HOW ENLIGHTENED ARE YOU?

1. Which statement is most accurate?

1. a) Men and women are not two separate groups.
2. b) Men and women are socially conditioned to behave differently.
3. c) Men and women are biologically and psychologically different.
4. d) I refuse to pick any option that puts ‘Men’ before ‘women’ in the word order. That’s a syntactical reinforcement of oppressive gender structures.

Answer: a. ‘Men’ and ‘women’ are irrelevant categories the human mind has created. Every man, woman and child on the planet is Awareness, irrespective of his or her bodily configuration or set of opinions. The people you attack on Twitter are you, and you are them, because at the level of the true self, we are all that same Awareness or Consciousness with no limit, beginning or end.

2. You, Sondra Halliday, insult and Twitter-block dozens of people every day because:

1. a) They are abusive misogynists who deserve it.
2. b) Women shouldn’t have to repress their feelings to placate the patriarchy.
3. c) You are fighting for a fairer world, which means you can’t always be nice.
4. d) You have a pool of unhappiness inside you that has nothing to do with what anybody tweets to you, and that is easily triggered.

Answer: d. The objects of your anger tap into a discontent – or rage, or pain – that you carry around with you as a result of your misunderstanding of the nature of reality. The source of negative emotion is always the belief that one is small, separate, inadequate and incomplete. It is never what the other person has done that has made you angry or upset. Once you understand that your essential self is limitless Awareness that cannot be harmed, you will cease to be angry or miserable.

3. A truly enlightened person is:

1. a) Someone who agrees with you, Sondra Halliday, about everything.
2. b) Someone who understands that there is no such thing as ‘brain sex’, and that we are all individuals who happen to be biologically male or biologically female – therefore gender must be abolished.
3. c) Someone who knows that both biological sex and gender are irrelevant.
4. d) Someone who wears a T-shirt with ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ printed on it.

Answer: c. Boundless Awareness, which is neither the mind nor the body, is the innate nature of every human being. Awareness has no biological sex, no gender, and remains unaffected by social conditioning. Therefore, focusing on these issues as a source of division will always take us further away from our true selves and create more inner pain and external conflict and suffering. Instead, for greater fulfilment and peace all round, we should focus on our oneness and on the insignificance of the apparent differences between us.

4. ‘Not All Men are sexist pigs’ is a bad thing to say because: