Hottish take—”enlightenment” and ethics are independent 🕉️

I think it’s better to have our agreed upon understanding of “awakening”, as independent from psychological maturity (growing up) and shadow material (cleaning up). We don’t ask our spiritual teachers to design our bridges or balance our books. Why should we assume someone with a persistent baseline of wild-empty wholeness is the best to design our morals, or balance our relationships?

Perhaps “enlightenment” and “ethics” are only separate when the awakening is partial, and we should be using the word to mean the whole thing. Distinguishing the two makes the pursuit of awakening less sexy (it won’t save us from hurting others or give us magic god-powers), but more honest. I think this is better. It helps us honor the gifts of people we might otherwise ignore, seeing everyone as our teachers. It helps us see the flaws of our most beloved gurus, to avoid and learn from their dark sides. It helps us keep from deluding ourselves into thinking our actions are ethical simply because we’re in flow. It helps us reclaim our golden shadows—the ‘awakening’ we can’t hold for ourselves that we project onto others. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. We’re it.

I think this difference is a property of nondual perception—with nowhere to get, nothing to attain, and nothing to clean up, what sense does right and wrong have? A whole host of unexamined and likely false reality-constructions—that I’m separate from everything and everyone else, that I have to earn love, that there’s something other than all here already, can be recognized as projections onto the things and people we think we need to improve.

With love, Jordan