Brandon Hall88 said:Facing your own shadow isn't some casual walk in the park. It demands an immense amount of time... and even more courage.
Still, I actually like this definition. 🙂
There’s this common misconception that an Awakened person feels absolutely nothing, as if they’ve been magically liberated from all typical human struggles. 🙂
The truth is, they still feel pain, and yeah, sometimes they suffer. They experience those so-called "negative" emotions just like anyone else; whether they choose to act on them or suppress them is entirely up to their own discretion. If they decide a situation calls for an emotional response, they'll show it. If not, they won't.
They still have desires, they still receive congratulations, and they still offer greetings, but they aren't tethered to any of it. Expressing these things doesn't make them any happier or more miserable than if they kept them inside.
Beyond themselves, there is no sense of traditional morality. But don't mistake that for being lawless—this kind of morality exists outside the standard social conditioning or the rigid moral frameworks most people live by. In practice, though, they usually respect those societal norms and don't feel the need to go around trying to fix everyone else's rules.
A whole person is someone who has fully embraced every part of themselves—that's why we call them "whole." They tend to be much more sensitive than your average person, which means what they experience hits much harder and more intensely than it does for others. They aren't at war with themselves anymore. There's nothing left to fight because they've transcended every internal conflict through total acceptance. And when I say "transcended," I don't mean it in the way people usually think... it just means those conflicts no longer touch them. They no longer identify with the struggle.
They exist in the moment. They don't feel like they're at odds with their surroundings or the universe; instead, they see everything as an expression of their own Will. ...etc.
Do I really need to bother explaining what a "normal" person is? 🙂
Until you bring consciousness into every single corner of your Being, you can't truly be enlightened. People are under the delusion that once someone reaches a state of Unity or Self-Realization, they'll suddenly stop experiencing reality altogether. No. As long as a person is still tied to this plane in any capacity, they experience everything just like the rest of us... just with a massive difference in intensity. The rest of us cling to what is inside and outside of us, but He doesn't cling. He exists in the state of The Observer.
Regards,
nirvaan
I don't have any issues with your definition, but I wanted to mention something, especially regarding your point about bringing awareness into every pore of one's being...
A person who is fully conscious is also aware of every single movement they make;
they don't have unconscious gestures. They are also aware of every thought, knowing exactly where it came from and why it surfaced in that moment.
They don't have "body language," because they've become aware of that part of themselves; if they want to communicate something physically, they do so consciously.
Furthermore,
that person will breathe consciously.!!
If they were to smoke a cigarette, for example, they would do so with total presence, because they wouldn't be able to do two things at once—they've broken that duality and exist in a single moment.
They won't talk much, but when they do, they choose their words very carefully so they don't say anything that isn't true.
Finally, they will be completely free from the brain's mechanics,
not the mind or reason... In the sense that the constant "record spinning" in their head...
They "turn off" that record. To a typical American, such a person would seem crazy, half-dead, depressed, or at the very least, not quite lucid.
urbangardener35, sorry, I mixed you up with a moderator from that philosophy forum...
