The five greatest barriers to enlightenment

Everyone has different degrees of anger and if channelled in the right way can have a positive outcome. Anger is a powerful energy and the trick is to use it and not let it use you.
Anger can be aroused and directed as it was in the two world wars; an angry man fights more strongly and so tempers were kept on a short leash and built up to explode at the enemy.
Even after the wars this practice was kept up in the services and created a lot of angry men that after leaving the army or navy came back into society and had few ways to deal with their anger that had been drilled into them, and so caused a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Some did find an outlet to let it off such as in sports or work but most were seen as angry and wrong and bad people and the stigma of violence and madness and devil-like hung over them to the end.
Most turned to alcohol which fuelled the anger explosion when it was set off by anyone or anything that pushed the right button and sometimes the wrong button.
Those who managed to control their anger by burying it, perhaps because of their family ties and knowing how destructive it could be sat on a powder keg and so had to be vigilante at all times and in control of their emotions; and as a violent prisoner is guarded by many guards, anger too when suppressed for long takes a lot of energy, and so these ones led a seemingly normal life, and yet how much more could they have been with the right treatment to understand where the anger came from and how to let it go or use it for something positive.

The mass psychological manipulation by the authorities to make human beings take up arms against other human beings has gone on for a very long time and has caused incalculable harm to the psyche of humanity as a whole and has set us back as a species and kept us in an unnecessary darkness, an ignorance of knowing and a smallness of being that is more like a crippling disease that John Lennon put most succinctly in his song: ‘Working class hero.’
Anger is a most insidious emotion and is one of the five great barriers that keep us from enlightenment, far more than any chemical or psychological manipulation and dumbing down that can be used on us because it comes from inside and is felt to be what we are when in fact it is a darkness buried deep down and only by a fearless exploration inside of our self to go beyond the pain, sorrow and suffering of our past can we come to find out who we really are and what we are all a part of.

This has been kept from us by the religions and such as the source of all our power and supplanted by false beliefs that point outwards and great pains have been taken to keep us looking outwards in fear of death and eternal damnation.
Fear of course is the second great barrier that keeps us from knowing who and what we really are and takes great courage to quest beyond.
So why did an enlightened one say once: ‘that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into Heaven?’

Could it be that greed is the third great barrier that keeps us locked into a ‘having’ syndrome that perpetuates itself in a never ending cycle of more until our very spirit is lost in it and takes over completely?
The fourth great barrier is ego that dictates its own agenda and doesn’t hear what the heart says and paints a picture of a beautiful face to be judged by the numbers but underneath is ugly and has nothing to do with true beauty and is but a trap for the unwary to fall into and become lost.

Lust is the fifth barrier and is a twisted desire that comes from the unbridled darkness of our unknowing. It is a voice that whispers to us and when let lose can burn us to our very roots in its empty promise of fulfilment.
Anger can take you so far if used in the right way but sooner or later it has to be let go of.
Fear must be overcome with courage.

Lust once opened cannot be overcome and so has to be supplanted with love.
Greed can only be seen for what it is and given away for in the giving is the having.
And ego is a worm of wrong thinking and only in the quieting of the thinking in the silence of the soul can it be seen for what it is and the true light of clarity shine through.
Of course, if you master these five barriers there will then be concepts to overcome for concepts are perhaps the biggest barrier of all.
All images taken by me