Everyone is experiencing a different reality within the exact same confines. Everyone carries within them an unconscious bias and a different knowledge base, spawned from their own experiences. Beliefs are based on different set of personality traits, mostly stemming from morals derived from different cultures and influences: race, schools, work, friends, families and economic conditions and their own personal experiences motivated by one’s own selfish dreams and desires. When the world as you understood it no longer exist that is when you are knowing, hence enlightened. Being free from unconscious thoughts and beliefs is enlightenment. Enlightenment is no great achievement; it is simply the revelation that nothing is as it seems. Much of life is an illusion, generated by ulterior motives, perception and realization are oppositely alike and truth is not found on the surface, it can only be revealed by peeling back the underlying layers. It is the merging of the layers that project a so-called reality. Birth and death are the closest experiences you have to being in reality, the further we are from the beginning or end of an event the greater the illusion, being able to be in the moment while understanding that it is an illusion is enlightenment, hence reality. Many so-called wise people seek enlightenment only to discover that the truth is painful, that is why it is said that ignorance is bliss. Enlightenment can be agony, because it is often times the realization of a deception. Discovering there is no Santa Claus is enlightenment. Enlightenment can be joy, learning that someone you are fond of is also fond of you is enlightenment. Being in love with someone and discovering their also in love with you is enlightenment. Reality can be agony or joy, so be careful about that deeper understanding that you seek 🙂
The ‘Why’ with things…don’t spend too much time there, it is what is, move on because I can assure you there is always much more shit to come, until there’s not. There’s birth, life and death….that’s the ‘What’, ‘When’ and ‘Where.’