Ryan: So isn’t the best approach to enlightenment in pointing out how people are mistaken in how they think about the world and themselves?
Bob: I think the best approach is sharing with others how lost 'we' once were, what happened, and then fully exemplifying what the enlightened life is like.
Ryan: And a fall into total insanity isn’t necessary in my opinion. It could be more gradual.
Bob: A fall into total insanity remains necessary in my opinion. And while the renewing of the mind will very likely be gradual, I feel a 'burning bush' type of experience is absolutely necessary in order for the necessary shift in mind or brain function to take place. Without which any change will be on a superficial level rather than on a deeply edifying one.
Ryan: However, I should point out that an individual who is susceptible to enlightenment has certain traits from the outset.
Bob: Yes I agree, and this fact prompted my thread herein entitled: 'Different' From Day One. And possessing an extrordinarily sensitive and finely-formed organism (primarily neurologicalIy) I feel is the key to it all. And like it's been said: He who follows the Infinite has been called by the Infinite. Though very few ever hear the call and fewer yet ever fully heed it.
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Characteristics of Nietzsche's Free Spirit
Playful curiosity - the final metamorphosis of spirit is to be a child, a free spirit who dances across truths, beliefs, and values. A free, independent mind and spirit "cannot be taught, one must 'know' it from experience" and from questioning everything. (Beyond Good and Evil, p. 155)
Laughing - throughout his writings he emphasizes laughing. Zarathustra says to laugh ten times a day (p. 24); it is important to laugh at oneself, confirm the validity of insights and discoveries with laughter, and let wisdom about all aspects of the human experiences be coupled with gaiety and joy.
Self-actualization - Nietzsche was compelled to explore and understand his own nature. He wanted to find out how his mind worked and the way that thoughts and sentiments influence human actions. He said, "We ourselves want to be our own experiments, and our own subjects of experiment." (Joyful Wisdom, p. 248)
Paradoxical - throughout his writing he makes reference to the paradoxes, opposites, and antitheses in himself and the new human. About Zarathustra he said, "all opposites are in him bound together into a new unity." (Ecce Homo, p. 106) He described himself as lonely and friendly, decadent and decent, terrible and beneficent, and Janus faced. He wrote "viewed from his angle, my life is simply amazing. For the task of transvaluing values, more abilities were necessary perhaps than could ever be found combined in one individual; and above all, opposing abilities which must not be mutually inimical and destructive." (Ecce Homo, p. 45 - Kaufmann)
Synergistic - he was deeply bothered seeing how much human energy was wasted through people trying to live by values and beliefs taught to them. He was distressed by the harm people do to themselves and others in trying to act unselfishly. He tried to tell, teach, and show people how life could be better for everyone if, through a process of experimenting, developing their own values, and enjoying a healthy selfishness, they became free spirited individuals.
Sensitivity - he stated, "I have in this sensitivity psychological antennae with which I touch and take hold of every secret: all the concealed dirt at the bottom of many a nature, perhaps conditioned by bad blood but whitewashed by education, is known to me on first contact." Being around people was so difficult for him that he needed many periods of solitude to recover, and to retum to himself with "the breath of a free light playful air..." (Ecce Homo, p. 48-49)
Toughness - with enthusiasm Nietzsche describes the new human as "better and badder," as needing hardness, as being strong willed. He says, "another form of sagacity and self-defense consists in reacting as seldom as possible." (EH p. 63) He observes that all creators are hard. They have to be because they are, in the act of creating something new, destroying the old. He says, "We premature born of a yet undemonstrated future need...a new health, a stronger, shrewder, tougher, more daring, more cheerful health than any has been hitherto...a great health." (Ecce Homo, p. 101)
Serendipity - throughout his writings he talks about the value of an illness. "The man who lies in bed sometime ...gains wisdom from the leisure forced on him by his illness." "It was sickness that brought me to reason." (Ecce Homo, p. 56); "It was in the years of my lowest vitality that I ceased to be a pessimist." (Ecce Homo, p. 40) He also said that with every hurt or injury he revitalized himself and became stronger.
http://www.theintrovertzcoach.com/schiz ... #emergence
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COMMONALITY AMONGST THE WORLD'S MYSTICS:
If you study the life of past mystics you'll find they share several things in common:
First, they all speak of an induction – or of a need to learn/realize a new level of understanding. They all speak of a fundamental shift in consciousness (be it called awakening, realization, divination, or being born again).
Second, they all tell of making a journey into and through a despair process of being "undone" as the precursor to this fundamental shift in consciousness--be it through experiencing 40 days and nights in the wilderness, starving under the boddhi tree, facing the dark night of the soul, or the hero's journey. There is a Journey of metamorphosis that all mystics have undergone in some way.
Third, it is an inner journey that must be taken up and navigated alone. This is a hallmark of the mystic's realization: The reason the journey must be alone is because that which must be faced, seen, and surrendered in order that something new can emerge, is only possible through sustaining the fear and despair process of being alone and meeting the ultimate and fundamental fear of "non-being" and annihilation.
Fourth, they all seem to realize the frustration of being misunderstood by those who have not yet been through the awakening journey -- "those who have ears to hear, let him hear." A great deal of the mystical writings are devoted almost exclusively to the fact that fundamental spiritual truth cannot be understood by the intellect nor correctly
put into words. Forever, the great spiritual teachers have tried through the insufficiency of words to point toward that which can ever and only be experienced and known on a level that is before and beyond the mind. This is something unfathomable to those who have not yet had this breakthrough revelation - and particularly so in our contemporary culture that has become so overly reliant and blinded by the limiting paradigm of the scientific method that forever reduces our understanding of intelligence to that which is sensory, measurable and linear in nature. (...Life isn't (only or always) linear .. In fact it rarely is, except in man-made constructions and habituated uses of the mind.)
http://www.rondalarue.com/PAGES/WRITE%2 ... ystic.html
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Ryan: I believe that despite the cleansing nature of wisdom, many men attempting to live the path of wisdom get stuck with part of their shadow. It never goes away, but remains in the background, controlling their cognition.
Bob: Call it the 'shadow', but it's still the conditioned 'self', the cowardly and security seeking 'self' that prevents a total cleansing. Along with the refusal to look reality squarely in the eye.
Ryan: Perhaps many men who go insane couldn’t handle the continuous pull back of their shadow, and in the face of such conflict between the logical self, and the irrational emotional self, something snaps, there is an inability to live with and cope with ‘what is’.
Bob: I think going mad or insane is the result of a combination of clearly seeing reality (which only an extremely sensitive organism is capable of doing) and then not being able or willing to become pure Spirit. Or being totally driven by the Infinite in one's every word, thought, and deed.
