It isn't necessary to navel gaze. One can be mindful of breath and actions/sensations while performing almost any task and have a walking meditation. Nor is the idea to concentrate on past hurts but to note them, as they come up, and learn to detach from them (thereby letting them go). Taoists agree that preserving them, like museum pieces, gives them power which is unhealthy.

Interesting. I'll go read that later.

Worth posting here.
“ Although I realize the popular imagination may wander in that direction, I don’t think enlightenment is
“trying to transcend what it means to be human”.

I think
“…grounding ourselves in our lives and who we are as human beings can ultimately be a lot more fulfilling” may be something of a paradoxical statement, because such grounding in reality is actually a lot closer to the enlightened state.

It can be a lot more fulfilling to be grounded in reality than to suffer over an unobtained goal.

The fable of the Fox and the Grapes reminds us that it is human nature to tell ourselves that the ‘difficult to obtain’ is probably not really desirable anyway.

And that’s probably as good a way as any to avoid an unproductive obsession with the goal.

But I think it’s worth stating that the goal is real, and obtainable. That is to say, not magic or merely mythological, but based in human biology.

It’s just that the methods we have for getting there are multi-thousand year-old antiques, and possibly not the best suited for the modern mindset. It’s an area that science - until very recently - has been reluctant to study. So we have some catching up to do.

So my advice is to pursue the enlightenment of conscious understanding. If meditation worked for you that’s great. But if it didn’t, you could study science. Particularly biology. Particularly evolution.

Once you understand deeply what made you and therefore who you really are, you can no longer sustain illusions of who you aren’t. Then the bubble bursts. And it will not reconstitute itself.

It’s not just a momentary experience, or something that has to be constantly propped up. It’s an irreversible, structural change in cognitive development. It’s not easy, or guaranteed, but it is real… and very much worth the work.

It can be very frustrating and counterproductive to endlessly pursue something you can’t quite picture in your mind, and I think it’s impossible to picture “enlightenment” accurately until you have achieved it. So it’s better to simply follow your curiosity about your own nature with the most modern tools available and be aware that one of your natural capacities that evolution provided is the ability to outgrow the habit of suffering.

Best regards.”

“ So it’s better to simply follow your curiosity about your own nature with the most modern tools available and be aware that one of your natural capacities that evolution provided is the ability to outgrow the habit of suffering.”. Thanks for that @Skado.

@MsKathleen "Once you understand deeply what made you and therefore who you really are, you can no longer sustain illusions of who you aren’t."

I think we are an electron clumped together with other electrons by polarity. That bonding creates a vibration and we are a shared illusion within the wave. We are not real so there is no evolution, there is no creation, there is no science, there is no god. There is nothing to argue about. We are each contributing to the story being written as the wave unfolds until our polarity changes and we disconnect from the other electrons. Humans call that death. Until that happens we try to keep this illusion from causing our death.

@rainmanjr Okay.

Very nice comment. I agree wholeheartedly with the thought "Once you understand deeply what made you and therefore who you really are, you can no longer sustain illusions of who you aren’t. Then the bubble bursts. And it will not reconstitute itself."