[Cochonette]

For me it's not so clear-cut. I feel that I'm at Courage-Neutrality right now. It's hard to put myself in a single box because I fit into so many of them at any given moment. I've been to shame, and while it was courage that first lifted me out of it, I eventually fell back into guilt when my environment changed drastically... Likewise, unconditional love lifted me out of guilt and put me back and more firmly on the plane of courage and also introduced me to neutrality.... but I still have a lot of Pride to deal with... and I feel that anger is something I have only just started to really get over.....

and remnants of shame still reside in me. Actually, when I first started hating myself, I immediately developed a habit of saying to myself, "I hate myself. Die!" and I still often say "God I hate myself" out of habit, even if I don't mean it in nearly as deep of a way as I used to.

Courage is still a little shaky for me in the short-term, but I think I've got it covered in the long-term and that I will just keep coming back to it... so I can say I'm there. I'm also having to deepen my learning of neutrality, which I had learned before but lost because I was still driven by fear, anger, and pride. But I've experienced all the way up to love and shadows of joy... It's quite complicated. :P

Oh, btw, I wanted to ask... what is the difference between Peace and Enlightenment? "Blends with divinity" doesn't tell me much, but I suppose that whoever wrote these levels hadn't reached Enlightenment yet and couldn't describe it. Haha! Or maybe Enlightenment is just that ineffable. I'm not all that concerned about the concept of Enlightenment, as a student of Zen, and I think my Pride is making my reading of these levels a bit competitive... like now I must compete with my friends for Joy! What?! Must learn not to compare self with others, not to divide self and other.

Time.

I started thinking about the pride issue with me and this hierarchy, because everyone I've talked to so far puts themself in Acceptance (above) or Reason (everyone else)... and I also played a game once about socioeconomic privilege after which we were asked to put ourselves in box lower, middle, or higher class. I later realized that the less privileged people are, they less likely they will be to be able to stand up in the face of the world and explain that and why they are at such level of privilege. In that case I was surrounded by mostly upper class folks a few middle class, and I felt lower class but was too afraid to say it.

Well, I went and talked to a very depressed friend of mine who doesn't value his life about this article, and he started asking about how you can know these levels are really permanent... doubt, doubt, doubt. And I realized I couldn't help him, I couldn't really explain it for him even if I'm supposedly "above" him (in reality, that is only an illusion). The guy couldn't even believe in these higher levels and wasn't yet at the state of courage... more like guilt. And I've been there, so I'm just thinking... if a person trapped in the lower levels reads this, they won't necessarily get anything out of it. Because Pride is still a big issue for me, even though I'm starting to move beyond it, it bothers me a little bit reading this. But it's okay... I have courage, so I just remind myself that it's Pride!