Ah, I see now. I misunderstood what you meant. Thank you for pointing it out.

No, you are obviously right. It is your teaching and it is your responsibility to see. It is all up to you.

But who can walk that way?

This may be important for you. You have seen part of this illusion; the I is no different from what it wishes to be free from. The who – the person doing – tries to separate itself in order to achieve a “higher” state. It sees what is really there, and rather than accept it and start anew, it pushes away, violently trying to force itself into a new way of living.

The answer to your question is fluid and alive, and coming to a fixed conclusion will only bring more frustration. Can you see the answer without your conclusion?

Reality is distorted by feelings and if I can separate one from the other, then my world changes and I can see the things in front of me clearly.

tokumei,

Who will separate these feelings? Are you, the separator, in some way different from what is being separated? Could there be another way through the mess?

From another angle, we may refer to this as ego behavior that arises when the me is unsatisfied. As noted, ego is a natural stage of development but one we should outgrow.

You made a great point when you said,

It’s not so much wrong as counter productive.

It is not wrong at all. In fact, in order to see these things as they arise within us, we cannot resist or condemn.

People often ask, “Where do I begin?” You begin with what you have. And if what you have is selfishness, greed, or a need to lash out, you begin there. It arises and you see it; not out of a need to get away from it, or to actively resist it; you watch, observe and see where it goes and what it does. It only has the power one assigns to it.

This pure observation is similar to the realization of the emperor having no clothes, and it comes to an end.

Nicely said. And the media may indeed accelerate this activity. However, we have not always had the media, but we have always had this problem.

No matter the time period or level of technology, humans have always seemed to behave in certain ways. I don’t accept that it has to continue, but it seems to have happened this way throughout history. I question these activities to find out what is really going on beneath it all.

Maybe we need to look at the totality of the race, see it as one organism fulfilling it’s destiny, maturing and preparing to take it’s place in the cosmos as an adolescent soon.

Who knows? But it seems this freedom will not come through accumulation. We have supreme levels of technology throughout the world, yet we still grunt and stab at each other with pointy sticks. The outer achievements do not come together with the inner “knowing” (for lack of a better word).

So instead of a frightened, uncertain, dangerous caveman with a pointy stick, we have a frightened, uncertain, dangerous cavemen with gun and a home theater system.

I do not think we are approaching an age of enlightenment. All of the knowledge and technical achievements have not helped, in the sense we are speaking. We are the same creatures as our ancestors; they hoped to be set free by God, knowledge, or whatever else, and we hope for the same thing. But no one can do it for us.

If there is an age of enlightenment, it is now. It has always been now. It is within every moment of every second, in every petal of every flower, and it is inescapable.

But no one can give it to you.