I Worry About Enlightenment & Relating To Others

This question contains a slight misunderstanding of presence, but it's a fairly common misunderstanding. It can probably be explained very briefly. The question is, I'm afraid that if I become enlightened, I will not be able to relate to others. I will not say to my son, you can't do this or that. I will let him do whatever he wants even if it is wrong. How can I be enlightened and have an agenda on the present moment? I just allow everything to be a common misunderstanding of presence. When you respond to the present moment, you don't have an agenda. That's not an agenda. As the questioner here says, you have an agenda. When you have a pre planned sequence of things that you want to happen or want somebody else to do, then you are not in the present moment, but responding to whatever it is that the present moment requires. That is not an agenda, that is freedom from an agenda. So there is an error in the question. And of course to be able to tell somebody like a child to stop doing something for a good reason, not because you want to exercise control, but because whatever the child is doing may be dangerous. So you have to respond to the need of the present moment. And this is what happens in presence. So presence. And again, there's a misunderstanding here which is allowing everything to be that is misinterpreted by some people as if it meant that you never say no to anything or anybody. So if your child climbs on a high wall and to the other side there's a cliff, say I allow the present moment to be as it is. The allowing to be is an internal thing rather than an external thing. So allowing to be is. It often happens, you may have observed, a child goes into a dangerous situation. The parent suddenly panics and they run and grab the child. They might even hit the child. I've witnessed it. And they shout, don't you ever go there again. It could kill you. Don't you see that this is the curb you shouldn't cross? There's a traffic, you could have been killed. And they shout at the child, don't ever do that again. That is non acceptance. The acceptance is that a child does these things and you take effective action. You don't fight against what is. You take effective action. There is not an internal resistance which is totally misinterpreting how a child behaves. And the shock that some parents in their panic or their fear give their children leaves a dreadful trace in the children contributes to the formation of the pain body of emotional suffering. Because a child is very sensitive when you scream at a child, even though your intentions may be good because you wanted to protect the child, but you're screaming at the child. And of course it's like even if you don't physically hurt the child, you are hurting the child energetically. It's extremely harmful. And this is part of non acceptance of what is. So when a child does something dangerous as you are present, you take effective action without fighting against the isness of that moment, which is what the child does. So you pull the child back and you explain this is very dangerous. And there's no anger. The anger always comes when there's a non acceptance of what's going on. It's internal and that puts you in opposition to the present moment. And then anger arises and resentment arises because this shouldn't be happening. So the action you take is much more effective. In the absence of inner opposition, then you can take truly effective action. And you're not causing, in Eastern terms, bad karma because when there's an outflow of negative energy, you are causing suffering to yourself and others. And that's karmic. And if you shout at a child many times, your child, many times during childhood, then most likely he or she is going to do the same to their children until somebody finally comes who discovers the power of presence and then breaks the cycle of karmic whatever they inherit karmically. So allowing the present moment to be as it is does not necessarily mean that you cannot say no. But you say no in a clear, non confrontational way. Not aggressively, you just say no. Oh, there's no negativity behind that. Very different from the aggressive no that is against what's happening. You may have seen the movie with Jim Carrey, I think he was called yes Man. He goes to a new age guru and listens to a seminar. And this is the character that he plays is very negative. He loves saying no to. He's a mortgage consultant or at a bank. And his favorite occupation is to say no to people. And he's in continuously negative statements, no, no, straightforward no, you can't have a mortgage, no. And somebody takes him to the new age guru who teaches said, whatever life gives you, say yes to it. Say yes to life, to everything, to everything. And at first the character resists and then he says, well, that might be interesting. And then the rest of the movie shows you that from then on, whatever happens, he says yes. And he goes with it and gets into the most incredible and absurd situations. And of course it's a misinterpretation of a Basic truth of an inner yes to the present moment, which does not necessarily mean an outer yes to the present moment. So when somebody says okay, offers you okay, do you want to. I have this great drug. I mean they don't call it drug. I don't know what the words are, the hit, you want the hit or whatever. You don't say, I'm not in touch with these things. But you don't say okay, I need to accept the present moment, say okay, I'll have it now. In the movie, that's what the character would do and he does all kinds of things like that. That's a misinterpretation. You can clearly, when you say, when you are present, you can say no to something which is non confrontational no. You do not make the other person wrong by saying no to that. There is still benevolence, there is still kindness. And you can say a very loud no and still emanate kindness or benevolence. You say no, no, no, I'm not getting into this car with you because you're drunk. I don't want you to drive me home. And I would recommend that you don't drive home either. Get out of the car. So you say what's needed. You'd. I call that in the power of now. I called it a high quality no as opposed to a low quality no. So coming back to the movie, if you haven't seen it, I'm not taking away the pleasure of seeing it by telling you that at the end, in the end, he realizes that it wasn't quite right. And I think if I remember correctly, he comes to, he realizes it doesn't necessarily mean doing everything that somebody asks you to do. It's an inner thing rather than an outer thing. So that is very common, often been asked that question, a very common misunderstanding of what allowing this moment to be, what that actually means in practice, and saying yes to what is. It's an inner yes, whether it's an outer yes also or whether it's an outer no depends on the situation. But if you don't have the inner yes then you have a loss of goodwill, a loss of kindness, as in the example of the parent shouting at the child. It.