- Understanding of Enlightenment: Enlightenment is the realization of one's existential nature and departure from the belief that we are an individual self (body and mind). Instead, it asserts that we are one with the entirety of reality and exist outside the confines of time and space.
- Massive Reduction in Suffering: One of the major benefits of enlightenment is the significant reduction in both large-scale and small-scale suffering. Large-scale suffering such as losses in health, wealth, or family can create unnecessary emotional distress, while small-scale suffering arises from the underlying frustrations and discomfort of everyday life. Both types of suffering can be alleviated through enlightenment.
- Freedom from Worry, Fear, and Anxiety: Enlightenment brings about relief from continual worry, fear, and anxiety about various aspects of life including health, relationships, and one's future.
- Liberation from Fear of Death: As enlightenment allows for the understanding that one is not their body or mind, the concept of death becomes meaningless. This can alleviate fear and anxiety related to death.
- End to Overthinking: Enlightenment can put an end to chronic overthinking or overanalyzing situations, allowing for more mental presence and enjoyment in each moment.
- Immunity to Heavy Emotions: Enlightenment can lead to immunity to intense negative emotions such as deep sadness, anger, or loneliness. Such emotions may still occur post-enlightenment, but they will no longer have the same overwhelming effect.
- Elimination of Addictive and Compulsive Behaviors: Enlightenment can eliminate addictive and compulsive behaviors, promoting healthier living.
- Elimination of compulsive behaviors and self-sabotage: Enlightenment can help eliminate compulsive behaviors, self-sabotaging tendencies, and emotional addictions.
- Elimination of worrying about self-image: Enlightenment can help eliminate the constant worry and obsession over self-image, aiding in reducing stress related to one's appearance and mannerisms.
- Ending life's strife and obsessions over love, money, power and status: Enlightenment can put a permanent end to constant striving and obsession over acquiring love, money, power, and status, leading to reduced stress and improved mental health.
- Elimination of loneliness and neediness: Enlightenment can help eliminate feelings of loneliness and neediness, both of which are often thought as illusions of the mind.
- Elimination of neuroses and stress: Enlightenment can help eliminate neuroses such as depression, anxiety, negative thoughts, and compulsive behaviors. It can also significantly reduce stress related to family, relationships, career, money, health, and appearance.
- Increased physical energy and reduced need for sleep: By eliminating mental stress and unnecessary worries, enlightenment can lead to increased physical energy and reduced need for sleep.
- Foundation for self-actualization: Enlightenment serves as a foundation for real self-actualization and personal development, enabling deeper understanding and change.
- Tool to deal with chronic pain: Enlightenment can be used as a tool to deal with and potentially reduce chronic pain.
- Ability to handle disasters with composure: Enlightenment provides the ability to navigate through life's disasters unaffected and handle them in a resourceful way.
- Reconnection with one's body: Enlightenment promotes a reconnection with one's body, countering frequent disconnection due to living predominantly in our heads.
- Reestablishing Physical Vitality: Enlightenment can reconnect individuals with their body, reducing tension and stress, and helping to prevent ailments. This connection can restore the physical vitality and joy that was experienced during childhood.
- Improved Health & Longevity: Studies on advanced meditators suggest that enlightenment can lead to longer life expectancy and overall better health. This is due to the healthier mental environment created through enlightenment which, through the body-mind link, positively impacts physical health.
- Deep Self-Acceptance & Self-Love: Enlightenment allows for profound levels of self-acceptance and love, overcoming feelings of guilt, shame, and non-acceptance. This level of acceptance is unattainable without unwiring the ego.
- Enabling True Love: By eliminating the illusion of separate individuality, individuals can experience true, unconditional love for all of reality. This love is non-needy and powerful, extending to all beings, people, and situations.
- Fostering Authentic Relationships: Enlightenment encourages authentic, non-needy relationships that are not based on manipulation or ego. To cultivate such relationships, individuals need to understand themselves and others on an existential level.
- Immunity to Existential Crises: Enlightenment makes individuals immune to existential or midlife crises. By dissolving the ego, individuals become less susceptible to bouts of self-doubt.
- Accessing Deep Understanding of Reality: Enlightenment gives access to the deepest possible understanding of existence or truth, which cannot be attained through knowledge or logic alone.
- Living Without Regrets: Consistent practicing of enlightenment enables individuals to live authentically, connected to reality, reducing the chances of having regrets at the end of life.
- Healthier Attitude Towards Society and Humanity: Enlightenment promotes a healthier outlook towards the world, society, and humanity, helping to make the world a better place.
- Benefits of Enlightenment on a Macro Scale: Enlightenment can lead to increased honesty, ethical behaviour and consequentially improved societal structures. It has the potential to mitigate damage caused by unconscious and ego driven actions that harm our political, social and environmental landscape. This upliftment and betterment of society also prevents potential catastrophic future scenarios often driven by egos unable to keep up with rapid technological advancement.
- Rediscovery of Childhood Satisfaction and Presence: One substantial benefit of enlightenment is a return to the effortlessness and presence experienced in childhood, the feelings of being alive, being in the flow and finding satisfaction in life regardless of circumstances. Enlightenment allows you to persist in this zone of effortless presence leading to unconditional happiness and peace of mind.
- Cost of Attaining Enlightenment: Despite the noteworthy benefits, enlightenment comes at the cost of giving up one's ego, identity and entire way of life including not only negative attributes but also things one loves like family, career, success and the fundamental belief of the self being a physical entity. This cost could be challenging for individuals to pay.
- Revelations of Enlightenment: Enlightenment reveals that life is meaningless, all perceived truths about the world are false, judgements are fictional and there is no self to control anything. It is thus a complete surrender to life.
- Reality of Benefits: The discussion of benefits serves to communicate effectively with the ego, tricking it by promising advantages thus facilitating its dissolution. The idea of benefits and value in enlightenment is a deception since there are no real-world advantages and no self to be benefited. Enlightenment doesn't enhance 'you', but removes the erroneous concept of 'you'.
- Desire for Enlightenment: Those who desire enlightenment have to be strategic by shifting the focus from pursuing materialistic success to existential understanding. This journey of enlightenment, although challenging in terms of giving up the ego and identity, is beneficial on numerous fronts and leads to increased satisfaction in life.
- Benefits of Enlightenment: Life post-enlightenment will be extraordinary, but without ego, it won't be considered 'your' life anymore. Previous notions of life will be viewed as living in a hollow dream, and enlightenment is described as waking from this condition into a true life full of majesty, joy, and power.
- Paradox of Enlightenment: Despite some aspects of enlightenment appearing nihilistic, such as life being meaningless and the non-existence of a self to be benefited, it is considered the greatest thing to strive for because your 'real life' begins after enlightenment. However, the ego acts as a deterrent to enlightenment, keeping individuals in a state of complacency without viewing the possibility of something better outside.
- Struggles of Realizing Existential Nature: Individuals struggle in understanding their existential nature, instead focusing on seeking more material success which has no real impact on the quality of life. Even when in agreement with the concepts of enlightenment, action is often not taken due to a lack of wisdom and tendency to fall back into old routines.
- The Role of Wisdom in Pursuing Enlightenment: Enlightenment should be the ultimate strategic intent in life, requiring a high degree of wisdom to overpower 'stupidity' or lack of strategic thinking. The difficulty lies in the counterintuitive notion of forgoing materialism and changing the current way of life to a foreign concept which is enlightenment.
- Ultimate Goal: The ultimate goal is to take one's life to its highest potential and discover what creates human happiness. For understanding and commitment to this vision, individuals should rely on self-actualization concepts shared by Leo, considering Enlightenment as a lifelong journey to improve strategic intent in life.
- Importance of Staying on Track: Despite the motivations to pursue enlightenment, it is easy to forget the path, making it necessary to stay on track constantly. Actualize.org is recommended as a regular resource to achieve this. It provides weekly updates on self-actualization through newsletters, along with other resources like the life purpose course, book list, and a free forum.
- Role of Commitment: The commitment to generate practical results for oneself is required to effectively utilize the mentioned techniques and strategies. Enlightenment becomes achievable by overcoming complacency and developing a more strategic direction to life centered on self-actualization.