Brief Thoughts On Morality and Enlightenment

I've made this morality argument many times before, but it keeps coming up in my life, so here is the condensed version: Morals based on the Bible and only the Bible are a blind obedience to a social order that are within the confines of one's religious community.  Those within that community often pressure others who are outside their religion to obey their rules, without regard to other cultures or societal structures.  This kind of morality is about controlling people who can't control themselves and subduing the individual in favor of the conformity of the group.  This type of morality can be important to the development of society and culture but is also inauthentic because it does not come from the self.

A higher morality is most certainly one in which realizing the importance of the individual within the community, as well as the communities needs, is equally important.  In a higher morality, the strict rules of conformity based morality become more like social contracts, which also take into account other cultures and their social contracts.  The focus moves from the within the community to the interaction of different communities.  This higher morality is based on the idea that all humans have basic rights and we should aim for the greatest good for the most people.  It is a morality of wider communication and the search for understanding outside of a persons immediate surroundings.


Beyond the higher morality of community interaction is a morality driven by universal ethical principles.  Simply put, this kind of morality is about 'putting oneself in the others shoes' to determine what action is right.  A person acts morally because it is the right thing to do, not because it is the law, a rule or an expectation. Only at this level does a person truly take personal responsibility for their actions.  This is extremely difficult within our current culture because universal ethical principles are often in direct conflict with cultural and societal ethics.  In a way, universal ethics arise out of a relaxation of expectations and relinquishing the desire to control the life of others.  It's about helping people in need when you can but also about taking care of yourself.  More importantly, it's about working within another person's framework and allowing them to make mistakes without putting undo pressure on them to see things the way that you do.  There is a realization that no two people see the world in the same way, we all live with our own reality tunnels.  This type of morality embraces individuality and there is a realization that, even though we have many similarities, no to people are a like in the way their perceive and function in the world.

What is the morality of Enlightenment?  Because Enlightenment is the natural state of oneness with Being, an Enlightenment driven morality is the morality of Being itself.  The action taken is in accord with all that is and is the most perfect action for that time and place.  An action is done, not because it is right but because it is in accord with everything.  It is a way of clearly seeing with the details, while retaining a view of the big picture.  It is easy to run into the question of fate and pre-determination but that question does not have an easy answer.  It is impossible to express how an idea like fate or pre-determination can be part of an experience of imediate experience.  Ideas are part of the reality of space/time, while Enlightenment is simultaneously within and outside of that reality.  The terms associated with a specific place and time are only a fraction of the enlightened experience.