Waking Up: A Zero Sum Game

The idea of living in a constant state of enlightened bliss is usually trumped by my habit of swimming the murky waters of self improvement.  Call it a desire to become EverBetter.

What's EverBetter?  Well, it's a drive that has lead me by the nose and straight into a spiritual search.  After all, to be enlightened is the Most Better one can ever get, isn't it?

Yes, that's all well and good but this blog is about holding every assumption up to Inquiry, and so I have to ask myself the most basic question:

What is it that tries to achieve the state?  The immediate answer comes straight out of the dog-eared pages of some spiritual book:  "Yes. That would be The Me, or Ego, otherwise known as the self."   I've heard that it's the self that loves the idea of getting enlightened. The promise.... the tasty carrot on the stick is the hope of transcendence (oooh, isn't that a great way to ensure that you're better than anyone else!)

Well, that's a nice story about the ego, but I've found a very basic problem with this model which centers around the fact that my early inquiries show that the ego doesn't actually exist. It's an idea. When looking for it, it's never found! (I'm looking right now, and there's nada.)   Essentially, this ego is null.  Zero.  So, if there's nothing to achieve a better state, then can the state be said to exist at all?

Is Enlightenment also just an idea?  

And doesn't THAT leave me with a strange little math equation.

Ego(0) + Enlightenment(0) = 0


I keep getting the same answer for the multiplication and division versions.  In the face of this inquiry, it's clear that there is no enlightenment and it's completely available, for no one.

Once again, I can see exactly what they mean by "paradox".