sadness and happiness...

Even a very deep clarity about the true nature of reality does not necessarily mean we will never again find ourselves in a momentary "low mood" of some kind or other, or that we will have no preferences about life at all and won't feel relatively more happy (in the context of a "conditional happiness") if these preferences are realized than if they are not. Contrary to popular opinions and beliefs, unconditional happiness and sadness or even grief, can exist together simultaneously! They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The sadness, like everything else that arises and ceases, must arise and cease in the absolute happiness of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss). So if we have awakened to this unconditional happiness and yet remain a human being on some level, doesn't it follow that we can experience both sadness and unconditional happiness together?

We have so many myths floating around in our heads and in the "biosphere" of the "world of Non-Duality" concerning "enlightened people" and what their lives are supposed to look like. One such very black and white, either/or "myth" being that someone is either "enlightened" or they are not...rather than people each being at some quite specific and unique point on the continuum that runs between "enlightened" and "unenlightened". How could any two human beings be at precisely the same place on this gradation, on ANY gradation? Are any two of us at exactly the same place in life in any other sense....ever? There may be "tipping points" or "thresh-holds" that people can pass, but to say much more than that seems simplistic and superficial.

One of the other common assumptions about someone who is "awake" is that they don't ever experience any of the ups and downs of the "roller coaster" we call "life". If you observed them at close range, it would probably be quite obvious to you that such a person has a very different relationship to the various inevitable vicissitudes of life as a "human being". They will certainly go through them much more quickly. But this idea or belief that they never have any emotional reaction to anything whatsoever, even the most difficult and painful experience, that they maintain a constant detached and stoical attitude toward life at all times and have no experience of them selves as "persons" on any level whatsoever is, I would dare to suggest, at least worth examining.

If an awakened human being is actually both fully human AND fully divine simultaneously, and not MERELY human nor MERELY divine, they may look and act a lot different than many of us may have first imagined. It may mean that enlightened people are actually not less human due to their clarity about reality....but are actually even more fully human than the average, "unenlightened" person. Perhaps they do not feel things less, but actually feel them more precisely due to the lack of resistance in their hearts. Did you ever consider that possibility? It is perhaps at least worth considering, don't you think?

If we believe that "awakening" is an absolute absolution from our humanity, a kind of "get-out-of-your-humanity-free card", we may be in for a very rude awakening about awakening when we finally do awaken!


Francis Bennett