What ideas regarding enlightenment/enlightened human beings that are clearly lies have you noticed circulating lately here on Quora dressed or presented as truths?

Tagged:

The thing I don’t like about this question is the request for things that are “clearly” lies. To say something is clearly a lie is to say that the person believing the lie should have recognized that it was a lie when it was told to them. Like if I told you I wanted to sell you beachfront property in Arizona, and instead of laughing at the joke like you should, you got excited. “There isn’t any beachfront property in Arizona, how did you manage to find some?” “Well it’s really great stuff, hope you brought your checkbook!”

What I want to talk about is, rather, common misconceptions. Not lies, these things are not borne out of a desire to mislead. But common culture, upbringing, and the zeitgeist of the community can cause people to have spiritual misconceptions that are clearly wrong to me, but yet are still widely believed. Closely related to this is the collective new understandings in societies and communities that are currently arising.

So, this latest brouhaha in the Quora spiritual community has illustrated to me that many many people in the spiritual community will mistake emptiness for enlightenment. Especially unearned emptiness, because it seems so complete and “functional.”

The related collective new understanding that is arising in the community is a finer-grained understanding of brain physiology. There are many spiritually-aware people on Quora that came to their spiritual awareness through struggle with personality disorders. If you feel empty, all the time, every time, and you don’t feel emotions and don’t understand empathy and can think ‘really really fast all the time’, you are describing symptoms of personality disorder, not enlightenment.

The difference is ridiculously, almost absurdly clear to anyone who has given themselves over to a spiritual search and have attained awakening as a result. Earned achievement can see all that given achievement lacks. One needs to heal before your spiritual journey will bear spiritual fruit. If you are not yet healed, then the fruits of your journey will be that healing. Spiritual experiences cannot be truly understood until and unless your brain is firing on all cylinders.