Enlightenment

This week we spoke about enlightenment - spiritual and otherwise - boiling it all down to a blessed state, free from ignorance, desire and suffering.  Frankly, boiling anything down to a few words, in my opinion, tends to diminish it.

Am I enlightened?  Probably not.  Do I care?  Not really.  Yet I feel blessed in so many ways.  I am blessed with so many caring/loving friends.  I feel blessed with the dawn, opening my eyes, taking it all in - as I race to beat the sunrise, for I love to be there when it arrives.  I am blessed with a wonderful family, children and grandchildren.  I appreciate and love them all so much.

Am I ignorant?  To a fault!  That drives me to want to know more, seek the unknown, ... follow the new path.  I'm not sure I want to be free from that kind of ignorance - for I would miss the motivation.  And what is life without a little desire?  A goal attained is so much more satisfying when one wants to attain it.  I can imagine anything else would be a bore.

Now, suffering - that's a tough one.  We all suffer to an extent, but I suspect/know I've not begun to suffer as so many on this earth.  Relatively speaking, I am generally free of suffering.  Save a few aches and pains, that nosy neighbor and my ex-mother-in-law.  Yet, I wonder - how can we know joy without benefit of a little suffering?  Can we appreciate the absence of pain, if we've never felt pain?  Hmmm.

Timing is everything, so, suspecting that I could not really take the desire for enlightenment all that seriously, I ran across this - 

HOW ENLIGHTENED ARE YOU?
IF....
If you can live without caffeine,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining,If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him or her,
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can honestly say that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, gender preference, or politics...

...then you have almost reached the same level of spiritual development as your dog!
Sort of puts it all in perspective, don't you think?