What is Enlightenment?

I think for the average person it is understanding better how everything works and how we all fit in the universe as it is.

It is very easy to get lost in cynicism my own cynicism drove me close to death instead of enlightenment.

However, then one day I went into the Library at Palomar College where I was taking Philosophy Classes then. Philosophy allowed me to begin to ask the questions that would actually keep me alive whereas life at this point seemed intent on killing me.

So, sitting down reading a Psychology Today Magazine began my voyage of self discovery since no one in my family had ever been to college (my parents). So, even though my father was valedictorian of his senior High school Class in 1934 his father wouldn't let he or his brothers go to college even though he let both their sisters go to college to meet a "College Man" and one of the sisters did marry a College man and have a son with him.

But, this moment in the Palomar College Library basically saved my life as a key point in my life. Understanding the weight I was psychologically carrying from my family that went back probably 1000s of years on both sides was bringing me to certain death. 

So, dropping the traditions that weren't keeping me alive was necessary to survive to 30. After 30 I was able to reintegrate stuff so I didn't permanently "Throw out the Baby with the Bathwater" in my life.

However, in the short term I needed to find a way to stay alive and not self destruct from the struggles in my life then.

For me, personally, the Social Revolution of the 1960s helped keep me alive. How?

For me, it was the "Back to the Land Movement" Specifically that helped save me by making me want to move to the country and buy land and build my own home without a mortgage which I did by 1980.

This along with getting married for the first time at age 26 and having a son also helped me survive to 30.

All these things moved me step by Step towards enlightenment which also helped thousands of people along the way, especially after I embarked on a life of Compassion (towards myself and all others) that I learned from Buddhism especially in Tibetan Buddhism and meeting Tibetan Lamas in the U.S. and India and Nepal starting around 1983.

So, "The Long and Winding Road that leads to your Door" by the Beatles was my path too.  

So, in this sense the Social Revolutions of the 1960s also helped keep me alive especially in the "Back to the Land Movement" which likely is still going on all over the world today (even though land everywhere is much more expensive than it used to be then.

By God's Grace