Keeping the Sacred Flame

It is hard, to love.  It is worse to love and lose.  And yet, if we do not love, if we armor ourselves against caring, we lose completely.

Love is absolute.  We want to treasure the person we love, care for them.  Protect them.

And yet, the Divine only lends us those we love for a time.  We cannot hold them, we cannot force them to stay.  We love, but we do not control.  We are each a piece of the Divine, separate for a time as individual beings, then drawn back together into one great Whole.

But what we love is the individual.  The Divine is too abstract, too big.  We attach to individuals, and then we lose them.  Be it a fight, a death, a moving away, or a hundred other things, we cannot hold to those we love forever.

Treasure those you love.  Hold them close without stifling them.  Celebrate them often.  Because we are only granted those we love for a time.  And then they leave, and we must go on.

So it’s hard enough to know what to do when you find enlightenment.  But how do you find it in the first place?

There’s no easy answer.  It’s not waiting past a specific ritual, a proper way of life, or anything else like that.  It’s something that grows from action, from thought, from changing the way your mind thinks.  It’s a massive change, but it comes from the little things.

So how do you find enlightenment, and what does it mean?  I don’t know.  I have discovered pieces of it in the past, but never given to me as a gift entire, with a handy map to lead others to what I’ve found.  If such a map exists, I don’t have it – and I doubt it exists.  We are far too individual for one map to serve all.

What I do know is, enlightenment comes from the small things.  It is looking into the eyes of a beloved and realizing that, yes, this person IS Divine.  And so are you.  It comes from looking at a flower and seeing all that has come before to make that flower, and that it is merely an ephemeral link between the past and the future – but while it exists, it is the plant’s whole focus.  That time itself is like that – we stand at that precious second between the past and the future, and we create the future with every step.

Enlightenment is sharing that future with everyone, and living in such a way.  Open your eyes.  Share your future.

Questions:
What future do you want?  Do you want it for everyone?
What moments have brought you enlightenment?  How did they feel?
What do you cling to that stands in your way?  Why?

Enlightenment.  It’s something that’s a natural craving in the human mind, though we view it in different ways.  And we think that if we just get *the* answer, everything will suddenly make sense and be clear.

And it just doesn’t happen that way.  We wish it would, but it doesn’t.  Enlightenment doesn’t strike out of the blue, change your life, and then everything’s different.  But enlightenment doesn’t get rid of dirty dishes and irritating co-workers.  It changes your perspective, but it doesn’t change the world.

And even more importantly, it’s not a case of flipping a switch and you’re enlightened.  You can’t just take what insight you get, if you get any, and expect it to be done.  It’s a case of constant change and constant deepening of what it is you’ve perceived.  You can’t ever be done with it.  There’s no one answer, no ending.  It’s a journey that constantly spirals onward, and there’s always more to find.

Enlightenment isn’t finding the answer.  It’s finding a way of living that incorporates the questions.

Questions:
What do you look for with the concept of enlightenment?
What do you expect to change with insight?  Why?
How do you incorporate changes in worldview with a life that continues as it did the day before?