I Don't Want to Be Enlightened. Not Yet, Anyway.

I think my main struggle with Eastern philosophy is the recurring sense that I really don't wish to seek enlightenment. Or at least, not in the all-encompassing sense that I feel many of the leaders in thought and philosophical rhetoric have emphasized in what I have read. I do believe in a state that I would equate with enlightenment...I spend a little time in that state now and again. But it is nothing that I strive for. It generally steals upon me, blooms from some little quirk of thought or observation, and I'm happy to inhabit it for awhile. What that state feels like to me is the absence of peripheries. My eyes feel softer, unfocused, but what I see is very clear. Colors are more vivid, sounds are quieter. It feels like living right beneath the surface of my skin. Smiling feels brighter, like light escaping through the cracks. Speech flows very smoothly, and the words settle just right. It is more immediate living, beyond the layers of heavy thought.

Maybe that is not enlightenment. I certainly didn't do anything to achieve it. I didn't meditate or ingest a drug or climb to a mountain temple beforehand. It is a very good feeling, whatever the root. Very settled. Very sure.

But

Sometimes I don't want to be sure. Sometimes I want to scurry along haphazardly through my day, and be fully present in some other facet of emotion, even if it is negative. I don't enjoy anger, or sadness. But I appreciate the breadth of those emotions nonetheless. If I am angry, at least I am not complacent. If I am sad, at least I get to have that hollowed-out peace after I cry. I truly enjoy what I deem my state of "sometimes-enlightenment." Someday I might even want to live in it full-time. But for now I am pretty comfortable with being young and foolish, and dwelling in each state that happens upon me. That may not be an enlightened way of thinking, but it fits.