What do you do to be enlightened?

I was asked these two questions about enlightnment recently and wanted to share my thoughts with each of you as well. Here is the Question:

Do you think that we can all one day become enlightened? If so, what do we need to do?

My Response:    There is no “day” in some future time that we become enlightened. There is no future at all. Each of us already is enlightened and at various points in our lives we see it. Those who do get a glimpse of it are usually pulled into it by some event, such as the death of a loved one, or something else that causes deep reflection in which no “answer” comes.  Most people who have such an experience can always recount the emotional state they felt in such times but they almost always revert back to the egoic need to explain what is going on.  Most come to some conclusion that their “prayer” was answered or that an Ahhhh Haaa came to them and they understood in a way they hadn’t before.  What gets lost in these conclusions is that in that moment where no answer existed is the only place that enlightenment occurred.

In other words, enlightenment is not some magical, mystical awareness of all the, so called, “Big Questions.”  Enlightenment is the “nothing” that
existed before the “ego” needed an explanation.  It is the sweetness of being in the presence of absolute silence and not needing an explanation
for everything.  In that place there is no fear, love, happiness, sadness or any other emotional state. There is nothing but silence and it is in that
“not knowing” that “all” is known and none of it needs definition.

What do “we” need to do?  “Be still and know that YOU are god.”  In other words, unmask who it is that occupies your body by silencing the mind.  In
this place you will experience the grand mystery of which we are all a part. It’s all you can do. There is no “we” in this unmasking. You’re own
enlightenment will enlighten others.  The “god” that you are is never invisible to the “god” that they are. Something inside us always sees the greater light but it is in the quiet of the mind.  Quiet your mind and discover the “everything” that is contained in the “nothing.”  This is your enlightenment.

This is what you can do.

A View on Compassion

Recently I was asked a question by someone visiting my website. Here is the question and what follows is my response. While the response is a bit lengthy I believe there is some important information for those who ask the same questions. I’d love to hear your response.

Comments: I just continue to have a problem with people who take other’s lives and rape etc. I find that difficult to be ok with and that it is the god within at work you have to be kidding me. How can we offer love to human life forms who are capable of this???? We must still believe that there are many who are not Intuitive enough to realize who they are or from where they came… so walk a destructive physical life. How can we be ok with this and offer love to these people??? Please explain to me…

My Response:

Vicki,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You ask, perhaps, the most complex questions that can be asked for any human living in this existence. There is no easy answer mainly because our egos get so attached to what they have determined to be right or wrong in the world. You must think of yourself (we all must) as two individuals. One that is human and one that is divine (God). The human is everything physical that you experience including your thoughts, dreams, aspirations, etc. The divine is the observer of the experience the human is having. The divine does not interfere with the human experience because, after all, the divine came here specifically to have the human (that YOU are) experience. It did not come here to change anything. I know this sounds a bit bizarre, but the essence of our human existence is to experience the wondrous-ness of being humans and to interfere (as gods could) would be to alter the reality of that experience.

After having established this, I will try to answer your questions. Let me be perfectly clear that “the god within” as you mentioned could be okay with rape, murder and all the other forms of violence we experience in the world. Gods, as I mention in my Book “On Being God-Beyond Your Life’s Purpose” do not encroach upon the experience of other gods. They have no need or inclination to do so simply because they possess all the power to create whatever they want. Having said that, however, as for this human experience the “divine” in us has also agreed not to interfere in the “human” condition as part of the overall “human” experience. It is the “human” condition that commits the acts of violence and control on other humans. It is the human condition that tries to stop it and it is the human condition that decides if it is “ok” or “not ok” to “offer love” to those who commit such acts. Nothing that is going on in the physical sense is “because” of gods. It is all because of humans.

As a human, you can decide whether to “offer love” to those who perpetrate such things on other humans or not. As gods the question of “love” doesn’t even come into question. What comes into question for the divine in you is compassion. Now, the world has misunderstood
the meaning of compassion. The world (egos) thinks of compassion as a higher form of love which it is not. Compassion has nothing to do with love. The only words we have in our human language (English) to adequately describe compassion is “acceptance of  everything” (careful not to confuse acceptance with apathy). Gods “accept” what is because they know that in the grand spectrum none of what goes on here “as humans” has any significance in the “eternal” spectrum.

What has happened in this “human” experience is that the “ego”, both individual and collective, has attempted to “out do” what is divine in us and in so doing has gotten out of control, to say the least! In other words, those who commit such horrible things no longer know
what they are doing. They are, for the most part, cut off from the divine nature within and have been largely taken over by the egoic nature that always looks outward for satisfaction and satisfaction often takes on vengeful and inconsiderate forms. Vicki, “they know not what they do.”

Here is why I say that we try in every way to love such individuals. To be angry, vengeful and unforgiving of those who have lost their way is to put yourself in the same kind of mind-set as they are. In other words, the ego in you is saying “why should ‘I’ be this or that” when they have done “this or that,” which “I,” for whatever reason, believe is wrong. Do you see this? You cannot fight against that which you despise or don’t accept (these are egoic responses) and not have it running wild in your experience. Love is a verb. It is one of the only things that can “actively” alter the egoic nature of the human experience, be it, individually or collectively simply because “love” alters YOU – not them. If you are holding on to your feelings of disapproval, anger and indignation, you are being as “disconnected” from the divine in you as any of those you judge to have hurt you or others. Your path is as “destructive” as theirs; not to say that you harm or hurt others but destructive to your own spiritual well-being. Why would you do that to yourself, Vicki?

In the end, Vicki, you choose (as a human) how you can view this experience. However, in the infinite scheme of things, none of what happens here matters. You will proceed into eternity as the God that you are and you will not judge anything that happened here or anywhere else, because everything to our innately divine nature is wonderful. As gods we don’t “see” with eyes that judge. We only see that everything is “good.” That is the “compassionate” nature the god who dwells within you. Find the divine in you and you will experience this knowing. Question every one of your judgments for they are of the ego. This is how you can tell whether or not you are connected to the divine within you.

Long answer to your question, Vicki. I hope you will contemplate what I have said. As I state on my website, “my purpose is to help get you out of your mind”. When you discover that YOU are not your body, your mind or your ego you will be at the point of discovering “WHO” you really are. It will amaze you how that will change your life. I wish you all the best in your spiritual endeavors.

Blessings,

Carl

Honesty – Do You Tell the Truth or Does the Truth Tell You?

From the moment of our birth onward over the span of our human sojourn, we are conditioned to be other than what we truly are. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in our general understanding and subsequent expression of honesty.

We are all liars. In fact, we are so good at lying, many of us will take offense at such an accusation, but perhaps more importantly, we have become so good at it we don’t even know it. Our conditioned nature has us convinced that our little withholdings and untruths are necessary to negotiate the collective human condition. We even come up with metaphors to express this conditioning even though we will not acknowledge the pervasive nature of our lies. We say things like half truths or little white lies to soften the blow, so to speak, so that our fragile egos do not have to face the fact that we are indeed liars. Collectively, we have come up with terms such as spin and techniques have been developed to divert the collective attention away from the truth.

We even accept that certain groups such as lawyers or politicians are dishonest and that is just the way it is. We will support individuals representing a political view, but overlook that they fall into a faction we know (and accept) as dishonest. We will even defend them to the point of anger or rage if they are attacked by another individual who is supported by a faction representing an opposing political view. Individually and collectively we have become defenders of our dishonesty.

Egoically, we have even gone so far as to determine that no individual ego, whether child or adult, should ever be told where they have missed the mark or fallen away from a particular guideline, without following up with where they have done well. Well, we don’t want to hurt any feelings now, do we? We are so concerned about preservation of feelings (ego), that we cannot speak the truth, or as we might say, the whole truth. It is interesting that we have books titled Radical Honesty, proposing that what was once simple honesty has become so elusive that telling any truth has now become radical. In other words, we have conditioned ourselves into the proverbial corner, that honesty is no longer the best policy, rather it has become the exception to the rule, both individually and collectively.

 Perhaps in no other aspect of the human experience will it be more apparent how difficult it will be to alter this current conditioning. We have completely given way to the idea that feelings should not be hurt. We must conduct our lives in such a way that only the softest of blows are ever exacted against our own and other egos. The loss or damage of self-esteem is untenable in any circumstance. In other words, tell the truth if you can, lie if you must, but always spare the ego – always!

Gateway to Inner Knowing

If we can learn to listen to our inner talk, we can begin to notice the deceptions playing out in our minds. If we listen carefully, we can catch ourselves every time we tell a lie and hopefully, in time, catch it before we express it outwardly. In so doing, our dishonesty can become a window into the nature of our conditioning. It can become the way back to a life of integrity and truth. It is through that same window that we can begin to see once again our divine self. The who of our existence rather than the what the ego creates. Once found, we see life as it was before our conditioning took over our awareness.

Who you are always comprehends honestly. Finding who you are is the way out of the darkness of a life that is cloaked in a false illusion and untruth. In fact, it is the only way to have a life that is fully aware of something beyond our limited and egoic view of it.

It is seeing without eyes, hearing without ears. It is a life only a god could know.