Illumination

Illumination: 1. the act of illuminating or the state of being illuminated 2. spiritual or intellectual enlightenment; insight or understanding 3. the act of making understood; clarification

"Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest." Goethe

Arecibo Puerto Rico 2008

“The truth is always an abyss. One must as in a swimming pool dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.” Franz Kafka

Arecibo Puerto Rico

“To a dull mind all of nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Arecibo Puerto Rico

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." Plato

In this life we are lucky to bump into certain souls who serve to illuminate our path.  Sometimes I feel unsure if I'm on the right path.  Starving for knowledge I read everyday. I research. I ask questions. I search. And sometimes I'm lucky enough to find illuminating bits and pieces from the past.

When researching the Philosophy of Illumination I am pointed to theology that insists humans can only find illumination from the divine which I completely reject because it's like giving up without even trying.  We are creatures of nature, existing among the natural laws of the universe and must find explanations within these constraints.

The Hindu Philopsophy of Intellect states:
The soul suffers subtle discontent and need for something more, combined with its current understanding, causes the intellect to direct the chariot of our existence in a particular direction to find happiness.


I can agree with this and see how this ties to our survival instincts. We are wired to seek solutions for whatever problems may arise.  Wait a minute, we are wired to seek . . .

Hindu philosophy goes on to say if you find the right guru, together you will find this happiness.

The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, compared active intellect to light because light makes potential colors actual.  He gave the intangible thought a tangible material input as well as output.

I can conclude that we have evolved technologically because like Aristotle it is our first instinct to form thoughts into tangible material.

But then this brings me to question why we have barely evolved intellectually over the past two thousand years.  We have not moved forward in our political philosophy (democracy) or our scientific philosophy.  When I see scientific studies on dark matter for example this gives me hope. Studies like these just might expand our thinking into to new directions.

But then when government funding is taken away from local schools in the US affecting the ability of these generations to be productive contributors to the planet in the near future I grow frustrated.

Sometimes I suffer with this discontent and wonder if it will ever cease.  There are times when I can ignore or forget but not for long. I can only continue to challenge myself and seek illumination.

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“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.” Anais Nin

“Hatred paralyses life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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Synonyms: acculturation, advancement, breeding, civility, cultivation, development, edification, education, elevation, enlightenment, polish, progress, refinement, social well-being, description, elucidation, exposition, interpretation, resolution, simplification, solution, unravelment, vivification