I’m no Buddhist, but I’ve read this thing a while back about the nature of enlightenment and the writer attributed it to the Buddhist way of thinking. It said that the monk who carried water and chopped wood before reaching a higher state of consciousness will do what after the fact? He will carry water and chop wood.

My interpretation of the stuff is that to the outside observer there may not be huge changes in a person who has achieved enlightenment. This is something that you seek internally, so the changes will also take place inside of you. It makes sense.

It would also make sense that a person would not abandon who they are. Being a seeker is about staying true to who you really are to begin with in my humble opinion. This would also explain the different personality quirks in people who are widely believed to have been enlightened human beings. History is full of saints who were nice people, but there are also those who were complete jerks. There are those who had sharp intellects and those who may have even been mentally retarded. Not that mental retardation is personality quirk. You get the idea.

Having said all this, I believe if you know what to look for, you can tell if someone has things going for them. I am not claiming to have achieved a permanent higher state of consciousness, but last year it was shown to me that I would be a different person if it weren’t for my two-decade quest for enlightenment.

My Dad got really sick and he passed in a few short months. You can read about that here: How I Learned the Meaning of the Word Devotion. Long story short, I was surprised that everyone thought that I was going above and beyond trying to be there for him (including my older brother and my sister-in-law who are no fans of mine, to say the least). It was hard, very hard to watch him wither away like that, but ultimately there was no other place I rather wanted to be or do anything else. It dawned on me that by exceeding my family’s expectations and acting outside of the norm in the eye of strangers, I have clearly demonstrated that my years of seeking haven’t been a waste of time.

It’s amazing how much influence can a person’s peers can have on his or her mood and thinking. Someone can say something nice just at the right moment, and it can lift you up. Someone else can say something rude just for the sake of being hurtful, and it will bring you down, ruin your whole day, or even stick with you for years to come depending on the amount of influence that person hasover you.

My personal least favorite way of having this happen to me is getting caught up in an argument that begun as a constructive discourse with a desire to share ideas that end up in a pointless shouting match. You know the ones where you are talking about something that neither of you has too much reliable information about (much less actual experience) yet you defend your respective positions like de facto authorities on the subject and you just know that you are right and the other person is wrong.

I decided to come up with a way to shield myself, or at least try. It’s not too hard to think of people as forces of nature. You may get upset that it’s raining, but you don’t get mad at the weather. Many people die on the roadways every year, but you don’t stand on the street corner yelling at cars. Note: if you do any of the above, seek help.

It’s especially easy to look at people this way when they abandon all reason, like in a silly argument, and revert to a more primal self whose only purpose is to win, thus reestablishing the pecking order and satisfy the evolutionary rule of “fittest survives.”

This is not easy for me to do, especially in the heat of the moment, because I have been known to engage in proverbial chest thumping myself from time to time. It gets easier overtime with practice.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This does not mean that I condone looking down on people in any way shape or form. This is just a technique to help me prevent conflicts, or deal with one if it already happened by putting myself in a sort-of outside position like I were watching a movie.