Self Awareness and Enlightenment – Dialectic Two Step
How can I increase my self awareness and become enlightened? Is this even possible?
Response:
Can you increase self awareness? hmm. Can you decrease it? How would you measure self awareness? Could you use some type of monitor to test when you are above or below critical levels?
What is it that you are aware of when you are self aware? Can you be aware of something, but not self aware at the same time?
These are either very difficult questions that either require a level of nuance to answer or they are completely absurd.
To complicate things further we’ve added enlightenment to the mix.
From a Buddhist perspective, self awareness and enlightenment would be an odd couple. There is the view of anatman (not-self) that warns us that the illusion of self is not who we really are. It tells us that suffering is caused by attachment to the self. So it seems difficult to equate an increase in self awareness with enlightenment. It feels like the wrong approach.
But why the human pre-occupation with the self? Why are we often inspired to live an authentic life? To be true to ourselves? To search for who we really are? And why is it so hard to find?
This urge to find something seems almost universal, natural, and thus something that can’t be offhandedly dismissed. So perhaps the questions aren’t absurd. Perhaps the answers are nuanced. But regardless, its embarrassing to speak so assuredly about our “self”, yet be at an utter loss to point to it.
They say that the job of a teacher is to point the student at themselves and let them discover. I might offer some rules of engagement.
Enlightenment is a terrible word
It makes complete sense to all of us to speak of the self.
The self is not likely what we think it is
When it comes to you, you won’t be able to unsee it (because it’s always been there)
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Dialectic Two-Step is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio
Dialectic Two Step, Modern Koans, Verse Us, Say What?, and Minute Meditations all copyright Andrew Furst
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