Is Enlightenment a Process?

If I understand Eckhart Tolle correctly, I would say he equates enlightenment to surrender. I am his fan. But I don't like his reply to this:

"Q: How do you know you have surrendered?
A: (ET): You stop asking the question"
(The Power of Now)

I think that when he answered that, he was probably tired. It is probably at the very end of the book "The Power of Now". If Eckhart Tolle is enlightened and yet human being, I think he still gets tired.

Why? Well, to start with, most of his answers are much longer than this. Since my own experience is that I am briefer when I am tired and need rest, I think he needed rest because he was tired and, as a strategy, he was brief. Although I believe this is a very plausible hypothesis, I can never really tell anyone's feelings and needs without asking. Only strategies are visible. And we cannot even see the whole strategy because intentions are somewhat invisible. And I believe we cannot really understand strategies without understanding their intentions.

So herein lies my problem: I have an unverifiable good hypothesis. Can it be true that I disagree with Eckhart Tolle because he was tired, and therefore, was meeting his need for rest and was briefer than the question required? I cannot know without asking him.

As I wrote in Science as Process, you can never really verify if a hypothesis is true, only if it is false, as Popper said. So, it is possible that even if we ask someone about their feelings, needs and intentions... even if they are clear and honest; even if we are in an understanding mindset (i.e. trying to meet our need for understanding by asking and by deep listening), we will never know for sure if I disagree with Eckhart Tolle because he was too brief as a strategy for meeting his need for rest because he was tired. So, I guess I will have to find another strategy to meet my need for understanding than making judgments about the other person.

So, I will dive deep into why I disagree that an enlightened being (i.e. a being that has surrendered) would not necessarily stop asking the question about whether or not he surrendered. And maybe this will require to understand Eckhart Tolle's statement more thoroughly.

What I Think Enlightenment Really Is

What I think enlightenment really is, is more like waking up than surrendering. In playful process terms, we wake up from the trance of form and go both into the sun of being. This is a surrender involved, that is: accept form at every moment as it is, for we cannot fight the present moment. We can pursue strategies that can relieve us from pain caused by unmet needs, in NVC terms—but for real change to take place, there needs to be acceptance.

The Dialectical Framework

One of the most popular methods of therapy these days is DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy). It is CBT + mindfulness. The "BT" in both stands for behavior therapy, mm, yes they rhyme on purpose. The D stands for dialectical. Dialectical stands for acceptance AND change. Get it? They too understand that there is no real change without acceptance.

So, when I said in my last post that I disagreed with Eckhart Tolle that I don't think that people who have surrendered stop questioning whether or not they IDK... Now, if I want to be inclusive in my thinking, I will need to change my thinking and, there we go again. I will have to reframe my thoughts, in CBT language.

Reframing the Question

So if I revert his thinking and check what I find that to be true always, I find myself lost again. What is the reverse?

1. "People who are not enlightened question."
2. "People who are enlightened question."

Neither of these is necessarily true, but I can point to that in a minute. For now, I just want to point you to some ideas that can help you reframe this...

So why? For 1) People who are not enlightened question. Well, if the definition of enlightened is the ones who can see the sun, being, people who are not enlightened, cannot really see the sun and therefore cannot question the sun deeply, just like astronomers can only evolve their thinking by depicting images and data about the sun, so we need to see our inner sun to be able to ponder upon certain levels of being. Therefore, if people who are not enlightened can't really question what matters most to me, the deepest side of my being that is most taken deeply being, I will say I can disagree with someone as much as I disagree with Eckhart's, that is only partially.

Where I Agree with Eckhart

Because now I see some instances in which I believe Eckhart's sentence now. I do believe that people who are enlightened will not linger too much on the matter, and definitely would not struggle with it. For struggle is resistance, and if people who are enlightened accept the present moment as it is, there is no resistance, no struggle, and, they don't get stuck thoughts.

Exposure-based therapy is the go-to therapy for trauma. Its key strategy? Get rid of stuck thoughts. Just like points of tension in our bodies that need to be massaged, CBT methods massage by exposing and normalizing stuck thoughts.

The Paradox I See

I believe enlightened people don't get stuck, maybe they don't resist the thinking of form. They accept it. They don't struggle with any question, they release it because they know how to surrender to the present moment, to reality as it is. So I do agree with Eckhart Tolle that people with surrender can live without questioning, even if they can. So, I don't want to disagree with him.

It is not because of an opposite or: "Those who are surrendered don't question" that is false. Those with surrender question is also true. The first statement is true. So, I don't want to disagree with Eckhart Tolle. Uff... I feel relieved maybe because I have met some kind of clarity.

⇒ If you find the language of this post weird, that's because I am trying to use Non-Violent Communication to the best of my abilities. It is somewhat a foreign language to me and, most definitely, a foreign language to most humans. If you want to learn more about it, you can interact with the course I have created.