Identifying the Enlightened

Part 3 of the Enlightenment Series

How do you know if someone is enlightened?

Definitely, it's not like in pictures or paintings, wherein the enlightened people have golden halos around their heads. Close, though.

Enlightened people are good people. Emphasis on the word good.

Linguistically, the word good may seem like a weak word. Synonymous with the words nice and kind. But they are not the same.

A person may be nice, but not good. A person may also be kind, but not good. But a good person is both nice and kind.

You will know a good person when you see one. It's in the way they smile, the way their eyes look at you when they're talking, and the way they stare at you when they're listening. It's also in the way they talk. Good people will never mutter expletives. For them, there is always a perfect word to embody your emotion. If you resort to using the words fuck or shit to refer to something, then that just shows how lazy you are to think of that perfect word. You can actually tell a lot about people by the words that come out of their mouths.

Good people always think about others first before themselves. When they have food, they will share. Et cetera, et cetera. You already know that.

Not all good people are enlightened. But all enlightened people are good.

This is the composition of human goodness: The most numerous are the normal people. Normal meaning they can succumb to the dictates of the flesh, they think ill of other people, they will save their own asses before others. You cannot blame them for that; that is the natural human state. After the normal people, we have the good people, who are only a small fraction of the number of normal people.

And from the pool of good people, we have the enlightened ones. They are the ones who walk the path of righteousness, never straying, twenty-four seven. Which is something very difficult to do. And there are only very, very, very, very few of them.


*DISCLAIMER: I am not enlightened. But I wish I was.