Spinoza's Ethics: II. Preface

The importance of this preface is to emphasize that this is not a work of primarily philosophical or scientific significance. Rather, Spinoza is focused on the pathway to the highest blessedness. The notes here on the Ethics are focused on removing the obstacles on that pathway. 

The term "blessedness" is unclear. Initially, I perceived it as a kind of high or euphoria. Call this the drug-like state. Later, I was persuaded by some that blessedness referred to a contented state without attachments. Call this the Buddha-like state. Yet, the more deeply I have read his work, blessedness is correlated with an awareness of reality, a state that I would term "being present." The obstacles to blessedness, then, are those which prevent us from being present - such as bad memories or bad beliefs. By removing these, we are able to become fully present and have vitality restored.

DE NATURA ET ORIGINE MENTIS

Transeo jam ad ea explicanda quæ ex Dei sive Entis æterni et infiniti essentia necessario debuerunt sequi. Non quidem omnia; infinita enim infinitis modis ex ipsa debere sequi propositione 16 partis I demonstravimus sed ea solummodo quæ nos ad mentis humanæ ejusque summæ beatitudinis cognitionem quasi manu ducere possunt.

Translated as,

On the Nature and Origin of the Mind

Now I move to explaining the things which must have followed by necessity from the essence of God or an eternal and infinite Being. Not indeed everything; for we have demonstrated (IP16) that infinite things must follow from themselves by infinite modes, but only those things which are able to lead, as if by the hand, to the cognition of the human mind and its highest blessedness.