This one has been solved.
I always thought the sound of one hand clapping was an applau.
Been there.
Done that.
Visualized the t-shirt.
Did a smell of petroleum prevail throughout ?
This is the part where you get whacked with a stick!
This is the sound of one hand clapping:
Yes, it was very profound and also ephemeral. It is something that I see as both a gift and a burden. Like I said processing the new understanding will take some time.
I do have plans to talk to somebody, later today, about the experience.
By random coincidence, this video appeared in my YouTube feed this morning and it is a pretty good break down of what happened:
I’ll know when I’ve truly achieved enlightenment the day I don’t feel compelled to brag about it on the Internet.
There was a guy on the Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg podcast who had done a metric fuckton of qualitative research on the general state of enlightenment, or what he called “fundamental well-being.” He appeared to me to be a serious scholar, but he had run into a lot of stigma with his research interests. He had operationally defined fundamental well-being for the purposes of research and tried to determine its nature by talking to the people from every religious tradition who were considered enlightened by whatever cultural standard. He found that there are many different paths to fundamental well-being as he defined it, and that there are a minimum of 25 different stages of enlightenment and that at later stages people can easily switch from one to the other, as necessary. I found him very interesting to listen to, if a bit obnoxious, however he kinda lost me when he talked about his training institute where he teaches people to be enlightened by cycling them through every known technique to see what sticks (mostly various forms of meditation.) It’s not that I don’t think theoretically it could work but the likelihood of people staying in that state outside of a controlled training seems very small, so what’s the point? He said most people can achieve fundamental well-being with an hour of meditation a day, which actually I believe. But if that’s true, it’s no great accomplishment, is it?
I am truly sorry that my sharing what was, for me, a very positive experience should cause you such a negative response.
…the soul descends further into the inner earth, attaining ever greater levels of purification, reaching enlightenment at the core. Assuming, of course, that your soul is able to avoid, the lava men.
I sent an email to my favorite cartoonist with the subject Enlightenment (or something to that effect), and he responded, and then the next couple cartoons were riffs on our exchange.
I’m fucking famous, 4 orders of Don’t Give A Fuck!
Their voice gets a cool reverb effect, which really sounds good when they start expounding about "The power of DARKNESSSS!"
I have acheived enlightenment, for a few hours but I did not take it too seriously as I was using LSD at the time.
Quite fun though.
Do people who achieve enlightenment stay enlightened? Seems like if one is able to isolate themself from all external stimuli, they’d be prone to staying in that state without experiencing any signs that their physical state might be in danger.
That was one thing the guy pointed out in the podcast - there are times you have to get less enlightened to have meaningful relationships with your kids or respond to danger and stuff. Because there are certain phases of fundamental well-being where you stop feeling love for people or concern for yourself and it gets really problematic.
Apropos Doonesbury today: WP link
I’m guessing you meant this one: