Attila was doing all right…’til he converted to civility; and Faust was doing okay ‘til he abandoned his. See – you can’t win at this as long as you see it as a contest.
“Yippee –I win!”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause I can no longer tell.”
All systems taught to achieve enlightenment are forms of self-inflicted wounds, and moreover, to a self that doesn’t exist until you inflict the wound.
In the first stage of a journey, a man thinks only about the destination. In the next stage, he begins thinking full time about the effort of the travel. If this doesn’t land him in a ditch, he then begins moving faster while thinking of nothing but, “What the hell I am doing here?!” That’s when the destination comes forward from the mist.
A son asked his father, “What is the difference between ‘facts’ and ‘anti facts’?” In a more spatial reality he would have been sent to his room for asking such a question, but this family lived in an area wherein the illusion of differences-between-things did not exist. (“Phew! Close call, huh?”)
The non-tourist version of Enlightenmentland is a place of equitably-distributed-reality…just like where you live…except here you don’t have to wear headphones, and listen to gawdaful running commentary on a forced schlepping tour of the premises.
J.