By Eric Allen Bell

When it comes to the subject of Enlightenment I am no authority. I do not possess special knowledge nor do I profess to speak to you now from some elevated state. On all matters Divine there is but one authority and that is The Great Mystery.

Enlightenment is often said to be a state of conscious communion with Divine Source.

According to some spiritual traditions this state is something of a finish line. One's existence is seen to be a cycle of birth, death and rebirth as one's soul…

Over a long enough period of time, the survival rate for your body is zero.  Contained within the body is the brain and one of the functions of the brain is the ego.  The ego is the self concept of the brain-body organism and it does not like what was just said one bit.

And there are different states of consciousness than just ego.  The ego is like a dog you bring with you on a journey. Untrained, it will run off, bite others and come back to bite you.  But trained and disciplined it knows its place. It can sense things, warn you of danger, protect you.  As the…

With each passing day, as I look inward and as I take in what is going on with the world outside, my heart opens. And the more it opens the more I understand why I have kept it shut for so long. The more my heart opens, the more I understand why the world has closed its heart.

ॐ

I find it harder and harder to criticize the world from a place of anger or disappointment. The screwed up world and the screwed up self are not only reflections of each other, they are one in the same. I am the suffering and the beauty and everything in between - not as some new philosophy but as a felt…

Art by Alex Grey

In order to answer the question, "What happens when I die?" I feel it is important to take a look at something a bit less speculative and that is the question of what happens when we live.



There is no way to understand death if you don't know what life is. What happens between the moment you take your first breath and the moment you draw your very last?



Who is it that is looking out through your eyes?



Is it not the same quality of awareness that existed right before you read these words? Is that quality of awareness not the same quality that existed yesterday and the day before?



And that awareness, the pure state of awareness…

The subatomic particles

love each other so much

they form an atom,

which loves the other…