How can Enlightened people do bad things? A guest post by Adam
March 10th, 2013 by Rose Rosetree
Still expecting a cosmic Enlightenment Manual?
Our moveable feast of inquiry gets to add one more article, Blog-Buddies. Because there is so much to consider regarding this fascinating thread about:
- Householder Enlightenment vs. Renunciate Enlightenment
- Imperfect gurus and priests, their sex scandals
- What Enlightenment really means
- Does spiritual development become so complete that a person never makes a mistake?
Today we get a wonderful guest post from another person on our Enlightenment Life List, Blog-Buddy ADAM. My headings, links, and minor copy edits. Otherwise, all ADAM.
How can Enlightened people do bad things?
One of the things about being Enlightened is that you have a lot of free will.
If you have no STUFF, then there is less in the way of your conscious exercise of free will. It is easier to make deliberate choices, rather than merely reacting from STUFF-driven impulses.
However, when Enlightened, you are still a human. You are likely to still have typical human impulses like hunger, thirst and sexual desire.
You still have to make good human choices. You still need to make those good choices based on your best understanding at the time of what constitutes a good choice.
You will still experience strong emotions that can influence your decision-making processes.
An Enlightened person can still hold error-riddled beliefs.
Guess what else about Enlightenment?
Enlightenment doesn’t come with a special manual (in which God finally levels with you and tells you how everything REALLY works).
If an Enlightened person has been led to believe that their divinely-graced state inoculates them from error, they are in massive danger.
If they are constantly surrounded by yes-folk who celebrate the guru’s every word and deed, it’s not impossible that an Enlightened person could develop problematic beliefs about how special they are.
While I believe being Enlightened makes it easier to choose wisely, it does not make things automatic. God can’t make your choices for you.
A divinely-inspired flow-state experience is not a drug trip – you are still in full command of your faculties. You are still responsible for your actions.
An Enlightened person can still make bad choices. It would not be genuine free will otherwise.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Photo credit for today’s post goes to that big red dog in the sky.
Kidding:
http://clifford.childrens-library.com/Cliffords_Big_Dictionary.html
Enlightened or not. Each of us has a never-ending journey which is to continue to strengthen our spirits to love and light.
This journey is most difficult when our spirits must be on the physical plane in human form.
God allows us to fall from enlightenment and become re-enlightened many times during our journey.
When re-Enlightened, the spirit becomes stronger and stronger each time. It is not for us to judge others since that is God’s job.
This is a message or lesson to us to prove that we are not super human beings.
Your thoughts of judging allows you to fall out of love and light, and continues to test your own spirit.
Stay in love and light, and learn from each of our journeys.
Shout-out to MAXIMA MAY, from my Enlightenment Life List!
Thanks for adding your special wisdom to our ongoing conversation here.
Adam
you said:
“However, when Enlightened, you are still a human. You are likely to still have typical human impulses like hunger, thirst and sexual desire.”
I agree with that.
However as a consumer one of the “pitches” that I am given by some gurus (some of whom are on ‘the list’), is that a “siddha”. may actually not need to eat and drink (ie breatharian) and that they have “conquered their sexual desires. So what do I, as a consumer, (who might be thinking of following their path) think when I discover, they are partaking of sex and hamburgers on the QT?
The enlightened are free to quietly do absolutely anything in their enlightened state. However this surely, of necessity, changes when they take on the role of spiritual teacher and accept followers. Then their responsibilities should surely be the same as for any other professional (as has been mentioned in an earlier thread). Yes from a non dual perspective maybe nothing they have done is wrong. But here in duality we have to play by certain rules or bare the consequences.
In my work I can be sitting interviewing a pedophile, I can see how he was abused himself as a boy and is now perpetuating the abuse. I can feel compassion for him. But that said, at the end of the day he will go to prison. If a Dr sleeps with a patient he is struck off and so on.
I am really just exploring here (and still am not clear) , how the use of energy literacy helps us to be better consumers?
Mike, I’m getting a “baby with the bathwater” feeling here. Energetic literacy tells you who a person really is. Even if they are Enlightened I imagine it would show you if they are “experimenting” in certain areas or just have beliefs which are incompatible with yours. (Perhaps they are Enlightened but believe things that you find abhorrent, like that it is possible to eat hamburgers while telling your students to eat sunlight.)
If you were concerned about a specific person, reading their aura would probably provide some pretty easy answers, rather than all the speculation before even trying.
This is really difficult for me to put into words, but, in my experience of enlightenment, there are differences between individuals but there are also no differences between us. “There, because of the Grace of God, go I” is the closest I can come to putting it into words.
How can enlightened people exhibit bad behavior? I cannot judge the why’s or even the “bad” of anyone’s behaviors. To see anyone as a victim of someone’s behavior is, in my mind, depriving that person (the victim) of their full glory and power. Victimhood was the largest obstacle for me on my path to enlightenment, so, this is my personal perspective, which is all I can have.
Jnana, I agree with your comment, “It is helpful to see ourselves as the cause of all our experiences. It’s more empowering as well. It means we get to change the things we don’t like in our lives. No other person gets to spoil things for us except ourselves. And Rose’s healing skills can speed things up for us in this respect.” Spot On, Jnana.
Along the lines of the responsibilities of Gurus, I just spent the weekend at a Gun Show. I am enlightened, and I find that I am in situations more and more where just my presence is assisting others to grow spiritually. I don’t, and can’t even begin to, consider myself a Guru. I can’t and won’t tell anyone else how to attain enlightenment. I will leave the obvious healing work to those who are called to do that in the obvious ways, such as Rose and many of you do.
However, as a Molecular Empath, and, now, being Enlightened, I find that my greatest joy in life is simply walking among the people wherever I find myself to be and just being myself. It may be the combination of the auric modeling and the molecular empathic gift, but I find that many others respond to me in overwhelmingly positive ways. The ones who are open to it seem to catch my joy and are drawn to me.
I am happily married and enjoy the sexual relationship with my husband. I am very loyal and even when I was in a bad marriage I chose not to have an extra marital affair. But, that’s just me. I can’t judge anyone else’s use of their sexual energy. I could certainly envision the scenario of a Guru’s “abusive” behavior being a motivator for the devotee’s switch to self authority. I, too, think Karma is at play here.
I can see, lately, all the opportunities to “abuse” the power of attraction I am having. I can’t even entertain the thought of taking advantage of that in any way for longer than the thought that that might be possible to pass through my brain. There is awareness of the possibility, only. There is awareness of the hunger for what my presence seems to give, only. There is joy in giving it, whatever “it” is. And that is all. I feel love and compassion and that is all. There is no judgment. There is sadness in me for the divide that I see developing between people over “issues” of preconceived judgments and ideas that have nothing at all to do with the core of the persons involved.
To want to do anything but heal and love and play – as an enlightened being – is inconceivable to me.
Mike,
Perhaps all this disillusionment about Gurus is meant to be the motivator for you to develop self authority. By turning your attention inward, to you own authority, and simply healing your Stuff, you may find what you are seeking.
The Energy Literacy that Rose teaches and practices is all about healing and gaining the tools for claiming your self authority.
Jill it is so helpful to get an enlightened perspective. You may not be a guru but you are definitely a teacher.
Jill, your comment “seeing someone as a victim deprives them of their full glory and power” was so beautiful and moving for me. Something to remember when we see ourselves as victims.
Several years back I was married to a Protestant minister who ended up becoming emotionally and physically abusive. I had a harrowing experience getting away from him and ending the marriage. While I was navigating that and at times fearing for my life, he was busy crafting letters to the congregation to cover his ‘reputation.’
It was quite an awful experience to live through, but it certainly was valuable in terms of my being blasted into the realm of firmly taking charge of my own life instead of being dependent on him. I refused to remain victimized by him.
Over the years, I came to see that one blessing of all that was that any illusion about the ‘goodness’ of any religious leader of any persuasion was burned right out of me. This blessing came to mind as I was reading these posts on the Enlightened gurus and others doing not-so-good things. I have had first hand knowledge of the projections people lay on religious leaders. I was on the receiving end of that myself, even though I was the spouse. Didn’t like it! The whole thing can be quite an unhealthy dance.
With that experience, Rose’s emphasis on objective vs. subjective reality, and recent rereading of interesting info on the creative process, I’m reminded that it’s dangerous territory to have basically any particular behavioral expectations of anyone, whatever their job or title or even if they’re enlightened.
Putting too much emphasis on the concept of “enlightenment” rather than focussing on a person’s behavior in interactions is not a great idea.
Thank you, Paige. I am so impressed with the caliber of the conversations on this Blog and the thoughtfulness of the community. It’s a joy to see how supportive everyone, from so many different cultures around the world, are with each other.
Zelda,
Your story touched me. I am grateful that you found the blessing within all the Junk of your situation and chose to not be a victim. Your example will shine into many lives as a consequence. Thank you for sharing you experience and the lessons you learned from it.
Perhaps folks fall in and out of enlightenment and are not ‘there’ all the time. When they are not ‘there’ is when some of this hypocracy and bad/irresponsible behavior happens.
DEBI S., from what I understand, it is true that some folks do fall in and out of Enlightenment while developing it. For instance,J. Stewart Dixon has written about that with his usual candor in “21 Days, A Guide for Spiritual Beginners.”
However, this is not the case for someone who is a world guru.
Unless he or she is a fraud, that person does not set up a huge organization worldwide as a guru until Enlightenment has been pretty darned stabilized.
Thanks, Jill Erin, for your kind words. After reading all the comments, another of the major lessons of that era popped into my mind.
I remembered that back in college, when I was dating this guy, one day he told me that he wanted to be a minister. He was studying biochemistry at the time.
I was basically completely uninterested in religion at the time, and I remember hearing quite a loud inner voice saying, “This will never work!”
Back in those days, I didn’t have the confidence to trust my intuition so solidly that I’d do something so bold as to just leave the guy in the dust. Nope, I ended up marrying him.
That was another good lesson – trusting my intuition. No regrets now; it was the way I needed to learn, I guess. But it was a great lesson.
Adam, Maxima May, Mike, Jordan, Paige, Zelda, Debi S. – and of course Rose….
Wonderful discussion here.
I am grateful to be learning, growing and moving forward quickly
yet sometimes everything feels like…alot.
I am supported in my journey by the wisdom you all are sharing here.
Especial thanks to Rose for the following -
“DEBI S., from what I understand, it is true that some folks do fall in and out of Enlightenment while developing it.”
I appreciate that it is mentioned in some places here that enlightenment is not necessarily tied with having a certain world view. So many people on the Enlightenment Life List have vastly different and contradictory spiritual and world views.
I think I get it now. Enlightenment is not an end point, just a particular landmark in development where you transcend your STUFF and become unidentified with your emotions enough to observe/release them and feel an underlying joy (which has nothing to do with the belief “software” you’re running). This is why Rose places an emphasis in her aura readings on the way a person relates to their emotions.
The word “enlightenment” probably trips people up because they associate that with ascending to a master status.
Good point, M. Being a spiritual teacher, or master, is a separate deal entirely from having the state of consciousness known as “Enlightenment.”
Personally, I would like to help clean up these concepts for people such as you, folks who are serious about having meaningful ideals and then living them.
JEAN and ZELDA, shout-outs to you as well.
You know, I don’t always thank all you Blog-Buddies for your contributions. It’s a time thing. But know that I read and appreciate every single comment published at this blog.
Appreciating both of you two, for instance… speaking of spiritual teachers. (See last comment.)
Shoes fit. Enjoy wearing them.
Oh Rose – thank you for your comment #21 (big heartfelt smile.)
And thanks for your mention (in comment #16) of J. Stewart Dixons book,
“21 Days, A Guide for Spiritual Beginners.”
I recently began reading it and find it to be definitely helpful – and fun.
Way to go J. Stewart Dixon!
I do so appreciate any book or other resources you mention Rose.
Also recently started reading your kindle version of
“365 Days To A Stronger You: Balance Your Human Life with Helping Others as a World Server.”
Great to read each day – or several times a day – or as needed.
Way to go Rose.