Enlightenment Puzzle

The Pieces of the Enlightenment Puzzle

There are at least Twelve Pieces of the Enlightenment Puzzle which we must understand. If we ignore one, it will get us.

1.  The “Pain-body Piece” of the Puzzle.  Pain or stress is an ever-present piece of the puzzle of the process ofenlightenment, signaling something awry.

2.  The “Human Parent” Piece of the Puzzle:  We assume that parents are our source and that we are their progeny, but this is only a surface appearance.  God is our parent, and we are the emanations of God. God is light and we are rays of light.  God is the ocean and we are the waves. God is the tree and we are the leaves. God is the vine and we are the branches.

3.  The “Programmed World” Piece of the Puzzle.  Usually we do not recognize the world as programming.  We assume that the world is reality. We do not even see ego identity as programmed.  Unless we recognize the Programmed world, we become and remain its potential victim in all that we think, do and say. To observe our habitual experience of the world as programming, we have to step out of it and become its objective observer or witness.  If we judge our programming, even the judging is part of the programming and we have not yet stepped out of it.

It’s like life is a drama occurring on a stage and we are in the drama as one of the actors along with other actors, but only as we step off the stage and sit in the audience do we see our drama as drama. From this vantage point, we can begin to see that we are the co-creator (writer, director, producer) of the drama, along with the collective mind.

The “context” piece is another name for programming.  Everything occurs in a context of some kind.  The survival context, for example, is universal, although very narrow and confining.

4.  The “Conflict Piece” of the puzzle.  There are many conflicts in the programmed world, but they can all be reduced to one:  “there ought to be good for me, but this good is absent.”  There is a conflict between what I think I want and what I think I have, and this is stressful and so we project this conflict outward and try to erase it there.  (See MacDougald, Glasser, Ford, Hopkins and Hora, A.R. Luria)  A better name for the Conflict Piece might be the Discrepancy Piece of the Puzzle.  Luria, A. R. (1962)

• Higher Cortical Functions in Man. Moscow University Press. Library of Congress Number: 65-11340
• Luria, A. R. (1963). Restoration of Function After Brain Injury. Pergamon Press.
• Luria, A. R. (1970). Traumatic Aphasia: Its Syndromes, Psychology, and Treatment. Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 90-279-0717-X.  Summary at BrainInfo
• Luria, A. R. (1973). The Working Brain. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-09208-X.
• Luria, A. R. (1976). The Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-13731-0.
• Luria, A. R.; Bruner, Jerome (1987). The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book About A Vast Memory. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-57622-5.
• Luria, A. R.; Solotaroff, Lynn (1987). The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54625-3.
• Luria, A.R. (2005). Autobiography of Alexander Luria: A Dialogue with the Making of Mind. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. ISBN 0-805-85499-1.

5.  The Cosmological Piece of the puzzle is that the universe is random, meaningless, purposeless.  This can also be called

The “Phenomenological” Piece of the Puzzle.  We assume that the body and the world are made of matter, which makes death seem real.  In the Programmed World, we assume that phenomena are real, and that circumstances produce experiences.

6.  The “Symbol Piece” of the Puzzle is when we believe that we know what we want and don’t want, when actually we only know our symbols of what we want and don’t want.

7.  The “Symptomatic Piece” of the Puzzle occurs when we follow our programming and experience anxiety in physical, emotional, mental, financial and social symptoms

8.  The “Self-Medication Piece” of the Process of Enlightenment is a habitual unconscious reaction to stress in which we try to correct, fix or treat the symbols and symptoms of our programmed perceptions, feelings, physiology and behavior.

9.  The “Reactionary Piece” of the Puzzle is when we realize that we are not acting but reacting.  The ego reacts, only the Self can act.

10.  The “Personalism Piece” of the Puzzle.  WE believe that we are human beings—finite, autonomous, choosing, thinking, decision-making persons, but we are not.  We are spiritual beings and have never been separated from Infinite Consciousness Itself.

11.  The “Collective Mind Piece” of the Puzzle.  Our reactionary thoughts and experiences come from the Sea of Mental Garbage but our real thoughts come from the Ocean of Infinite Love-Intelligence (God).

12.  The “Problem Piece” of the Process of Enlightenment Puzzle. Problems seem to exist just as the Programmed finite world does, which means that we do not yet realized the Reality of the Infinite Perfect world. We think we live in a problematic world as problem-solvers.  As far as the ego is concerned, the Infinite does not exist.

13.  “Enlightenment” The ego is committed to the familiar, to the concrete, to the symbolic, and to survival strategies, and has no interest in enlightenment.  Enlightenment is not difficult, but interest in enlightenment is.  Enlightenmentis not something we do, but the ego thinks it is a doer. Enlightenment is awareness and the ego is not aware.Enlightenment is not a feeling nor an experience, it is our true state of being.  The ego lives through  thoughts, feelings and experiences which are controlled by the programmed world. The ego likes to think it is in control, but it is not—it is a victim of programming.  Only in enlightenment-awareness are we free, secure, unconditional, and content.  The ego likes to think it is a fixer, but nothing is broken in the Real World of God. The ego likes to think it is a realist, but the ego is an ignorant programmed dreamer.  You are not an ego nor is anyone else.

Belief and dis-belief in religion and god are part of the programmed world because they are polarized into subject and object.  Spirituality has no subject and object, all is one.