Anyone genuinely “enlightened” (and that’s a paradox, because there is “no-one” there), understands from experience that goal setting and chasing is impossible. No one living into the “natural state” can put goals and self-whip or self-carrot feed, until these are achieved. This kind of process can only be entertained by a separate entity, which carries huge tensions, and misuses them as fueling power for goal achievement.
In the “natural state” these tensions are not present. The tensions emerge like waves in the sea, being discharged on the sea-shore. These are cosmic waves, just occurring naturally. The one who enjoys the natural state might surf on the waves in order to reach the shore, but he or she may not do so. The one who enjoys the natural state might reach the shore, riding the wave and they will enjoy the undercurrent, that will pull the back into the sea, back into where they were. They will see the shore not as an ultimate goal, but as a point in a circular non-ending ride.
When life is seen this way, there is no meaning in the shore, nor in the circular ride, other than just the enjoyment of the experience. It all happens just for the sake of the experience and that’s the full meaning of it. Anything else, superimposed, on the experience, just comes from a separate mind, misunderstanding its nature and identity and because of the discomfort caused by this misunderstanding, stories need to be created around the circular ride, in order to make the mere existence of the separate mind relevant, if not important.
As the mind is binary, immediately a range on “importance” is created, which created a broad playground for many games. Some seem more important than others, depending on the maturity of the gamer. The maturity of the gamer, depends on how quickly he/she is bored and how much their understanding penetrates the true nature of their boredom. If their understanding is shallow, they will look for another game, another round of circular play, believing that there they will find the final meaning that will quench their thirst, once and for all. If their understanding is sharp and cuts through this layer, they will start exploring deeper layers of the circular process, layers they have themselves made.
Deeper layers create more interesting games, the spiritual path, being probably the most interesting. This is available only for very advanced players, who do not find any joy to previous layers. However, the Spiritual Path is still a game, so more layers are created inside that layer that include more mini games, which constitute “the paths to the path”.
This suggests an unending prolongation to the experience of Reality, which is what is the case, regardless of any games, or paths.
All paths are made of Reality, within Reality, but not all paths lead to Reality. Reality is the “natural state” that includes all playgrounds and gamers. It includes the person riding the wave to the shore and the undercurrent back to the ocean, but it also includes the one who never rode the wave and always stayed deep in the center as the ocean.
Reality is both. God is both. You are both.