You think of love in this context as an emotion?
Liberal
You can refer to post 108 for a detailed commentary on exactly what I think of love in the context of enlightenment.
In short, loving acceptance is our natural state. However, the incessant drama of the mind eclipses our access to our natural state (being the state without mind). So to understand love in the realm of enlightenment is to lose the attachments and associations our mind has been conditioned to link to the conceptualization of love; namely need and certain set, often societal, expectations. This leaves only freedom and acceptance of the result of that freedom.
Or faith that the self is an illusion.
Woah, that was quite profound, and I said it. Cool!! 
Kidding aside, I think different vehicles work for different people on the spiritual journey. Jesus for some, Buddha for others, Muhammad, Bahá’u’lláh, etc. If their honest desire is to seek the truth, self discovery, spiritual awareness, then they will find their way through whatever vehicle seems to work for them. I’m not a huge fan of organized religion because I think people often get hung up on the dogma and tradition and loose sight of the purpose of personal spiritual growth, but, I know it works for lots of folks.
For me it boils down to seeking love and truth through all of life’s experiences and understanding how those things apply to our day to day , moment to moment life.
It’s easy to be holy and high minded if we meditate in a cave away from the world. Much harder when dealing with the details of life and it’s challenging cast of characters.
:blushes: Thanks, I’m still searching on my own, but I do love my uncles a lot. When I have kids, I know I won’t be able to answer their questions on religion very well- because I myself am unsure of it.
So instead I want them to just learn to want to desire knowledge- to find out for themselves. Read everything, learn from ALL texts of all religions, and realize that life in itself is a learning experience. So I’ll probably tell them lots of stories like that one, because they are the things that meant the most to me.
But thank you again.
As for the answer to “are you enlightened”
I don’t think it matters, at least you’re trying [I hope]. If you posted this thread truly to learn more about yourself, then that’s all that really matters.
In order to think?
I thought it covered all the bases. I have been reading this thread with great interest. We think alike on nearly all points. You use many words and I only a few. You are the teacher and I the healer. You are young and I am old. But the message of love is clear and resonates in our being. I am glad you are here, consider joining.
Yes, it is a very valuable video, she has written a book and does lectures. It is so hard to put into words the feelings of connection to the inner spirit. She does it so well. Millions have made the connection, but most have not. But they will in their own time.
All this business of becoming enlightened, and calm, and detached, and in peaceful harmony with everything is great, if that’s what floats your boat, but what if I don’t want to?
What if, for me, the highest goal of existence is to strive - to experience the highs and lows - to taste the bitter and sweet, to fail, succeed, or just exhaust myself trying, then relish the sensation of lying there gasping for the next breath - not to simplify, but to complexify - not to smooth out, but to roughen, then find interesting things in the cracks and crevices - to take anything apart, terrified that it might not go back together again, but doing it anyway - to break open the bones and suck out the marrow?
What if your ‘heaven’ is my ‘hell’?
Enlightenment doesn’t mean you can’t do all those things you listed, not at all. As for heaven and hell, they are what people want/make them to be.
But if it can be everything, how can it be anything?
Being everything is being anything.
At the same time as being nothing in particular.
Before the battle, every soldier is a hero.
Does it seem like Jesus was all peaceful harmony? Plenty of spiritual greats led lives that tasted the bitter and the sweet right?
At the same time being everything in particular.
Everything is not particular, Everything cannot be particular. Everything is general.
But what I mean to ask is this: What is the point of saying “This is the path to enlightenment… Well… this and every other.” ?
Don’t know what you mean. Enlightenment is self-discovery, connecting to your inner self. There are many ways of becoming enlightened.
Sorry for only now getting back to you on this!
Ah, ok then. Just as a general pointer, if you’re using a term differently than how the majority of people would use it, it’s helpful if you point it out. I thought you meant ego as in the ego/id/superego trinity, and though I guessed you weren’t referring to the other common definition it was confusing. 
But you’re defining and then rejecting it; and rejecting it purely because it falls into one category. It’s like looking at your foot, evaluating it, examining it, poking and prodding at it a bit, and then chucking it away. No matter the amount of analysis you do to it you’ve already admitted that you will be disregarding totally any inputs that come out of it. It wouldn’t be accepting your whole if you said “Ah, yes, my foot is there, and I know what it does, but I always ignore any inputs that come from it!”, so why is it so with a part of the mind?
Because an enlightened person, as you have suggested, feels no suffering. And thus they have no reason to choose a path outside that realm; they don’t need to. They have zero motivation to choose to avoid suffering because it has no hold over them; likewise, joy has no hold over them either. They have no motivation to do one or the other.
Why?
I can’t speak for you. But if I look at my life, and my mental state, and I had to evaluate where my happiness and loving feelings come from - i’d have to say they pretty uniformly came from my attachments. To people, places, whatever. Just as my suffering when a friend is hurt comes because i’m attached to them my joy when they’re happy too comes because i’m attached to them. Love is all about attachments; even in it’s most lonely form of narcissism it requires an attachment to yourself. Love and suffering are, in my eyes, from the same place; so I would say unless you can convince me that they have different sources, or are uniquely different in form, I don’t think you can eliminate suffering attachments without also harming your love ones.
Hoist by your own argument, I feel. “and quite entertained by it”? I could, as you’ve said, ignore the commentary - but then I wouldn’t get the entertainment out of it either. And likewise, by watching the game I might miss a particularly funny bit of banter.
I believe the mind can relate to life well, otherwise we would be totally unable to produce beautiful articulations ourselves. Authors, artists, writers, and those very same atheletes in that exciting sporting event need to be able to articulate that full beauty or they would not be able to produce great works, books, paintings, or a neat cross into the box. 
After all, if we can’t fully concieve in the mind the full majesty of the world, then all we can do on purpose is drudgery, and all we can do that matches that wonder is luck, and not based on anything we can do. The next time you are moved by a fantastic piece of music or moving poetry, remember that that came from a mind.
This point worries me, and it leads me to ask you a question;
Can love ever be a bad thing?
I don’t believe the self, absent of the egoic mind you describe, would only know love. Why would it? That which makes us greedy or selfish is that we attach worth to things. A selfish person attaches worth to money, or love, or delicious cake, and tries to hoard it or take more than their fair share. But a person in love attaches those they love with worth. A charitable person attaches the money they give away with worth, or they wouldn’t think giving it would help. You as a person seeking or having had sought enlightenment attaches worth to that goal and to the truth. What about these attachments means you’ve been able to look over them all and come to the understanding that only the bad ones come from what you call the ego? What quality is it they have that both seperates the good attachments from bad, and also associates the bad attachments only with the “commentating” mind? I honestly do not see them.
Well, then as I’m not really willing to let go of that, I think i’ll keep it. But let me ask you this question.
For you to see my way of thinking, I don’t think you need to let go of anything. On the contrary, I would say that the best way I can think of that would get you to agree with me would be both judging the situation from where you are at now, also including the reports from your egoic mind (if only temporarily; as your servant, i’m assuming you can go back to discarding it afterwards ;)); reading books, debating all the people in this thread and also trying to see things from their particular points of view, and going off in general to search for a look at both the learned people who’d agree with you and the learned people who don’t.
For me to see your way of thinking best, you’ve suggested I try to not take into account particular things.
Now, in general, I would say that we can’t ever know anything for certain. There’s no point at all at which we can really say “This is, with 100%, a fact of the universe”. That we say there are facts or things are so is just a way we have of speaking; we can never really be entirely sure of anything, and theoretically the odds are incredibly long that we’re ever right at all. But I would say if we tried to find the truth of a matter, the best way is to take everything into account. That the good things, the ones that correctly point us to the truth, will outweigh the things that are false and don’t. So when I hear someone say “To truly understand, you must consider this input as entirely worthless”, it kinda makes me wonder why they think their position is so untenable that the removal of *one single factor against it *will stop people believing.
IOW, if the only things stopping me agreeing are intelligence and well-versedness (and I think if I were truly either i’d know the correct word to use there), then the only things stopping you agreeing with me are those same things. And if agreement hinges on just those two piddling factors in a world of billions upon billions, if the line between them is of a metaphorical atom’s width - what value does the truth of either side have that it can claim superiority over the other?
Sounds attachment-y, to me. I would say that a problem with your outlook is that you’re assuming a bit too much the extension of you part and bit too little the extention of them part. That is, you’re assuming too much that people are like you and would react like you would to your situation and ideas. I don’t doubt you’re a good person; but I don’t think you can assume from that that another person with the same ideas could be a bad one.
It does make sense. But I don’t agree with it. Removing stage fright, for example, also means the loss of anticipation. Half the fun of something is the build-up to it. You can’t discard worrying about the future without also discarding looking forward to it. I wouldn’t be willing to give up my memories of a not-entirely-fun school life if it meant I lost my nostalgia as well. It’s not so easy to seperate the good from bad in this way.
My egoic mind doesn’t see it that way, to be honest with you.
The problem of that being, of course, that a world of Christs would not stop the torturers. Unconditional love for all might be nice, but being crucified kinda stops you doing that. Accepting all means accepting other people stopping you from doing so. I’m an atheist, but I have to imagine that if Christ believed after he was dead he’d have no more chances to spread his word, he probably would have got out of that situation. Unconditional love is only a good thing when you’re able to bypass the conditions others place on you as well, and the rest of us don’t have a get out of jail free card.
I don’t believe you did establish that. You just said it was so.
I would argue that people act illogically because love is just a part of the mind as the rational parts are, and so we act crazily because the two (and everything else) is in conflict quite a lot.
You’ve hit upon the exact nub of the problem. There is zero reason why.
But there is equally zero reason why not.
I would say that if we cannot conceptualize it, we cannot experience it. Experiencing it is true and present conceptualization, after all. I don’t believe you can both say “This is something we cannot fully understand” and “I am experiencing it, I know what it is, this is the way to it” - if you don’t know what it is, how do you know you’re experiencing it?
You may have missed the video if you just now enter the thread which explains how enlightenment may happen.
I have not seen a post from Friedah35 for several days, I hope he will be back.
By having a stroke? I’m surprised to find you championing a concept of self that exists as the mind.
Anyway, I don’t think the woman in the video’s lecture makes sense. She claims to be able to step back into that enlightenment, that nirvana, whenever she wants. Yet, she must be choosing not to, as she could not do her lecture whilst in it. But if that is so, then it cannot be true nirvana, as she prefers to do something else than to exist in it. I would also say that her assertion that because she has done something, everyone must be able to, is wrong. I can’t write fantastic musical compositions because Mozart could.
And generally I would say that i’m not willing to give up my happy memories for my bad ones. She apparently feels that way, but hey, i’m not her. 