Peacedog wrote:More and more the cognitive ability issue seems to creep up. People do not need to be educated to do this stuff, but if they are not fairly bright it just does not seem to happen. Ultimately, people must have the ability to maintain a high level of concentration while performing multiple tasks at the same time to pull this off. And that ability highly correlates with being very intelligent.
So if you go back a few hundred years in time where small population sizes, environmental conditions (spending your life inhaling wood smoke from around a camp fire), nutrition (being in starvation mode during formative years and/or borderline malnourished the whole time) and social behavior (eating off of lead plates and cutting a man's balls off to make him a more docile slave) all conspired to reduce base cognitive ability it is easy to see how barring any other factors this would have been the territory of a very small group of people.
In the modern era people with an IQ of 115, and higher, can pretty much do whatever the hell they want. Modern free market societies effectively cater in an unlimited manner to this part of the population. So, if you can avoid drug induced brain damage the demand signal for your talents is pretty much unlimited. And in that scenario most people choose to do other things with their time than stare at rocks or work on their clairvoyance.
Doc Stier wrote:Thank you, sir. Great reply with excellent observations.
Peacedog wrote:Being a good person and having esoteric ability are different issues. Likewise being enlightened and being "nice" are two different issues as well.
AFA a path of service is concerned that is another issue altogether.
I've known enlightened people who were killers, thieves, and worse. I have never met anyone with an ongoing drug problem or significant brain damage.
I can imagine, although I don't think I've ever learned from a criminal. In my experience - but this too is certainly limited - if one enters into a deeper and longer learning process with someone (master/disciple or similar), then apart from the explicit area of work/material where one learns, the whole energy field (for want of a better term and to save space here) of the teacher will start to osmose to some extent to the student. Or maybe not, if one as student has other strong resources and awareness for that not to happen. But I have seen and felt this happen often.I've learned from cult leaders and other criminals over the years. It was never a pleasant experience even if it was valuable.
We are all born and we are all going to die at some point. A thousand years from now the greatest of us will be vaguely remembered in a history book somewhere and most will be forgotten in three generation's time.
If you view life as a leadership laboratory it is all about what you as an individual experience and learn along the way. Karma sorts out the good and the bad of it.
You cannot save others from themselves, but you can point out the way. But ultimately this is all about your individual trip.
Giles wrote: Would you like to give your (short) definition of enlightened? I've heard a few definitions over the years. For me, ever since I got my act together a bit more, enlightenment has no longer been of interest to me personally but I'm open to and curious about approaches to this aspect.
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