01-25-2016, 10:59 PM
I tend to shy away from saying someone is either awakened or unawakened, partially do to the fact that in reality, it is not a binary either/or scenario from my perspective, but rather a continuum of understanding with infinite gradations. Thus, one person may be aware of unity to a greater extent than another being, and I really have no legitimate way of quantifying it. To some extent, I get an intuitive sense of it by talking to a given individual or just by being around them, or reading words they wrote, but beyond that I do not know the depth of their understanding of the nature of reality.
I think people with a strong sense of purpose are the closest to what I would consider "awakened". In a sense, they know who they are because they know what type of change they would like to affect or create in their lives. Someone like that may not be aware of unity in a metaphysical sense, yet nevertheless are seemingly guided by strong spiritual purpose. I don't believe there is a universal terminology.
I realize you are talking about something that is possibly different from what people think of as "enlightenment", but I think the word "enlightenment" has become extremely bastardized to the point where I cringe when I hear it nowadays, because I don't think it has any meaning anymore. I see people claim it like a kind of status, and then of course a bunch of people rip into them because of the intimations raised by such a claim. Nobody becomes "enlightened" because enlightenment is the dissolution of self or ego. So the second somebody makes the claim, I become immediately dubious of anything else they say from that point onwards. If such an awakening occurred, they would feel no impulse to proclaim it in the first place.
But I suppose in a general sense, I could see the phrase "spiritually awakened" meaning something generally akin to what you are aiming to define in this thread. If somebody says they are "spiritually awakened" it communicates to me that they have seen beyond the material illusion to a purpose greater than that of simple random entropy implied by a strictly physical world.
It indicates a degree of awareness of unity, at the very least, because after all, what is spirituality if not an awareness of unity?
I think people with a strong sense of purpose are the closest to what I would consider "awakened". In a sense, they know who they are because they know what type of change they would like to affect or create in their lives. Someone like that may not be aware of unity in a metaphysical sense, yet nevertheless are seemingly guided by strong spiritual purpose. I don't believe there is a universal terminology.
I realize you are talking about something that is possibly different from what people think of as "enlightenment", but I think the word "enlightenment" has become extremely bastardized to the point where I cringe when I hear it nowadays, because I don't think it has any meaning anymore. I see people claim it like a kind of status, and then of course a bunch of people rip into them because of the intimations raised by such a claim. Nobody becomes "enlightened" because enlightenment is the dissolution of self or ego. So the second somebody makes the claim, I become immediately dubious of anything else they say from that point onwards. If such an awakening occurred, they would feel no impulse to proclaim it in the first place.
But I suppose in a general sense, I could see the phrase "spiritually awakened" meaning something generally akin to what you are aiming to define in this thread. If somebody says they are "spiritually awakened" it communicates to me that they have seen beyond the material illusion to a purpose greater than that of simple random entropy implied by a strictly physical world.
It indicates a degree of awareness of unity, at the very least, because after all, what is spirituality if not an awareness of unity?
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