Existential Advocates Forum Awake or enlightened?

I've been ruminating on the concept of enlightenment.  The Buddha pointed out that "a journey well travelled is far better than the destination."  It seems to me that it's the seeking of knowledge, in many ways, that qualifies many of us as "awake" or aware of our divinity and gives us a glimpse towards discovering our specific purpose.  I have two questions for everyone, and I'd appreciate your honest opinions.  They are as follows:

Do you believe that the journey of awakening is better than the arrival at complete awareness?

Is this awakening the same as enlightenment?

In my own writings I desire to always infuse a certain sense of awe at the processes many take for granted.  It's fun to share simple "revelations" through imagery.  Like telling a cute story about a child's first bowl of ice cream and making allusions to the excitement that is tempered by the discovery that too much cold can be a bad thing.  Monumental discoveries work, also, to help me share insights.  For example, I just started a story in which an author finds that he's "channeling" the description of a woman who is in the middle of living through a car accident.  The entire experience starts out as a "runaway train" experience but should end on a more "comforting" note as he discovers just exactly why this is happening.

I look forward to hearing from each of you.

Love and light, dear ones.

~ Jodie

Hello Jodie :) My experiences have led me to view enlightenment as an action rather than something which is attained, the lightening of Being, or the letting go and resolving of the heaviness which encumbers the essence of who we are. The more enlightened we are, the more we have disidentified ourselves with the Pain Body and the belief systems which hold us down in this world. Enlightenment reflects purity of consciousness and a remembering of who we truly are as divine beings. Certainly awareness helps us to see more clearly what it is that holds us down from an enhanced and somewhat detached perspective. Realizing that one is "heavy" is a major step, because it is then that one can "lighten" the load. I would say that this step is an awakening, and the awakening leads to enlightenment as we remember who we truly are and dissolve the things we have identified ourselves with in this life.

I love the idea that the Being and the Becoming are one and the same; meaning, we are becoming what we already are. Pure consciousness rests in each of us and transcends time/space. If our awareness remains locked in time/space, we are more inclined to identify ourselves with belief systems and adverse emotions, or the Pain Body. And, the awakening, judging from my own experiences, is the realization that these systems and adverse emotions are not who we truly are. The enlightening is the letting go of who we believed ourselves to be, and the opening up to purer consciousness. We really don't have to "attain" anything. We just have to let go.

Much love and many blessings to everyone,

Nathan

I definitely do believe that the journey of any trek or trip in general is far more significant then the ending. Logically, you can't get anywhere you would like to go without a journey, we do not have teleporting abilities and we are not natural aviators. I have always believed that the individual parts of something are more important then the actual thing. In turn, those individual parts are made up of individual parts and so on. The word enlightenment itself is made up of parts. This relates to cause and effect, a minute only passes because a minute passed just before that one. The experiences and memories you get when you take a trip is what will make you a better person and more adept for the ending. The maker or the owner of a toy is more important then the toy itself because without him, the toy would not exist. As humans, we are never alone, we get hit with effects every single day. Enlightenment is only a thin slice out of the whole loaf.