Our Driving To The Rez second hour panelist, Fred, asked about the relationship between Enlightenment and Awareness.
During our free, monthly enlightenment class at the Shamanshack in WA, we decided to explore this question.
As a wisdom seeker, the main tool I use to advance my studies is to explore questions asked by other wisdom seekers. Without interesting questions, I would not have any idea of where to look.
The questions cannot be random. For them to be useful, they need to be well thought out and accurately worded.
For example, the question posed by Fred was “Enlightenment vs Awareness”. The first answer, as is typical if you know me, was short.
There is no “versus” between Enlightenment and Awareness. They are not contradictory to each other, or in any way opposed to each other.”
Having had some years learning the larger meaning behind peoples questions, it appeared to me that his question was more in the nature of:
How do Enlightenment and Awareness compare to each other? Are they related in any way? Are they the same thing? Does one lead to the other?
I checked my understanding of the question with Fred, who then confirmed that, indeed, this is what he meant.
In this article, I am going to summarize the discussion that followed.
First, let’s define the meaning of each word.
* Enlightenment: I have a very specific definition of this word when it comes to present teachings. The definition is “our own true nature correctly perceived.”
* Awareness: For this definition, I will simply copy a simple one from Webster’s online dictionary - “having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge”.
As we can see although one can be used with the other, the two items are not directly related. In order to understand further, we can say that both of these definitions contain the word “perception”. But, one of them has it as a verb, the other uses the word as a noun.
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