Which Is Better To Pursue; Enlightenment Or Emotional Independence

The most attractive is of course enlightenment, spiritual realization, self-knowledge or anything in that direction. Promise of this draws many people, and although it would be wonderful to have a large following, I will not claim to have achieved or promise something I cannot deliver.

What I can promise, and something I do have, is emotional freedom. The Sufi and the Kaballists say; “Freedom is not being concerned with what anyone thinks or says about you.”

This state of being is a life in which you can never be insulted, hurt or emotionally manipulated. With those emotional buttons removed from your life, anger and conflicts rarely occur yet joyful events increase.

I cannot promise enlightenment, but I can say that without emotional freedom, which is also known as equanimity or a stoic character, no one can achieve significant spiritual growth or enlightenment.

Thus I believe that the best path is one which seeks emotional freedom not only since it is a prerequisite to spiritual growth, but because enlightenment is very difficult to achieve and a life spent in that pursuit may not change much. However, emotional freedom is relatively easy to attain and will definitely and drastically improve the quality of anyone’s life.

I will present a very brief outline of the principle in this article and hope that you will enquire about learning the method. You will find a deeper explanation with some exercises in the article; Understanding Words, as well as the ebook; Eliminating Anger: Don’t Just Contain It.

The basic principle to attain freedom is in knowing that you never really understand what the other person means with the words they say.

It is impossible to get angry or hurt when you truly understand. How can you have any emotional conflict if you agree? And how can you disagree if you truly understand? Thus, we can safely say that any conflict or negative emotion is based on a lack of understanding.

The key is in being able to understand at the deepest level. This is the purpose of our work, to remove the blocks that prevent us from being able to truly understand another person or the situation.

Understanding and subsequently agreeing does not mean you lose your values, or that you give up all your beliefs. Rather it means that you see it from the other persons point of view. We can easily see things from different views at the same time. The problem is that we often think or say that we understand the other person and just disagree, when in fact you do not really understand. The test is your emotional reaction. Anything negative in any way means you did not really understand, but rather took it personally in your subjective interpretation.

The point is that if you see it from the other persons view, or understand what they mean instead of taking your interpretation of what they said to be what they meant, then you can understand and thus cannot be upset because you are in harmony. We cannot have a negative emotion when we are in harmony.

Once in harmony, free of negativity which includes anger, conflict, self-pity, self-attack and a whole host of other negative emotions, we can calmly express our own opinion. On the other hand, you may find your opinion was wrong or unnecessary and drop it altogether. Or you may find that once in harmony the other person may be more open to hearing what you think, because you will be able to explain it in a way they understand.

Our life revolves around our opinions. We have opinions about everything, even what some words mean, or what we think a person means when they say certain things. The problem is that those opinions are very subjective. They are yours and often do not match others.

The principle of the work we do in our school is to open the mind, become truly objective and remove self-limiting fixed opinions, among other positive alterations of our being.

If you attain nothing else in life than to have become impervious to any emotional attack or manipulation, free of anger and conflicts, you will have achieved much indeed. With these qualities, imagine how much good you can do in the world? What would the world be like if everyone understood each other and lived in harmony?

It is so simple to attain, if we would simply focus our life on goals that are reasonable and feasible rather than live for goals that we cannot achieve because we have not prepared our mind to reach that level.

One step at a time. First, master being human, then work on being more than just another human being.