Bodhisattva? Me? No, no, I just teach. A bodhisattva is a human who has reached enlightenment. How many levels of enlightenment are there? Sometimes the light goes on and I understand something I had been ruminating about for awhile. I get it but does that equal enlightenment? Maybe it depends on who you are...or, if you meditate to claim your inner being and you do it for years and years and years yet you never feel as if enlightenment is just around the corner but you keep on meditating, is that enlightenment? Or the moment you realize the consumer's idea of God does not match yours? Certainly that's enlightenment? No? We're running out of options. What do you think?
At one time, many years ago when I had given up alcohol, drugs, and marijuana, I was taught how to self-hypnotize. Best thing that ever happened to me. I know people always say that about different events in their life and it makes me wonder: can you have more than one "best" thing that ever happened to you in your life? Best is a superlative used to describe a single event. Theoretically, there is nothing better than best. Correct me if I'm wrong. Self-hypnosis is meditating without meditating. I would sit on the couch, go into the zone for about twenty minutes, wake myself up. I felt great after that. Once a day while in college, at least the last year of college. It went away when my first wife told me she was divorcing me. My last semester at the university was about to begin. I was required to quit my wonderful job as stir-fry chef at The Mustard Seed restaurant when it was across from the Opera House in Spokane. I wasn't supposed to work as this was the semester I was to dedicate to student teaching. I didn't know how I wasn't going to work and support a family. I suppose the divorce announcement and consequent move from the apartment of my then wife and daughter freed me up a bit, although I should have been paying child support, I suppose. No, I wasn't divorced yet.
So out the window went the ability to calm myself into a trance like state and rest deeply. I haven't been able to get it back. I miss it. We are all at our best when well rested, especially me. It runs in the family. What's left of the family, anyway. Maybe I'll cross that subject later.
So, who is enlightened? The Dalai Lama? He knows a lot of good quotes that ring true, most common sense. The Pope. Nope. Any of us, really? Maybe this is my time in life to be confused. Those who claim enlightenment shouldn't. It's not really the sort of thing you would brag about if you were enlightened. Me, I'd just keep it to myself because as sure as getting killed by stepping in front of a moving bus, someone will want to argue about it. Just be enlightened. I'll feel it.
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