The Message
Enlightenment is an idea that has been around for thousands of years. The story of Siddhartha Gautama, “the Buddha”, tells us about the journey of a man’s life that led him to find this “enlightened” state of mind. Something that I think is often overlooked on the subject of enlightenment is the struggle, the suffering, and the self-inflicted torture that one must go through in order to get it. In order to become “enlightened” Siddhartha starved himself and separated himself from his desire for material possessions as much as a human can. He spent an enormous amount of time alone in meditation and deep thought. He gave up his life as a prince to go in search of the true meaning and deeper purpose of life. These things were a necessary part of reaching this level of consciousness. He found true empathy for his fellow man because he had experienced true sadness, hunger, and sickness for himself. He understood what it felt like to have everything and to not have anything. He knew what it was to be alone and he knew that there were worse things in life. He came to find peace and comfort and joy in knowing that it is this life that is the gift. Everything beyond that is only an added bonus.
We are given such a small amount of time as a human and it is often filled with worry and thoughts of what could be or could have been. We miss so much of the beauty in this life, simply because we are looking the other way. We get distracted by television and thinking about what other people are doing. We fight one another over what we believe to be best for people that we don’t even know. We try to dictate and manipulate what people believe and how they act when we don’t even know how to act or what we truly believe ourselves. We have lost touch with something that holds the most importance in our lives… life itself. We can get so caught up in what is commonly thought to be the way life is that we never live any of it. If you can’t stop for a second and tell yourself that you are happy and be completely honest when you say it, chances are you have not lived your life as it is meant to be lived.
Very few people are willing to give up their security and comfort in convenience and ease. The label on the clothing or the number of dollars in a system becomes the focus of importance. Our status among individuals that makes up the society that we somehow have become a part of takes our focus away from important things like time with family and personal happiness. If a society is something that has to be, it should be made secondary to things as important as love and family. Status should never be considered and our concern for how or what another individual chooses to do with their time should be none of our business unless it will have a direct impact in our lives. Just because something is good for one individual does not mean it will be good for another. Until we learn simple values we can never understand the complexity of how simple this life really is. As humans, we complicate things and add layers that should never exist. We fight and kill each other as we hand over control of our lives to governing forces that should not have any power in our life. We allow other people and groups to give us orders and direct our path, making decisions for us that we should make for ourselves. It has become so common that what I am saying sounds more like craziness than it does for you to be controlled.
Think about what you are allowing when you think this way. You think you are being privileged to be allowed to vote for someone who you believe to be suitable to run your country, your state, your life. Is it not obvious? You have been fooled the entire time. We have become so reliant on a governing power to give us the comfort and security that we believe is necessary to sustain life. If people would realize that we do all of the things essential for survival everyday without the need of a controlling force in our lives, we might begin to unite as humans, learn how to love one another with complete disregard to race, religion, sexual preference, or any other of the unique factors that make us the beautiful individuals that each and every one of us are. As long as you make yourself a slave to a state or set of rules that are made and governed by man, you are not free, you have not reached a level of enlightenment, and you are still missing the point entirely. Be unique. Be the message. Love!
