[yanonymator]

Would you possibly be able to explain "enlightenment" to me?

As far as I can tell, pretty much all of reality agrees with my understanding of it. Does that mean I'm already "enlightened"?

My guess is you mean something deeper? Perhaps a self-awareness capable of formulating thought/actions to (successfully) modify ones own disposition/situation? (which I guess often means influencing other people?).

[blueprint]

Enlightenment means to open one's eyes to what is in reality. But the problem is that you can't confirm the degree to which you've opened your eyes. How do you verify whether you know or really do not know a given thing? How do you see and verify the precision of your eyesight?

The thing is that someone's 'eyesight' (of their individual consciousness) is a function of their own individual degree of truthfulness. I hope that's understandable. In other words, how much and how precisely we can see the world is determined by how truthful we are individually. Degree of truthfulness can be defined as the degree of exactness of confirmation. For example, I might have 65% truthfulness and therefore 35% untruthfulness. But we can't tell how truthful we really are - we don't know how precisely and how closely we are able to confirm things. That's why even if we make a confirmation about something, we can't just believe our confirmation, and we have to keep checking. Through this process we can improve our own individual wisdom. And it's through wisdom that you can find the way to whatever abilities you want to have for yourself. All the ways exist in the world. It's a question of recognizing what way has the result you want and then you need the willpower to correctly practice the correct way.

There are many enlightenments along the way to obtaining the supreme, perfect, final enlightenment. However it's only a totally enlightened master, i.e. the one who has opened his/her eyes completely to the world, who can tell how truthful we really are.

If you really think you've obtained an enlightenment, I'd like to confirm it. You can either tell me what you can see, and then we can check it through proof, or as an alternative I can also ask you some questions about very simple terms that we learn at a young age and check through your answer what you can see.

[yanonymator]

Wonderful answer - thank you so much!

No, I'm not enlightened: I was wondering what it means. While I do think my "world view" is remarkably complete and accurate, I am aware that I purposefully deceive myself (I enjoy building mental pictures of fantasy reality futures, like, "what if I invented an anti-gravity device", and the corresponding fun I'd have building fake space-ships to prank people; some of these get so intricate and awesome that I don't want to look too deep at the seed of the idea (anti-gravity)... )

I have what I call my inbuilt "bullshit filter", and I no doubt annoy rather a lot too many people by not simply swallowing their ideas. Unfortunately, reality is not something that many people seem able to grasp. By way of quick example: global warming (now called "climate change", on account of the "warming" not actually being "global"). Everyone worships one side or the other of this debate - there are few, if any, people in the middle. The problem, is that there are 7+ billion of us. Whether or not global warming is true is utterly irrelevant, because there is simply nothing possible that can be done about changing the overall direction of all those people that could make any measurable difference. Now - take that "truth", and apply it to local problems: Should I put my plastic in the recycling bin? Should I pay more for electricity? Should I suffer the annoying blueness of LED lights, instead of the nice warm glow of incandescent? Why should I do what all those lunatics are telling me, and all these new "green" laws are forcing down my throat, when it's all just a 100% waste of time?

Same goes for conservation (aka: the "fun police"), road rules (would it be more, or less, safe on the roads, if all rules were abolished? And no, I don't mean immediately, I mean after the inevitable carnage that takes place between the "end of rules" and the point where drivers understand about using their brains when they drive. We don't have "how not to bump into people on sidewalk" rules, do we?), religious rules (many which make it into real government rules), and so on...

So, back to my point: "totally enlightened master" - that's the bit that triggered my bullshit-alarm.

I'm doubting any such thing is possible, or at least, not in our modern world anymore. Knowledge is so vast, nobody could become "finally enlightened" without cutting themselves of from it all. [amusingly, seems I've worked out form 1st-principals the idea behind monasteries?]. Even if you do master enlightenment in one part of your life, that's going to conflict with the "stupid people" you inevitably have to interact with, so you then have to somehow master the manipulation and/or tolerance of them, and being, as there are, so many people out there, not all of whom you can reach or influence, and indeed, many of them running media empires or otherwise swamping the conscience of others with bogus crap, you are basically screwed. You now have to deal with "knowing", but also "tolerating" those who do not, who also make rules and laws for you.

This seems a majorly thorny meme.

I am though, super-interested in your "some questions about very simple terms". I wonder what you'd ask?