This book was created by Martin K. Ettington and he should be acknowledged as the Author.
However, you are granted the right to copy this book as much as you want and even offer it as a free download on your website if desired.
DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES:
The information presented herein represents the view of the author as of the date of publication. Because of the rate with which conditions change, the author reserves the right to alter and update his opinion based on the new conditions. The report is for informational purposes only. While every attempt has been made to verify the information provided in this report, neither the author nor his affiliates/partners assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. If advice concerning legal or related matters is needed, the services of a fully qualified professional should be sought. This report is not intended for use as a source of legal or accounting advice. You should be aware of any laws which govern business transactions or other business practices in your country and state. Any reference to any person or business whether living or dead is purely coincidental.
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Chapter 1 What is Enlightenment?.......................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 2: Searching for Enlightenment............................................................................................... 6
Chapter 3: What enlightenment Feels Like.......................................................................................... 12
Chapter 4: True Happiness is Related to Enlightenment................................................................... 13
Chapter 5: Other Benefits from living in the Spirit.............................................................................. 15
Summary:.................................................................................................................................................. 17
Index........................................................................................................................................................... 18
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................................. 19
Appendix A: A basic Meditation Practice.............................................................................................. 20
As a student of the metaphysical and paranormal since I was ten years old, I’ve also had many paranormal experiences, read many books, joined different metaphysical groups, and meditated for many years.
In this book I’d like to help the reader understand what enlightenment is, what it is not, how one can find it, and the benefits of doing so.Enlightenment should also be the main goal of every seeker. Other goals are distractions. Even though I talk about other benefits of enlightenment in this book I still recommend to the reader that you not be distracted from the path.
There are many detours on the path to enlightenment, and many fakers and Egotistical teachers who say they teach enlightenment but only teach devotion to themselves.The path to enlightenment is a rocky one and only a few find the truth.
Amazingly the truth hides in plain site. When we learn to set aside our Ego and live centered in our spirit we have reached the goal.
There are also many beneficial side effects from learning to live in the spirit.
This is since our total being is really composed of our spirit, an energy body, and physical bodies which all work together to determine our state of health.
Our spirit is really part of the universal consciousness that exists outside of time and space.
As you read this book you will understand more of these concepts and how they relate to your enlightenment, happiness, physical health, and other abilities.
When I say enlightenment I mean the type defined by the Buddha, or in other eastern religions where one achieves peace and oneness with the underlying consciousness of the universe.
Christianity and other Western religions also have the same goal although it may not be as clearly stated. Note quotes from the Bible on peace and stillness as recognizing this state of being.
The goal of enlightenment is a very noble and difficult task since almost all of us area heavily bound up in our Egos from day to day.We usually think only about we want and how to become more important, popular, famous, or whatever it is we think will satisfy us.
Ultimately, nothing can satisfy the Ego because it is an illusion of who we think we are, not our true self.
There are of course many religions, philosophies, organizations, and books all written over thousands of years to help one in their search for enlightenment.
The fact that so few people ever report having reached this state shows how difficult a task it is.
Enlightenment is not about “feeling spiritual” because that is another trap of the Ego. Also, many famous gurus, preachers, and some priests may also just be on an Ego trip and not really understand what enlightenment truly is.
Many books try to describe what enlightenment is but words fail to describe a state of being that one has to experience to achieve any understanding.
True enlightenment has to do with finding a state of “stillness” or “peace”. This is done by a variety of stillness techniques and meditation.
My search for took an interesting turn when I started reading about very long lived people and immortals from other cultures.
In my research I found records of some unbelievably old people and some of the reasons they gave for their long lives also seemed to relate to their spiritual development.
The oldest person of record is LI CHING-YUN at 256 years. Here is his story:Figure 1-Picture of Li Ching-Yun
The New York Times, Saturday, May 6, 1933
Peiping, May 5 – Li Ching-Yun, a resident of Kaihsien, in the Province of Szechwan, who contended that he was one of the world's oldest men and said he was born in 1736 – which would make him 197 years old – died today.
A Chinese dispatch from Chungking telling of Mr. Li's death said he attributed his longevity to peace of mind and that it was his belief every one could live at least a century by attaining inward calm.
Compared with estimates of Li Ching-yun's age in previous reports from China the above dispatch is conservative. In 1930 it was said Professor Wu Chungchien, dean of the department of Education in Minkuo University, had found records showing Li was born in 1677 and that Imperial Chinese Government congratulated him on his 150th and 200th birthdays.
A correspondent of The New York Times wrote in 1928 that many of the oldest men in Li's neighborhood asserted their grandfathers knew him as boys and that he was then a grown man.
According to the generally accepted tales told in his province. Li was able to read and write as a child, and by his tenth birthday had traveled in Kansu, Shansi, Tibet, Annam, Siam and Manchuria gathering herbs. For the first hundred years he continued at this occupation. Then he switched to selling herbs gathered by others.
Wu Pei-fu, the warlord, took Li into his house to learn the secret of living to 250. Another pupil said Li told him to "keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog."
According to one version of Li's married life he had buried away twenty-three wives and was living with his twenty-four, a woman of '60.' Another account, which in 1928 credited him with 180 living descendents, comprising eleven generations, recorded only fourteen marriages. This second authority said his eyesight was good; also, that the finger nails of his right hand were very long, and "long" for a Chinese might mean longer than any finger nails ever dreamed of in the United States.
One statement of The Times correspondent which probably caused skeptical readers to believe Li was born more recently that 1677, was that "many who have seen him recently declare that his facial appearance is no different from that of persons two centuries his junior."
An article from the May 15, 1933 issue of Time magazine titled: Tortoise-Pigeon-DogIn the province of Szechwan in China lived until last week Li Ching-yun. ... By his own story he was born in 1736, had lived 197 years. By the time he was ten years old he had traveled in Kansu, Shansi, Tibet, Annam, Siam and Manchuria gathering herbs. ... Some said he had buried 23 wives, was living with his 24th. a woman of 60, had descendants of eleven generations. The fingernails of his venerable right hand were six inches long. Yet to skeptical Western eyes he looked much like any Chinese 60-year-old. In 1930 Professor Wu Chung-chieh, dean of the department of education at Chengtu University, found records that the Imperial Chinese Government had congratulated one Li Ching-yun in 1827 on his birthday. The birthday was his 150th, making the man who died last week—if it was the same Li Ching-yun, and respectful Chinese preferred to think so—a 256-year-old.
More about Li Chang Yun from the Toronto Evening Telegram, 26 April, 1942:LI CHING-YUN, 256, died May, 1933, Szechun Province, China.
At the age of 100 he was awarded by the Chinese Government a special Honor Citation for extraordinary services to his country. This document is available in existing archives. It is reported that he gave a series of 28 lectures at the University of Sinkiang when he was over 200 years.old. He attributed his longevity to his life-long vegetarian diet and regular use of rejuvenating herbs plus "inward calm". A renowned herbalist, he used Fo-ti-tieng and ginseng daily in the form of tea. He enjoyed excellent health, outlived 23 wives, and kept his own natural teeth and hair. Those who saw him at age of 200 testified that he did not appear much older than a man in his fifties.
A researched Li Chang(Ching) Yun is featured in this 1980 book: The Seed of the Woman by Arthur C. Custance"At the age of 100 he was awarded by the Chinese Government a special Honor Citation for extraordinary services to his country. This document is available in existing archives. It is reported that he gave a series of 28 lectures at the University of Sinkiang when he was over 200 years.old. He attributed his longevity to his life-long vegetarian diet and regular use of rejuvenating herbs plus "inward calm". A renowned herbalist, he used Fo-ti-tieng and ginseng daily in the form of tea. He enjoyed excellent health, outlived 23 wives, and kept his own natural teeth and hair. Those who saw him at age of 200 testified that he did not appear much older than a man in his fifties."
Li Ching Yun is also featured in the recent book: Qigong Teachings of a Taoist Immortal: The Eight Essential Exercises of Master Li Ching-yun by Stuart Alve Olson (10)
LI CHING-YUN’s story and many other long lived or Immortal persons are also recounted in the book “Immortality: A History and How to Guide” at
http://immortality.us.com
"keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog."
This advice on “keeping a quiet heart” is very similar to what we hear from other sages on the need for meditation and other methods to calm ourselves into a more enlightened state. That when we do so we also make our bodies much healthier.
In fact, it has been suggested by many old sages and supposed immortals that most enlightened persons have learned to be able to live way past their peers to be able to have the time to learn how to live more in the spirit and closer to reaching their ultimate cosmic consciousness goals.
Most studies on enlightenment focus on the need for meditation. This is since meditation helps us center ourselves in our spirit.Imagine that your spirit is like a light shining out that is surrounded by water. If dirt is introduced into the water and it is moving, the water becomes cloudy and blocks out the light of the spirit.
Imagine that your thoughts and emotions are the mud in the swirling water.By stopping the water moving, the silt will drop to the bottom and the spirit shines out.
Achieving stillness provides many benefits of peace, calmness, health, and vitality. Appendix A to this book has an example procedure to learn meditation.
Figure 2-An artist's conception of PatanjaliAnother interesting perspective on enlightenment and stillness comes from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (1) is close to two thousand years old and describes in Sanskrit the nature of consciousness and the path to enlightenment. Stillness and learning to live in the Eternal is a major goal.
It was written as a scientific exposition on the path to enlightenment, and the abilities and spiritual states obtained as part of the process.Book 3 Chapters 14 and 16 can be translated as follows:
14. Every object has its characteristics which are already quiescent,
those which are active, and those which are not yet definable.
The explanation is as follows:
Every object has characteristics belonging to its past, its present and its future. In a fir tree, for example, there are the stumps or scars of dead branches, which once represented its foremost growth; there are the branches with their needles spread out to the air; there are the
buds at the end of each branch and twig, which carry the still closely packed needles which are the promise of the future. In like manner,
the chrysalis has, as its past, the caterpillar; as its future, the butterfly. The man has, in his past, the animal; in his future, the angel. Both are visible even now in his face. So with all things, for all things change
and grow.
With an exposition on it’s meaning to be:
We have taken our illustrations from natural science, because, since every true discovery in natural science is a divination of a law in nature, attained through a flash of genius, such discoveries really represent acts of spiritual perception, acts of perception by the spiritual man, even though they are generally not so recognized. So we may once more use the same illustration. Perfectly concentrated Meditation, perfect insight into the chrysalis, reveals the caterpillar that it has been, the butterfly that it is destined to be. He who knows the seed, knows the seed-pod or ear it has come from, and the plant that is to come from it. So in like manner he who really knows today, and the heart of to-day, knows its parent yesterday and its child tomorrow. Past, present and future are all in the Eternal. He who dwells in the Eternal knows all three.
When reviewing the Yoga Sutras we see that the ancient view of consciousness was that because it is rooted in the eternal.Therefore, those who have developed themselves so that they perceive things from the point of view of the Spirit which lives outside of time and space—live in true stillness.
However, I have noticed major differences in my personality and the way I see the world since I started meditating many years ago.
• I’m a much calmer person and more objective.
• I feel like I have an edge at work because I feel sharper after I meditate.
• I am healthier than I was more than ten years ago
The calmness and peace I also experience on a continuous basis helps me get through some major stressful situations.
At the time of this writing I’m going through a tough divorce and only working half time so cash flow is a serious problem.
If this was twenty years ago the stress might have driven me nuts or to have a heart attack.
Instead, I feel separated from the stress most of the time as an observer of myself.
This is a phenomena that many spiritually developed persons report—that they see their thoughts and emotions from a distance. They feel like they are an “observer” of events.
I still feel everything that happens to me as intensely as ever, but being more centered in the spirit helps keep everything in perspective.
I would not claim that I’ve reached total enlightenment since that would involve staying centered all the time and probably more of the cosmic consciousness that others describe.
However, I can tell you I feel more connected to others on a daily basis and realize I don’t have to be controlled by my feelings.There is no need to experience anger about my current situation. In fact I don’t experience it unless I dwell on the subject and lose my spiritual focus. I feel that gradually, as I dwell in my spirit more and more, my connectedness to others and the world is increasing.
Figure 2-Illustrating the Illusion of Happiness
When a person achieves stillness through meditation they also have the benefit of learning to live more centered in the spirit and see through the illusions surrounding their daily lives.
This state is also conducive to true happiness. The book “Removing Illusions for True Happiness” discusses how removing illusions leads to happiness.
http://removeillusionstruehappiness.com/
Almost all of us want more than we have and more than our current life offers us.
Great religions, religious teachers, gurus, and self help teachers all fill the need of people for direction on how to become happy and fulfilled.
The truth is that to be happy you have to be satisfied with the way your life is now and not want to change it.
I maintain that happiness has a lot to do with the illusions we internalize as “laws” inside ourselves which bound what we allow ourselves to think, to do, and to become.
An example: A man has built a relationship with a woman and asks her to marry him. She says no and the man feels rejected and depressed.
This man may feel bad for several reasons:
• He feels the loss of her attention which normally makes him feel good.
• He feels inadequate to her and this hurts his self image
• The future he was envisioning with her is now gone.
Sadly, all of these perceptions by the man are illusions of the ego and should really be seen as follows:
• The man has a false sense of value in his ego which the woman “strokes” to increase his perceived value.
• His personal value as a man is tied up in her opinion of him rather than his value being based on who he is as an eternal spirit at his core
• His future vision was probably based on an illusion of what would make him happy.
I’m not suggesting that a person should avoid relationships or not marry. What I am saying is that our perceptions of why we want to do many things are illusions of the ego.
When the thoughts are emotions are stopped through meditation and other stillness practices then the Ego is also calmed.
This state lets the person live centered in their spirit which is a much deeper state of happiness and peace than most people have ever experienced.
Going back to the Yoga Sutras again, we find a whole book where supernatural abilities can be achieved from living more in the spirit. These include levitation, teleportation, and many mental abilities.
One of these beneficial abilities is learning to see the future. This is because the spirit lives in eternity outside of time and space.When we reach a more relaxed state our spirit can naturally perceive things outside of the narrow timestream we call the present.
The book “Prophecy: A history and how to Guide” at http://prophecybook.us.com focuses more on specifics of developing prophetic abilities.
The Nature of Reality also helps one to understand how the spirit can exist outside of time and space.
Figure 4-The Growth of the Universe
Physicists and Astronomers all agree that the Universe we know was created in a huge explosion called the “Big Bang”. This was when the Universe was created from nothing and inflated. As it inflated time and space as we know them came into existence.
When you study Einstein’s Relativistic Physics you being to understand that time and space are inextricably linked. You can’t have one without the other.Given our understanding of Physics, we know that time and space didn’t exist before the Big Bang. The state of things before creation then was “No Time & No Space”. Another subject of great interest to Astrophysicists is what are called “Black Holes”. Black Holes are a result of Einstein’s equations and Astronomers have verified their existence in the last few decades.
Black Holes are stars which due to their own mass have collapsed down to an infinitely small point and where time stops. Scientists do not understand where all that mass goes.
Hmm…. A Black Hole seems to be another example of part of reality that exists without time and space.
In Quantum Physics, time is also viewed differently that we perceive it on a daily basis. Here is a quote from a Physics website explaining this view: (17)
The upshot is that, on the microscopic level, there just plain is no direction to time
-- and this is even more spectacularly true in quantum physics than in classical physics. In the microscopic domain, everything just exists in a kind of nebulous, atemporal continuum. Then, every once in a while, something becomes observable, and enters the one-dimensional time continuum. The arrow of time does not exist in the universe as a whole. It only exists in individual subjective views of the universe!
Therefore, it shouldn’t be considered too strange that our immortal Spirit is part of and one with that Stillness.
Given the above evidence of Science and my thinking I conclude that time is really an illusion of our physical being.
If we can pierce the illusion, we can expand our “time sense”.
That living in the spirit means that our spiritual “core” also lives outside of time and space.
That stillness is a reward in itself and that you will become happier as the Ego becomes stilled and we stop living the illusion that we are our Ego.
When mind is stilled we experience more happiness since true happiness really has to do with perceiving the stillness and peace of the spirit—and not being controlled by our thoughts and emotions.
Also, when we achieve stillness we gain what seem to be supernatural abilities since the cloud of thoughts and emotions which normally surround and cover our spirit have been stilled.
Living in an enlightened way also enhances our everyday experience in the world. We don’t need to live in a cave but can enjoy our everyday lives more fully.As I learned these truths I decided to start writing about subjects of interest related to reaching a higher state of enlightenment.
The approach is usually to cover the history of the subject, a model for how the phenomena works, and then practical advice on procedures, exercises, or other things the reader can do to pursue their goal.
The books cover the subjects of how to become immortal, how to learn prophecy, and how to remove illusions for true happiness, among other subjects.All can can be found on my we
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