Enlightenment?

Not For Me...

I don't really believe in or strive for enlightenment, or any kind of elimination or transcendence of personal interest. I don't believe in a permanent state of self-transcendence and I don't believe that a person who has achieved it has any authority to tell me or anyone else how to achieve it. I don't strive for eliminating or transcending any of the opposites of human nature. I don't strive for the victory of the light over darkness. I don't pick sides in any of the so-called "battles" within human nature. I believe all of us are both dark and light, greedy and generous, lustful and loving, violent and peaceful, thoughtful and impulsive, good and evil, cooperative and competitive, altruistic and self-interested, emotional and rational, one and separate.

To me, nothing is pure, everything is intermixed. I strive to accept the dynamic tension between these opposites, to find the unforced balance that is at the core of everything, to live in that tension and not seek to resolve it because to live in it is the only resolution I can imagine. I don't do any overt energy work. I don't try to move or change anyone's energetic configurations. I try not to interfere with their own natural unfolding and the intelligent process at its root is theirs not mine. I'm just a person who has studied unforced balance for most of my life and who can give people some tools to study it too. I help people improve their balance, open their circulation, release some of their tension, gain more mobility and responsiveness, flow more and force less, and I use the martial training games of T'ai-Chi as a teaching tool to help facilitate this.

I do pretty ordinary stuff really and the goal of this training is to become a more balanced person. I do of course recognize that there are contemplative traditions that are thousands of years old that think otherwise and have other goals, and I respect that. I don't knock believers or seekers of enlightenment, it's just not my path. There are also many different approaches to mind-body trainings and martial arts and many have real merit. I'm just talking about what feels most deeply right for me, not anyone else.

I do experience moments of self-transcendence to be sure...What I don't do is call them my true or ultimate nature and seek to experience them all the time. This seems to be something a lot of people do with these experiences, they want it to be their permanent state. I'd rather just allow them to be part of life. It's like they had an orgasm and then decided that that's their true nature, everything else is illusion, and then seek to have a continuous 24-7 orgasm. For me moments of self-transcendence are an inevitable part of life. Just as moments of self-involvement are. I tend to take them as they come. I do work on posture and alignment, relaxation and flow, opening and breathing and connecting...the self-transcendent seems to come and go on its own.