Perspective - use it or lose it. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world - even if what is published is not true.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."

You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect, then be sure of one thing: the Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed. It feel an impulsion...this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.

The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that's all it needs to be.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Everything in this book may be wrong.

From: “Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”

Has anyone ever read Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach ?

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts

You teach best what you most need to learn.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

I know of a caterpillar with no urge to fly.
This urge is inherent in a caterpillar’s nature, coded in its soul.
This particular caterpillar was abandoned and physically and emotionally scarred.
But scars or no scars, urge or no urge, his destiny is to metamorphose and unfold in his true and beautiful form, leaving the scars of old behind to fly above the world as he previously saw it…
All attempts to alter this life-course are futile, and with certain inevitability the tell- tale signs of a cocoon will appear...
He will be thrust into a process ugly, scary and unknown, to emerge as a breathtaking and inspiring butterfly.
I’ll tell him that I never stopped believing in him, for I saw his wings all along…

Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

Enlightenment stretches across divisive lines.. no ONE religion or spiritual path can claim exclusive rights toward enlightenment.. so I am curious... what is enlightenment to you?

You may include your opinion of the process in getting there, which is always interesting, but my main focus is:
What do you think enlightenment is?

What distinguishes an enlightened person from a non-enlightened person?

Is it an end in and of itself, or a process/journey?

What is the purpose of enlightenment.. ?

Both make mistakes, experience sorrow, and suffer failure. The enlightened person learns something from these experiences, the unenlightened person does not.

It's a survival mechanism. Since humans as a species are no longer dominated by the need to procure food and procreate, like our animal cousins, we have a great deal of free time in which to observe our world, and this enriches our spirit. As I said earlier, to stop learning is to die- and the spirit has a survival instinct, as well. Thus, as we avoid death physically, so too do we avoid it spiritually.

and the spirit has a survival instinct, as well. Thus, as we avoid death physically, so too do we avoid it spiritually.

Once I believed that all of existence was 1 thing finding every conceivable way to interact with itself , and perceive itself, all in an attempt at defining exactly what it was in the first place.
I remember following my roommate down the stairwell, and I started imagining 1 thing interacting with itself to create the stairs, my roommate, myself, our perceptions of each other and the stairs, and our ability to walk down the stairs. It seemed to make the most ridiculous sense to me at the time. I suddenly had to laugh at it all.
I convinced myself that I had just figured out the universe.

That was almost a year ago, and nowadays I can't even being to follow that line of thinking anymore.
It has no weight with me now. It makes no sense.

Are we physical beings that have spiritual experiences or are we spiritual beings having a physical experience?

It's a matter of perspective, but a poignant one. We are in these bodies to learn in this incarnation - to grow - to become enlightened as it were.
When we know that all our experiences are meant to be, created by ourselves - for ourselves, then we can choose to learn from these experiences and gain - well - enlightenment.

What distinguishes an enlightened person from a non-enlightened person?

When we are not attached, thus aware*, and abide thus we are Enlightened.