soprano wrote:
Enlightenment is an accident does not go in my toe nor in MBT. If we can have some relationship between lowering entropy and enlightenment, lowering entropy is not mainly based on accidents (even though accidents can affect it), but in attitude, in change.
Some can wait for accidents, others can search and train. We all have free will.
Claudio
I have a feeling that "enlightenment is an accident" is mostly a semantic issue, or perhaps an issue of perspective. From the biggest perspective we can take, you're right, there probably (I say probably because I have not experienced this perspective, can only go by what others say) are no accidents. From a much much smaller perspective, however...
Let me see if I can illustrate what I mean in another way: I'm a writer, albeit a beginning one. In the last two years I've put a lot of my energy into writing, at times consciously focusing on different aspects of my writing, attempting to improve them. This has helped a lot. However, at the same time my writing seems to have evolved in ways that I was NOT consciously focusing on, changes and improvements have occurred simply as a result of writing regularly, rather than consciously working towards these changes (And in fact, I probably never would have been able to work towards these things, because I hadn't really realized they existed). This second and more unconscious side of my writing development has thus felt, in a way, "accidental." (In another sense, of course, it's not accidental, but rather a result of continued writing practice, but I still hope you see what I mean.)
I feel that this is what Wilber gets at when he says enlightenment is accidental. There's only so much effort and control we can bring upon a thing, some part of it is totally beyond our control, and I think it would be silly to believe that we could control this process fully. Surrender is a part of it too, I think. I like the way Ramon put it:
Quote:
Whew. What a mouthful! Having said all that I think I see a point to Wilber's statement. Tom has also said that to experience the larger reality we basically need to stop doing all the things that block it. Learning to meditate helps us remove those blocks to our awareness that keep it limited to a confined reality. When those blocks are removed, our current awareness can expand. So by saying that enlightenment is an accident and that meditation makes us more accident prone, sometimes we do need to learn to get out of our own way and let things happen.
I also think it's somewhat unfair to take such a statement in isolation. Who knows what the context was within which that line was said, what explanatory words went along with it? I've read a few of Wilber's books, and I usually find his ideas very discerning and logical.
Well, I guess that's my two cents, for the time being anyways... until I learn something new to change my mind!
All the best to everyone,
Julia
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