I’m keeping a record of my Google searches that yield NO RESULTS. These are becoming like trail blazes for me. Today I searched: “science of co-enlightenment”. No results. Hmm. “Science of enlightenment” gets 400K results.
A science of co-enlightenment is not difficult to conceive. After all, Thich Nhat Hanh suggested that the next Buddha will not be an individual but would manifest as a community. That prophecy implies a co-enlightening culture in which this collective Buddha nature ripens.
“Co-enlightenment” is a potent word with profound implications. Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.” Co-enlightenment is a delicious note to sound persistently and artfully on our collective keyboard! Let’s incubate and propagate it.
In a sane society, the science and technology of co-enlightenment will be a pre-eminent field of research and recreation. Propagating co-enlightening relationships is vital to the survival and flourishing of the human race. Why spend trillions on researching and developing weapons and other tools of warfare while investing so little in propagating and perfecting the science of co-enlightenment? A co-enlightening breakthrough is exactly what the world needs now; let’s discover and develop a highly contagious co-enlightening culture that sweeps through Gaia’s frontal lobes, that proliferates in schools, businesses, playgrounds, bedrooms, and basements. How can we develop the technology of bringing out the best in each other in a way that can be widely adopted and adapted? Such a technology will be simple in means and rich in ends.
How do we realize a breakthrough, how do we develop an easily propagated protocol for the liberation of the human spirit? How do we instigate a widespread contagion of relationships based on pragmatic compassion and rigorous yet tender curiosity? Such relationships are best cultivated with an ethic of co-mentoring each other. Open and respectful communication is key to studying and practicing the science of co-enlightenment.
How might we do this? The science of co-enlightenment can be understood and undertaken as a game. Mastering the game of co-enlightenment entails practicing the art of co-empowerment, the deliberate activation of each person’s most vital gifts and talents through contemplayful collaboration. The capacity to bring out the best in others is a most important social skill.
(Relationships can be co-empowering without being co-enlightening. This truth underlies all malignant political and cultural movements.)
My quest to explore the science of co-enlightenment led me to the intentional communities movement at an early age. While this has been a plausible place to instigate or join grassroots co-enlightenment projects, I must admit it’s harder than I ever imagined to establish the necessary shared protocols of research in the context of egalitarian relationships and social webs. There’s something in our existing cultural programming that prevents/inhibits co-enlightenment in most relationships. Investigating and transforming that inhibition/fear/disinterest is the necessary first stage of our research.
“This is my Quest to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far…”
All for now,