I dont think there's an end to "enlightenment" 🪑

I think the idea of there being a sort of "final state" is a mistaken idea about what life/reality/experience is. 

The territory of sitting on a chair can't really be mapped, but our words are good enough. I think the territory of "waking up" is itself much more ontologically fuzzy; it's inherently un-pin-down-able, and perhaps that's as much a feature of the thing being described as the inadequacy of descriptors. When you call it God it becomes harder to convince yourself there's a "place" to "arrive" that is distinct from anything so far or to be; but still... nondual/union/satori type experiences feel so much more real and convincing that people tend to get dogmatic and very self-assured afterwards. Unless they have a framework reminding them that the journey is (probably) literally endless. :)

This doesn't mean anything goes; telos doesn't demand endpoints, only a "toward" relative to where you stand, which could shift as you move. And the paradox of all-being-one must include separation being part of that oneness too.

Also, as far as I can tell, humanity hasn't come to a consensus about what all these terms and experiences share, and how they're different. Was Hafiz in the same state as St Theresa, but interpreting it through a different lens? Or was it a different experience? Or is the question from a frame that presumes one can separate subjects and objects? Here, we are reminded that we can't simply rest on "mystery" or even "endlessness" as a way to resolve the tension of the uncertainty. The embedded nature of meaning-making with the meaningful is inescapable, but with consciousness it's also a big part of the realization.

Therefore, it's also really fun, meaningful, and perhaps even necessary to explore the various ways people have made sense of these kinds of experiences. We're in a rare and beautiful time when we have more of them easily at our fingertips than ever before. If the frames and states are entangled, this is another gift of our era; more experiences of that vast and infinite territory... like the inflation of the universe extending space, new mapping extending the territory itself.

With love, Jordan