enlightenment

Self enlightenment is the greatest endowment.

There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history... [T]he detail of the formation of the American governments... may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven... it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses... Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.[A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, 1787]

Your only limitations are those that you impose upon yourself

It is not the outer objects that entangle us. It is the inner clinging that entangles us." - Tilopa

Acceptance is the vessel of realization.

We come to the end of suffering, through suffering.

suffering breaks us until there__ nothing left but gentleness

The blessing of resistance lies in its power to illuminate those aspects of ourselves which have eluded our appreciation.

One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling, that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation.

Daydreaming is the purest form of being. Take that away and One suffers.

He has no need for faith who knows the uncreated, who has cut off rebirth, who has destroyed any opportunity for good or evil, and cast away all desire. He is indeed the ultimate man.

Fate demands that we continue suffering, until we willingly seek out and discover the sacred path of righteousness. Until we surrender to the sameness of life, we are unable to experience the absolute ground zero of reality. Only by surrendering our desires, by readjusting our consciousness to a state undefined, unbound, and unmotivated by passion and desire, will we experience life transformed.

The dimension of space and time, represented by what is transpiring in the here and now, is all that we will ever know. Unlike the continuum of perpetual time and infinite space, everything that we know will experience disruption, dissolution, disintegration, dismemberment, and death. The inevitability of our ending represents the tragic comedy of life. Much of our needless suffering emanates from resisting our impermanence rather than embracing our fate. Only through acceptance of the events and situations that occur in a person__ life including suffering, and by releasing our attachments, will a person ever experience enlightenment.

When a person understands the problem that vexes them, and comprehends the choices that created them, they begin a journey of the mind seeking personal liberation from suffering.

A person experiments in life and reflects upon those events in order to discover how to lead a meaningful life. We conduct a quest searching for the source our essential being. What we seek is inside us waiting for us to discover. Until we realize the vital inner source that provides direction for our life, all our efforts are in vain. The ego with its craving and fearful protection strategies is what prevents us from perceiving the transparency of the world in which we belong. When we cease clinging to the past and no longer daydream of the future and unreservedly accept whatever is occurring while sacrificing ourselves in service of other people our sense of self vanishes and we exist only as conscious and nonjudgmental witnesses of reality.

A purpose derived from a false premise _ that a deity has ordained submission to his will _ cannot merit respect. The pursuit of Enlightenment-era goals _ solving our world__ problems through rational discourse, rather than through religion and tradition _ provides ample grounds for a purposive existence. It is not for nothing that the Enlightenment, when atheism truly began to take hold, was also known as the Age of Reason.

To be enlightened is to know oneself and not run away.

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it__ just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn__ in the character, it__ in the underlying truth.