Path to Enlightenment

Accumulation of knowledge is often mistaken for intelligence. This is like mistaking a cup of milk for a cow. Like memorizing information for a test, only so that you may pass that single test and then the burden of the knowledge is dropped after the information is not needed any more.
Where is the intelligence in such reasoning and action? Wisdom is much more valuable than any accumulation of knowledge. Wisdom is principles.

Principles discuss the very nature of perception as the understanding of reality. People are foolish when trying to become somebody in the world, when they haven’t even come to terms first with their own true nature. Until we become realized beings, every commodity we produce is at the detrimental expense of somebody. In order to have heaven on earth in such a corrupt system, you have to have somebody else do the work.

Many are fine with this and happy because they don’t have to do the work, or they do have to work, but are indifferent enough and caught in the illusion to where they don’t make the effort to push for a change. Working class and middle class people are trapped in lifeless dead end jobs, working to their own demise for the profit of somebody else. Too many people are in debt, bankrupt, homeless and/or barely able to survive. We all need food, warmth, shelter, and the other basic needs. It’s sad that this issue is still not resolved. It is not a question of resources. It’s a matter of getting those who hoard the resources to share, which unfortunately is most improbable.

The wealthy usually want to live in mansions and palaces, they want servants. They often want to waste what isn’t desired any longer and feel unburdened by their own waste and excess. Excess is important to most who are wealthy. It is selfish to desire to have so much of anything that is needed or wanted, to where there is no concern about going without. In fact, when you never have to put intention and energy towards what’s needed, the mind tends to enforce flippant cravings, desires, and indulgences, and forget about important things like health and the overall well being of the self and others.

When we are forced to be frugal or to ration, there is a sense of mindfulness, that is easily lost when there is no intensity or pressure
in that sense.
It is intensity that drives us, intensity that gives us power. Any negativity can be transformed, but to do so it has to all come to the surface to be worked out. This is why any legitimate internal alchemy practice or path to enlightenment can be arduous, and even painful and intense to the seeker. Once it is understood how to transform negative intensities that are felt, health, tranquility, and well being come naturally as if they were waiting for you to remember that they are the greatest treasures one can ever attain.

A sense of compassion towards all living things is suddenly realized when this happens, because the mind/body stops acting and thinking selfishly when it realizes that it doesn’t have to anymore; that it never had to be selfish in the first place. All sense of self or selfish behavior is damaging to the self and to others; it is the reason we get sick and the reason there is unjust violence and many other atrocities in the world. There is no self, we are all in this together. Each of us effects the world and everything in it, just as much as we effect ourselves by how we focus our intention and awareness. Either we can fight and reject the predicament, or we can find a way to unite and breakthrough.

Very few wealthy people are benevolent, generous, and compassionate. Most like to collect expensive and rare things like cars or trophies, just to have them sitting in around somewhere. Where is the intelligence in this behavior?!