Travis Eneix thinks “Enlightenment” is a loaded word for many people, meaning many different things. But, perhaps it’s just a shift in perception.
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Two of the methods humans can come to deal with reality in new ways are through increased understanding, or through paradigm shifts in the locus of perception.
When we learn something new, the influx of data changes the net amount of information we have available. The new data also alters the other information we already have. This is how we modify our models for navigating reality with increased understanding and skill. We learn better how to deal with situations. We can also re-categorize previous experience in light of the increased understanding. In the Integral Model, this is referred to as Translation. We learn new ways to translate the arising phenomenon we encounter differently. Ideally in a beneficial way.
When I studied the Integral Model there was a lot of this taking place. It’s a beefy philosophical system, but one I think is well worth the time. Slowly I read the books of Ken Wilber (with one four year break when I got a bad taste for his style, but that’s another story…), one after the other. He is not a terse writer. His, “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality” clocks in at 900 pages, and I am not a speedy reader. I also have no problem with re-reading the same paragraph five times until I grok it. As I read through book after book, my world view slowly shifted into something like an Integral view. My understanding changed over time, and information (new and old) took on new meanings and flavors.
Suffice to say that a change in paradigm adjusts the seminal position from which you view life.
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Paradigm shifts are a beast of a different stripe. Your paradigm constitutes the basic center of your view on reality. In this way, a paradigm is comparable to Tim Leary’s idea of a reality-tunnel. Your reality-tunnel is the subset of reality which you are able, or allowed, to experience. There are a lot of factors involved, from your cultural upbringing, to the wavelengths of light your eyes can process. A paradigm acts as a kind of “center of gravity” within that reality tunnel. Your paradigm, for the most part, determines your starting point when processing an arising occasion within your reality-tunnel. A paradigm shift then represents a change in the way you fundamentally, and initially process events you encounter in reality.
For instance, if you have been brought up with the script that all Jews are bad, then when you meet someone wearing a yamaka you will likely have a negative view on that person, as opposed to if you had been raised with no opinion about Jews, but instead a healthy fascination with head wear.
Your paradigm helps define your initial categorization of any incoming datum. Therefore, a shift in your paradigm can represent a radical break with your old way of dealing with incoming signals, and the taking on of entirely new ways of processing information. For this reason, a shift in paradigms often has a far greater impact on your journey through life than an increase in understanding. Increases in understanding represent steady and gradual change over time, where as paradigm shifts represent a quantum leap in your reality-tunnel. In the Integral Model this is referred to as Transformation. The Integral Model usually visualizes development of the individual as a hierarchy of increasing capacity to take more views into account, and to extend care into ever wider circles. Translations (as mentioned above) represent new ways of handling input at your current level of development. Transformation then represents a move to a higher level. Personally I prefer to think of paradigm shifts a bit more freely, and like the idea that Transformation can also represent radical moves within a certain level, but that’s really a bit of semantic hair-splitting. Suffice to say that a change in paradigm adjusts the seminal position from which you view life.
One of my most clear personal moments of paradigm shifts happened when I was thirteen years old. I had a “big brother” from the Big Brother program. His name was Art, and he was a computer geek. He taught me the Basic program language. I took to it quickly, with one noted exception: arrays. An array is a basic database where you declare a set of indexes and assign data within the structure created. These arrays can have one, two, or three dimensions. I understood right away how useful they were, but for the life of me I could not “get” them. Working with arrays was always a frustration filled nightmare for me. Then, in my first year of high school, the computer teacher Dr. Steffle said to me, “It’s like a dresser. The first index is your columns of drawers, and the second index is your rows. The third index would add depth to the set of drawers, but that wouldn’t work so well in a real dresser. Do you see what I mean?” Boy did I! Suddenly I got the idea of arrays (and my extension all database structures) in a deeply visceral way. From that point on they were no longer a source of frustration. I’ve never forgotten that moment, and the change it made in me was sudden and permanent.
Another phenomenon often seen as a quantum leap in a person’s reality-tunnel goes by the name of “enlightenment.” Enlightenment is a loaded word. For some it includes a host of super-human abilities and knowledge. I want to put those aside for this conversation. I am not saying such things don’t exist, it’s just that those particular versions of the word “enlightenment” are beside the point in this context. Some “ah-hah!” realizations are more of the Translation type, where we acquire a new understanding of a situation, or circumstance. What I am more speaking about the deep, and world adjusting “Ah-hah!” moments that one can experience.
When such a moment hits, one’s entire reality-tunnel is re-oriented. This can have profound effects on every facet of our lives. The way people react to us, the way we evaluate conversations, our political affiliations, our most precious relationships. All of these, and more, can feel the impact of such a shift. There is no way to tell before hand what these changes may portend. It is probably a good idea to consider whether, or not, you are willing to go for a huge paradigm adjustment such as enlightenment. You might not end up liking the things you used to like.
Looking at the possibility of enlightenment in this way can open up new ways for us to seek it. One possibility is too consider a given situation in our lives, and for a moment try and see it through new eyes, and in a different light.
Something to think about.
Photo:Flickr/Ian Burt
nope. nope. nope. nope. Awakening is not a shift in the way you view life or reality. Awakening is a shift in the way life, or reality views you. Life is that which awakens, not you. You are an aspect of life, which life is asleep to. When life wakes up, it realizes itself, and it realizes a ‘you’. all the writer here is talking about is cortical re-arrangement, which is indeed ‘you’ seeing things different. but this is not self-realization or enlightenment. in self-realization life (which is what you are) realizes the person it is acting out. Life itself… Read more »
Very well said my friend. I can tell that you know as do I that if one sees the reality of “enlightenment” one is clear that living at risk is a part of making contact with reality (another way of talking about enlightenment). None the less the attraction of the excitement of being that fully alive wins every time in my book or in your essay, or so it seems!