Ten States of Life
- Enlightenment: wisdom to create value in every situation
- Altruism: empathizing with, and helping others
- Realization: gaining insight through introspection
- Learning: learning from others and gathering information
- Exhilaration: satisfaction of achieving a desire
- Tranquility: calm and peaceful, listlessness
- Anger: outwardly directed self-righteous anger
- Animality: pursuit of instinctive desires
- Hunger: unchecked greed and ambition, improvement
- Hell: suffering, misery, torment, anguish
Each of these states is valuable but destructive when taken to extremes, except for enlightenment, which is wholly valuable. Also, every state contains aspects of every other state, meaning that anyone and everyone can potentially become enlightened through the proper actions. Dispassionate analysis of your attitude reveals one particular state which dominates and influences your life above the others.
The purpose of life is to raise your dominating state towards enlightenment. This is done through consistent inner reflection in an effort to determine the actions which create the most value in each life situation. Value is defined as that which brings benefit to both oneself and others.
Cause and Effect
Every thought, word and deed is a cause which results in some effect. In this way, we caused our own destiny through our attitudes and actions, which are themselves the result of effects from all prior causes. Essentially, we are the sum of our own actions.
We can do absolutely nothing to change our past causes, but we are total masters of our present. Through the application of wise causes, we will experience positive effects within our lives, and raise our state of life.
