Dear Friends,
What is Enlightenment?
99% of the responses I get are:
"The map is not the territory.”
"You can’t understand it through language.”
"Those are just words.”
Which yes, is technically correct.
But there’s a huge point being missed here.
Our maps are so out-dated that the norm in our society is to completely dismiss the territory.
Culturally, we see only the physical, material aspects of existence as real and substantial.
So let’s first develop a map that POINTS TO ALL THE TERRITORY(including higher states of consciousness) BEFORE WE DROP THE MAP and go into the heart of experience (the territory itself).
And this is where GOD comes into the conversation.
Our map of God is one of the most outdated maps I know.
That’s why no rational and intelligent human being can get behind the idea of God.
The label God in western culture has currently been reduced to the level of the mythic “fairy tale” God.
The man in the sky who watches our every move.
But this isn’t the only God there is. It’s just the mythic-version of God.
There’s also the rational version of God.
The postmodern, multicultural version of God.
The Integral God.
The god that is Awakening, Nonduality, Liberation, Eternity, I AMness, Formlessness, Emptiness.
But in our modern culture we have few well-known maps to help people navigate these waters of postmodern and transrational spirituality.
How might our world change if we upgraded our semiotics around God?
How might our culture change if we moved beyond the current widespread nihilistic existence of consumerism and materialism by upgrading our sensemaking around God, Spirituality, and the domain of the Absolute?
Perhaps we can guide people towards postmodern and transrational spirituality not through telling them that all their maps are bullshit, but by upgrading our maps to include the territory of this entirely unmapped ontological reality that includes nondual and causal states of awareness.
Love,
Ethan
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