Remember, Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna were Teachers of Enlightenment.

The case of Jesus finds Jesus for forty days voluntarily out in the desert involved in deep spiritual activity. Jesus was getting his head together. The retreat of Jesus is a model for you to go off alone as much as you can in the natural world and find yourself. The natural world is not computers and cell phones. The internet is not part of the natural reality. The internet contains a great many illusions. The longer you can go off by yourself the better. A retreat puts you in a setting that enables you to naturally eliminate illusions that keep you from the clear state of Enlightenment. In a retreat, you get away from the pull of other minds and find your own. This is called Self-Realization. Some spiritual writers equate Self-Realization with Enlightenment and others do not. Some consider Enlightenment the next level after Self-Realization. A Self-realized person has integrated and aligned their heart, mind, and gut with “what is.” Until a person eliminates the illusions that keep the light of consciousness out the person feels separate from others and that something is missing. Meditation and other disciplines help a person cope with society but the pull of other minds is always there when we are through with meditation and other disciplines. So right now we have to control our environments more in order to find peace. Existence in society will become comfortable and peaceful as the state of Enlightenment becomes more common. This is because one Enlightened person has a great positive effect on the masses. So imagine what it would be like if there were more enlightened people now.

So a personal retreat is a solution. To further use Jesus as a model who has the spiritual image of God inside him as is said we do and who possessed a material body as we do let’s consider the lost years of Jesus. So Jesus is like us. There is evidence that Jesus from the age of twelve to twenty-eight was in other lands involved in an adventurous retreat studying and striving for perfection. This type of adventure has been referred to as the Hero’s Journey. Presently, it is extremely difficult to be “in the world but not of the world” until a person has experienced long retreats and this is because of the pull of other minds. If available studies and disciplines that help people cope were combined with long retreats they would be much more effective.

A sadhu is a person in Hinduism and Jainism who renounces the world with a prolonged retreat with the intention of reaching Enlightenment. Sadhus are common in India. Many sadhus have already been householders who have raised families and are free to retreat and truly find themselves. This tells us that we can attempt the hero’s journey at any point in our lives. So until society becomes more comfortable and peaceful models like Jesus and others are there for us.

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