Enlightenment: the fine art of being able to stay sane, calm, aware and awake when everything and everyone around you should for all intents and purposes drive you completely insane, mad, feeling lost and alone.  It has been my experience that true enlightenment isn't for the faint of heart. It challenges you in your every waking moment. And just when you think you've got it, that you're one of the enlightened ones, that you can stay in your "divine" place when you're confronted with a challenge, you find yourself caught completely off guard and fall into the abyss of what is the reality of the human nature and it's ego.  My journey towards enlightenment has taught me that being aware of those times that I fall off the "enlightment wagon" is "Enlightenment", that it's the very nature of realizing my challenges and confronting my weaknesses that brings me closer to "enlightenment", finding and realizing the divine within me.  I believe there is only one true challenge I face daily and that is to stay awake in a sleeping world, and therein lies true enlightenment, what enlightenment means to me.


"Knowing others is wisdom; Knowing the self is enlightenment; Mastering others requires force; Mastering the self needs strength." ~ Lao Tzu 600 BC-531 BC)

"I want to be rich; I need money."  "I want to be thin; I need to stop eating so much." "I want to own my own home; I need to get a job!"   For me, the difference between "want and need" is that want is a message you give yourself to express your dreams and desires while need is the direction you take to attain those dreams and desires. Wanting is a lower form of energy. It's not enough to merely want something in order to attain it.. It's the burning desires of "need" that fuel the deepest part of your soul into the belief that it's that item, person, etc. that will give purpose to your life. Want is though the birth mother of need. Sometimes you need something you didn't even know you wanted until the universe presents it to you.  I try to practice daily to not want for anything, but my ego self will generally win when I discover something that I absolutely must have, cannot live without, that I desperately NEED!