What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is experiencing that you understand the universe and then putting into practice all that you have learned to help both yourself, your family and everyone you know or meet.

You don't necessarily have to believe in God to become enlightened. You don't have to belong to any specific religion to become enlightened. You don't have to not believe in God to become enlightened.

For example, my mother was one of the most enlightened people I have ever met. But, she never went past high school in her education. She was an intuitive genius and passed this on genetically to me as well. My father never went to college either. He wanted to but wasn't allowed to go to become an electrical engineer like he wanted to become during the Great Depression. So, he became an Electrician and the Electrical Contractor just like his Dad. His two brothers became Electricians too because this was what their father ordered them to do back then even though all were very good students and could have succeeded in college and their father could have afforded to have sent all three in addition to both their sisters who he did send to college.

So, though my father was intellectually and scientifically brilliant he was not allowed to go to college when it would have mattered and so went through his whole life very resentful about this. However, in many ways he was enlightened but just in a completely different way than my mother was. My mother was "Naturally enlightened in an intuitive way". She often said to me things like, "I as an atom in the body of earth can pray for all beings all the time." When I was little I wondered what she meant by this and as I grew older I began to understand more just what  good and kind person my mother actually was. My father was brilliant but not always kind. He was extremely intelligent and strong and 6 foot 2 1/2 inches tall and sometimes he scared me when I was little growing up. But, he actually taught me more about surviving in the world than my mother did. My mother taught me how to become naturally enlightened. Though my mother was religious she really didn't need any religion personally because she was already there. I think that the only people who really need religion are those who will harm themselves or others without religion. That is who really needs religion.

I tried very hard to be religious like my father but I found that I was just too independent a thinker and too much of a free thinker to succeed with any religion in the end. I was raised a Christian mystic believing in not using doctors much. I watched many people die in my religion who could have been saved by medical doctors. So, it made me think that they should have accessed Doctors to heal them rather than trying to heal themselves by mind over matter. There is a time for mind over matter and then there is a time when this just doesn't work and one has to be pragmatic enough to know the difference to survive one's life. (if surviving one's life is important to one)

All the time I was growing up people were talking about "The Change". The change was a euphemism sort of like "The apocalypse" that people often psychologically entered into in the religion I was raised in. However, as I watched people move from California or Washington to places like Santa Fe, New Mexico, Denver, Colorado or Chicago to get away from the west coast that was supposed to sink I became very cynical about the whole thing and thought all these people were just over reacting to the 1906 earthquake which also started the whole evangelical movement throughout the U.S. and the world when a Pasadena, California Minister predicted it before it happened.

So, in the end I found that by joining my mother's natural intuitive genius that she had taught me to use to be kind to people with with my father's intellectual brilliance that I also had been born with that I could "Cut through everything" right down to its essence to figure out the universe and everyone to my satisfaction. So I did.

And then somehow I survived my 20s and by the time I was 30 really started to understand the universe and the true beginnings of enlightenment. So, in my 30s I began to apply my lessons in enlightenment that I had received direct from God. "IF an ant is your guru feed him". and "God is where you find him, her, it". These two ideas were the core of what I had found to become fully enlightened. I realized that God would naturally enlighten me in any and all situations in my life and so that I needed to look for God and enlightenment in every single moment. And I did. And enlightenment came to me like it eventually does to everyone who does this.

However, enlightenment is and was a completely different thing than I ever imagined it to be as a child and young adult.

First of all, it is an awesome responsibility as you become more and more enlightened throughout your life because, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink!" In other words you can't make anyone see what you see. They have to go through the process on their own to get to where they need to be. All you can do (at most) is to be an example of what you believe in. That is all you can really ever do. People who are forced to do anything likely unless they get free of this won't ever become enlightened. Enlightenment is always a completely free choice. No one ever becomes enlightened by being forced to become enlightened by anyone unless it is life itself forcing you to become enlightened for some real purpose.

So, what is Enlightenment? It is having compassion for all life in the universe. By realizing that all beings in the universe suffer with basically the same problems one then feels kindred to them all and one feels compassionate to them all as family. Once one gets to this place one is on the path to enlightenment from then on.