Transcendence – Another Way to Happiness
There is another way to happiness, outside of the 3 we have already discussed. This, Abraham Maslow calls transcendence. By removing all personal views and living from the removal of all biases, one reaches a state of clear mindedness. This level of understanding and way of viewing life is called realization. One enters the realm of clarity as to what is truly valuable and real. All limits of a personal to me view, all of what “is supposed to be, in life” no longer holds sway. Perception is no longer occluded by ego-based wanting or aversion. This is a state of greatly lessened ego, or nearness to enlightenment.
Why is this so special, so important? It is because this is how the (subconscious) mind itself works. This is the way that leads to working with the vastness of life energy, of greater interconnected Mind. When an individual becomes fixated upon dealing with the imaginary scenarios of a constructed and limited self, all energies that are available to that individual are also constrained by the very ways of defining a self that is also defined by the parameters of limitation. A self that is defined by the limits of surrounding conditions is also constrained by those same limits. The relatively few conditions that this sense of self is based upon is incredibly small compared to the vastness of other possibilities that exist in life. The mind is defined by conditions, and preferences seeing and experiencing those conditions to the point that other possibilities may even be invisible to that person.
Have you ever gone by a place not paying attention to it, so much so that when you see a person you know coming out of that place you ask them “how long has this been here,” only to find out it has been years? Years that you never knew it was there. This is a facet of how the mind works at a subconscious level. What a person unconsciously selects to be aware of is based upon what that individual wants and doesn’t want from life. The subconscious screens everything else out for the conscious mind. Why? The movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?” points out that the subconscious works with four hundred billion bits of sensory data in a given moment, and out of this the conscious mind is vaguely aware of two thousand bits. I remember from school that the conscious mind can only handle seven to nine pieces of information at a time. A huge difference from what the subconscious part of the mind is doing, and this does not even include the incalculable gazillions of processes of functionality that the subconscious mind operates and controls (like the beating of the heart, or the process of breathing, or the automatic reactions of emotion and thought).
We have thus far looked at nearness to enlightenment. What is enlightenment then? In enlightenment, there no longer is any remnant of separation from surrounding life or the life force. Which means there is no self-focussed differentiation, or preferencing of oneself over what surrounds the physical body. Why should this matter? – To the degree that an individual uses the conditions of life to describe themselves, to that degree they constrict their awareness and their use of the powers of life energy to influence.
Why should one strive for enlightenment? Enlightenment is complete freedom from suffering, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness. Enlightenment is founded upon a baseline of inner peace. As a side effect of this all-pervading inner peace, the state of loving consciousness is present and flows freely through that individual all of the time. How does that sound? To be in inner peace all of the time with the capacity to feel into loving consciousness whenever one chooses. Enlightenment is also the connecting basis for any workings with life, life energies, and the capacities to freely influence life with the Life Force.
An enlightened being walks gently through life, the world, often leaving little personal trace. They move from Life energy, as it moves through them.