaven on earth . . . or as the Buddhists would say “the end of suffering.”

In the enlightened state, The Natural State of Life on Earth, you regain your mental space by removing the false condition. The inner space of the mind is liberated from an alien occupation and is therefore free to return to its original state of alert stillness, present moment awareness and pure-clear perception. Out of this state arises The Joy of Being, which is bliss, and this state in turn flowers as unconditional, universal Love. This is your Salvation.

 

Be at peace.

Be aware of the source.

This is the fulfillment of your destiny.

Know that which never changes.

This is Enlightenment.

                                                 Lao Tzu

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Rapier Self-Knowledge

• Your Attitudes-Beliefs-Opinions are simply hardened layers of thought. Have you ever considered what would happen to you if you were free of them?

• If You STOP, and look at your attitudes-beliefs-opinions for long enough, you'll discover the truth concerning them; they are not you!

• Attitudes-beliefs-opinions are all enormous weeds of the mind that suffocate the beautiful flower that is your naked attention, in this moment, The Now!

• Your naked attention is much more real than your attitudes-beliefs-opinions; you have simply forgotten that fact. It's time to do some weeding.

• You are the observer of all your attitudes-beliefs-opinions. Observe them with your naked attention & watch these WEEDS of the mind wilt & die.

• When you remove the weeds from the garden, what remains? The flowers & plants, beauty, right? When you remove the weeds of the mind, what remains? You know the answer.

• To 'be' in this moment, free of the last moment that is gone, & free of the next moment, which hasn’t arrived, is the most liberating experience, but it requires copious amounts of weeding on a regular basis.        

• The most manifest sign of ‘Present Moment Awareness’ is continued cheerfulness.

 . . . and so, the so called enlightened are found to be cheerful individuals, why is that?
It is because they are free from the unhappiness of emotional reactivity and problematic living.

All the best for now,

Doug ;-))
 

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Have You Discovered 'The Way In' Yet?

A Book Review

The Way In: A Book of Self-discovery - Plain Statements of Essential Truth
By Barry Long

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher
An inspiring and challenging guide to self-discovery
PUBLISHER'S STATEMENT AND REVIEW

An inspiring and challenging guide to self-discovery from an acknowledged spiritual master.

The truth of life is discovered within ourselves, but how to find the way in? In ninety-nine concise chapters Barry Long guides us through the undiscovered country of ourselves. It takes a spiritual master to show the way. It's a rare to meet a master in the flesh. Here is a book that puts the master before us. His voice on the page addresses every reader directly. He challenges or entices us to recognise the truth or the spirit in our own experience. As we read and re-read the book we actively participate in our own self-discovery and begin to realise the part we play in the mystery of life.

READER'S COMMENT: "This is an all-in-one book that ingeniously presents the big picture but also acts as a primer for self-discovery. It shows us our place in the grand scheme of things and what we have to do to make the inexplicable mysteries of life more real in our own experience. It has certainly taught me to see life in a new way."

Barry Long gives us various ways to the Way - the ways of truth, love, stillness, and prayer - and then charts the blind alleys and false trails of the spiritual path. He invites us to look for the truth in our own direct experience of life and not in hand-me-down systems of belief. There is advice on how to meditate, how to pray, what to look for in relationships and how to discriminate between true and false teachings. There is instructive comment on other spiritual traditions, psychic practices and the 'New Age'. Towards the end of the book Barry Long focuses on the goal of all spiritual self-discovery - freedom from suffering and conscious participation in the purpose of life on earth. Readers will learn to recognise which are the reliable signposts on the spiritual path as Barry Long guides us finally to The Way Out, where the ultimate or highest truth is found.

CONTENTS: The Way of Truth, The Way of Stillness, The Way of Love, The Way of Prayer, The Path and The Way, The Way Now, The Way I Am, The Way Out.

The book deals with questions such as: What is truth? What is the spirit? Does God exist? What is the spiritual value of sexual love? Why should we meditate? How can we stop our minds from getting in on the act? How can I stop worrying? Why am I distant from the one I love? How can I bring the love back? Should we pray? What for? What distinguishes psychic teachings from spiritual ones? Where do channeled teachings come from? Can therapy really help? Is visualisation a help or a hindrance? What's the difference between Eastern and Western teachings? What can a Western Master add? What's the essential legacy of Jesus and the Buddha? Does the 'New Age' have any real meaning? Is enlightenment just an abstract concept? What can I do about it?

It also includes the contents of Barry Long's popular audio cassette 'Start

Meditating Now' and puts its spiritual exercises into print for the first time.

MAGAZINE REVIEW : "This simple to read, yet spiritually advanced book offers immense insight into the truth within us. . . . Chapter by chapter, page by page, word by word we are taken into the uncharted depths of spiritual being. . . .Any person who reads this book will come to see that Masters do exist among us." - Golden Age, Australia.

BARRY LONG'S 'WAY IN' TO SPIRITUAL SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Barry Long's response to the perennial questions of life and death is original, compelling and up-to-the-minute. Over many years as a spiritual teacher in Europe and Australia he has confronted his audiences with 'The Simple Truth' and shunned traditional and intellectual paths to God. Now we have a collection of his writings that gives a thorough overview of his way in to the mysteries of the spirit. 'The Way In' is essentially a practical manual for spiritual life in the contemporary world, written in short and pithy chapters. It has much to say about meditation, prayer and the many means of bringing truthfulness and love into daily life. Barry Long's world is the one we live in and share everyday with our husbands, wives, lovers, children and colleagues. So it's easy to relate to what he says, even though the truth of it may not always be comfortable. The underlying message is the one at the heart of all Barry Long's work - the proposition that we cannot truly trust or believe in anything outside our individual and immediate experience of life now. Least of all can we believe in a 'teaching'. By continually inviting his readers to test the truth of what he says in their own experience, Barry Long actually teaches us to discover the truth for ourselves. As with all true teachers, his primary concern is to disabuse us of what hinders or impedes our own self-discovery. For Barry Long this is not just the incessant chatter in our heads, but every false, ignorant or less than fully-conscious act. And this includes any teaching that is itself less than the highest truth. A large part of the book is a systematic reappraisal of 'spiritual paths', both traditional and New Age. The central message of the book becomes clear towards the end. What we are really being shown is the way out of the labyrinth of 'spirituality' to a true and free state of being. Those well-read in spiritual literature may find this new book both refreshing and unsettling, instructive and inspiring,. It is well worth accepting Barry Long's implied challenge that there is always more to discover about ourselves. And newcomers to this field could hardly come across a more stimulating 'way in'.

I highly recommend this outstanding book to all of you who are looking to discover a greater 'Truth-Reality-Integrity' than you are presently experiencing. You can take a deeper look at, and obtain a copy of, this book at THIS LINK.

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