The only thing better than taoism...
 

I've spent my entire adult life going after spiritual enlightenment.
Which is both a good thing, and a bad thing.
Had I not done this, I could never have attained it.
While, at the same time, going after it was the very thing that ensured I would never find it.

I was able to succeed in the moment of abandoning my quest.

Taoism was the final vehicle that took me to these unattainable places.
And so taoism is right up there with the way and the means.
The final barrier was the label itself.

What am I now?
I am what I am.

Happy landing Crow.

I'm curious, how does Taoism define 'spiritual enlightenment'?

I don't think it does.
The masters live this state, and largely forego the dubious practice of attempting to describe it. Perhaps they forget there was ever a preexisting state. Or even that, for them, there wasn't one.

I envy them. They were born into a time where everything they said wasn't ripped into by forum-goers demanding various proofs and sources :)

its unusual to claim reaching any level of enlightenment without following a method that sets that as a goal.

Are you going to continue on the spiritual path, or have you 'gone far enough'?

My spiritual path is the only one I know. I will always travel it.
But not as a seeker. Not as a practitioner.
More like a retired old-timer.

Do you imagine Jesus followed a method to become what he became?
He starved and denied his material needs in the desert, resisting all temptation. He endured because he felt like it. He invented himself, on the spot. He was just that kind of guy.

My own experience closely parallels the transformation Jesus is reputed to have underwent. I ditched everything a man can ditch, and starved in the desert, for weeks, meditating and deep breathing, just to see where it went.
I was very surprised, indeed, when I discovered where it did go. I've never been remotely the same, since.

But I don't plan on repeating the tactical errors made by Jesus, if, indeed, they were mistakes.

Have I gone 'far enough'? In a way, yes. I've grown a soul, released it, seen it home and done my job. It is now everything, everywhere, always. No matter what my body and mind do now, that can not be undone. Fait accompli :)

:)

10 character minimum

I've run into that little rule too :)
Apparently a smile is not enough.
And when you consider it, maybe there's something in that.

hmmm you are saying you're enlightened. of course i question this and wonder if it is actually so. how do you know? would it not imply a preconceived notion of what enlightenment would be, so that you'd know and could, as you have, recognise it when it happened? and is that not the past acting? awareness never recognises it's awareness.

giving up the need for enlightenment might be necessary but merely seeing this intellectually does not mean that the concommittent change/result will occur in your actual life.

out of interest, can you levitate? do you have other sidhhi powers? i realise these are irrelevant but all the same, they are a by-product of enlightenment and would be present if it were so.

I am indeed saying I have been enlightened. Not that I now am.
I see that the term means something rather different to you than it does to me.
Communication on this probably is not possible.

i'll move along then :sad11:

a questionh as a parting shot:: would awareness/enlightenment allow itself to fall back to no awareness/enlightenment? if it did, could it ever have been awareness?