What questions would I ask of anyone who was enlightened and what could I say to these questions?

Here is what occurred to me:

What do you really know? 

I live one thing.  This one thing is an outlook, a place I view things from.  This one thing has eclipsed my unknowing.  I have a definite, certain grasp of this word, ‘know.’  The more competently or fully I grasp a thing—like carpentry, painting and martial arts—the more completely my effort to encapsulate this thing in words fails.  I am it, more and more.  I think this is a simple thing.  How can you know what I know?  There are probably people exactly like me out there who I’ll never meet, but who would easily understand and know what I know.  I’ll probably meet almost everybody in my life that isn’t like me and consequently, they won’t understand or ‘know’ (recognize) what I know.  The odds exist for this and everything in between.  Anything will happen and won’t.

What have you got that I haven’t got?

There’s something missing that I want or pine for.  There are unknowns in my world view.  I don’t feel that way.  I’m not incomplete.  I don’t think a perfect life situation can make me feel fulfilled and complete.  If some aspect of it is changed, I think my equanimity depending on it is also removed.  The contentment that I walk with, however, doesn’t seem to change.  Like rain on my skin; it doesn’t seem to matter how soaking wet I get; external circumstances don’t affect the solid something that takes the place of a former lack.  You probably don’t have something of importance to you, and you know it.  If you had it, that’s what I have.  I have what you don’t have.

How do you know this for sure? 

I’ve been hungry and uncertain.  I lived my whole life looking for something more and don’t think there was or is any other way to live, for me.  Then: surprise.  Something else.

Are you sure that you’re right? 

Do you mean self delusion?  Or, being wrong?  If I’m fooling myself, I’m doing a much more complete job of it than I’ve been able to do before.  I’ve lived twelve years with this condition, which might just be called, “being a man.”  If it was dependent on me and my mercurial, variable and waning abilities and capacities, then I think I wouldn’t have sustained this delusion very long at all.  As the years go by, I am more and more imperfect.  The confidence I had once in my mental and physical abilities during the youth of my past is something that I no longer hold with utmost confidence.  I am confronted and live daily with my growing limitations, my increasing faults.  Like watching a great building develop all the problems of an old one—peeling paint, cracks, leaks, etc.  One thing, however, seems to be getting stronger as ‘I’ get weaker.  It’s a feeling of being.  A wisdom thing.  In the past, I didn’t have long stretches of time when I felt contentment.  There would be an afternoon, or an hour.  Then, dissatisfaction would come in and prompt me to do something, go after some interest or something.  I don’t have that at a fundamental level.  This change seems to be independent of my personal efforts one way or the other, thank God.

How can you be sure?

I think it is possible that everyone has some doubt.  For example, I can doubt the validity of my own motives—if I’m a student of the truth and a philosophic observer of my actions and the actions of others.  I can doubt my perceptions, conclusions and other people’s sincerity.  There is no end to ‘doubting.’  But I have one big thing that doesn’t fit into any of this.  I walk and live daily with a permanent moodless mood; I am infused with this feeling; it flavors me more with time, and it doesn’t have anything to do with my life.  It is, and I seem to be.  Coincidentally, my ignorance and uncertainty about most other things is shrinking as time goes by.

What do you recommend that I do?

Okay, this really only applies to me, but maybe you can use it.  Kick and struggle.  Don’t do this half-assed.  Fight.  It’s a real, real big hill to climb.  If you don’t go full tilt, maybe you won’t get that second half of a peddle in before your lack of momentum roots your tricycle in one place.  Grab for your right; it is your own solitary sacred right.  Sacrifice everything for this one thing that you want.  Never surrender.  If you feel like giving up, just try one more time.  Give up everything else for That, whatever That is.  Cry.  It helps.  Pray.  It’s straining in that direction and hopefully somebody hears you in this lonely place.  Try.  Always try.  Become smarter than the problem and become smarter, better, braver and wiser than yourself.  You’re not going to make it there.  Some other person will.  Read.  Read everything that you are interested in.  Read anything, anything.  No action is ‘not spiritual.’ The only thing ‘not spiritual’ is not being true to your own personal honest efforts.  Adopt a daily practice.  Do it like your life depended on it.  Go the route that everybody sincerely driven goes.  Devote yourself unreservedly to practices.  And do whatever one seems to be the one.  If you have to move to another one, don’t hesitate.  You can’t afford to.  Keep a journal.  This is really important.  Seek out experts, enlightened people and grill them, dissect them, take them apart, find out what makes them tick.  Don’t be polite.  Eternity is more important than politeness.  If an enlightened person is offended or defensive, then maybe they’ll have to whittle their enlightenment into a better shape.  You’re after the best stuff there is; turn towards the probably-better.

How can you help me?

I don’t think I can help you.  If you’re similar enough to me, you’ll pick up on me and maybe find comparing yourself with me useful.  It will probably feel better than hanging around those people who you have nothing in common with. 

Please help me!

Okay.  I think we all want this.  I wanted it badly.  I was disappointed and let down by not having had an active teacher or a true helper along the way.  I was resentful of not getting this.  I was jealous of people I met who’d spent years with a teacher, decades.  But that didn’t last.  I can recall this sadness, this ‘growing pain’ of mine, but I can tell you that there’s something better in being self reliant.  As much as you can, go out there and do it.  You’ll grow stronger and without knowing it, you’ll become what you were going after in chasing those elusive personal masters.  Read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. 

What should I be doing?

What you feel drawn to this minute.  This is not a way of referring to something vague.  Try everything that you can think of.  Keep your ears open and eyes peeled for things out there that other people are doing or trying.  Unashamedly grab what you see that looks promising.  Try pushing into those things that scare you.  It seemed to help me grow or advance a lot.  Maybe you don’t need that.  Above all, form your own path.  You own path might be someone else’s; it might be worship or atheism, but make sure that it’s really it for you.  Follow things that you are drawn to or that you are drawn to attempt.  It is your personal path, no one else’s.  This is my projection.  It’s probably not true for everyone, but it’s what I’m throwing out there as ‘true.’ 

What can I do right now?

If you actually ask that question at this point in this series of questions, I say, “Do it!” and hit you in the face without explanation.  Because (by way of explaining) you’ve probably heard or had the idea of something that you could be doing but feel the uncertainty that accompanies untested potential and untried endeavors.  You may ‘want’ something to resist or, especially, want something to agree with you, to reinforce you.  Who doesn’t want to feel better, to be unique and to be the same (accepted)?  If someone says, “X,” You may say, “Why?”  Well.  Stop screwing around and do it (your thing).  Ask real questions later.

Can I get this ultimate answer right now, without all the messing around that people do?

I think so.

What is it, this answer?

It’s everything for you, I think.

Are you better off now?

I think so.  It feels better heading towards the falls with peace.

What is the nature of reality as you see it? 

It’s a profound thing.  All-encompassing magnificent oblivion that quietly resides in all, all, all.  Be careful.  I might be talking about oblivion and death.

What is the cosmos, the universe, what does it look like?

The nature of reality is that everything is somehow interrelated.  How, we’ll see to varying degrees; some people see a lot of this, I see a lot of that; we’ll all get some kind of overall felt view of this mundane related-to-itself universe.  And I mean universe, with its billions of galaxies.  There are causal relationships that we don’t see but that we are influenced by every second of our lives.  I’m talking interpersonal/emotional, genetic (never underestimate the power of a million years behind the unbroken candle flame line of existence that you are the current representative of), galactic, solar systemic, bacterial, viral (the stuff inside us that outnumber our own cells), and on and on.  We are part of this web every thread of which is thrumming between everything else.  People talk about quantum physics, string theory and multiple dimensions, and this is what I’m talking about, too.  This reality.  A wonderful cosmos.  I empathize with the millions miles-wide burning star that is our sun.  I feel myself being it, for millions and billions of years.  For this four-second stretch of time during this in-breath.  I feel it about everything, everything.  Like looking down at the earth from space.  I think I’m looking down at everything from someplace, something.

How do you know this?

I’m trying to describe something I feel slash see in this brief flame of personal conscious existence.

Can you give it to me right now?

Yes.  Anything is possible.

Can you do more than talk?

Probably.