I always get excited, and also a little self-conscious (which is actually quite funny in this context), to speak about this:
The concept of spiritual enlightenment.
Excited, not only because I find it such an endlessly interesting subject,
But also excited because I believe it is overly mystified, and I get passionate about debunking spiritual fallacies.
A little self-conscious I get, when I am aware that people might project on me that I am making some kind of grand claim about myself.
Which let me state it clearly: I am nót.
The only claim I am making, if any, is that both you and I, and all living beings, have no choice bút to be enlightened - and that this is a very helpful insight before we go chase this grand spiritual carrot.
No amount of meditation, therapy, healing, or numbing, can increase, decrease, create or destroy our enlightenment.
Enlightenment, not in the sense of misinterpretations and spiritual ideals of constant bliss and sainthood.
Enlightenment in the sense that the only one thing that we can absolutely know to be true is consciousness.
The choice-less, causeless, unbroken experiencing that pervades the totality of any present-moment experience we could ever possibly have.
Choiceless.
Unbroken experiencing.
Pervading the totality of this present moment.
…
…
…
We are right now the grand 8th limb of Yoga;
Pure samadhi, pure absorption.
Whether it is absorption in egoic consciousness, liking and disliking, opinions and personal limited perspectives,
Or oneness with the Paramatman, our inner eagles eye that sees it all just happening.
We are absorbed in that which we are attentively conscious of,
But also of that which is less obviously felt in the subconscious background.
We are absorbed when we are numb and drunk,
And absorbed when we are in pure clarity after a deep meditation.
Enlightenment is not the end; it doesn’t even know a beginning.
It should be our very first orientation, the recognition to start with.
The ultimate first-person proof and science.
A recognition to make, before we endlessly chase a non-existing carrot.
How futile would it be, to spend a life-time looking for eternal happiness and enlightenment as an experience,
When the very nature of any experience is to be impermanent?
One deeply attentive look at reality, one glimpse, and we realize the only one thing that is actually eternal and timeless is not be found in experience.
An eye cannot look back at itself, it just sees.
An ear cannot hear itself, it just hears.
Consciousness cannot experience itself, it just experiences.
Science cannot grasp it.
Only the meditator in pure subjectivity can.
With the recognition of consciousness, we open and blossom into a profound spiritual awakening;
Our true spiritual journey starts.
With the newly acquired sword of discernment in our hand, we know now to discriminate between the changing and unchanging.
We obliterate any false promise of human perfection and a grand eternal escape beyond ourselves.
We admit total defeat in our attempts to control, and wholeheartedly say;
‘I completely surrender to you life, for I see I do not control you.
I see that ultimately I do not even control my ability to surrender.
I understand that I am here to engage, learn lessons, and experience the raw and profound duality of life, for reasons I do not even need to understand.’
And right there,
By our willingness to experience the full spectrum of duality and human life,
By our non-resistance to experience resistance,
By our non-attachment to reach a state non-attachment,
Non-duality and enlightenment become crystal clear.
We now capital ’S’ See something, and not any word could truly do it justice.
And things begin to shift with the recognition.
What we no longer seek to transcend, paradoxically begins to liberate itself.
What was painful begins to purge, by our sincere willingness to be with it.
What was unhappy becomes happy, because we stop caring so much about fleeting states of happiness and unhappiness.
By dropping all our methods,
And by cutting through all the silly strategies of the ego that even tries to make ‘willingness to feel’ into a new method,
We move beyond suffering because we drop all our expectations to move beyond it.
Not on demand, but because we have been ripened enough by grace, even if only temporarily.
In the surrendered moments that we see that we are not doing it, but that It is doing us.
We are here now, for the full spectrum of human experience, for as long as it wants to stay around.
We are here for the formless truth, in all its infinite forms.
Knowing that enlightenment knows no beginning.
And that duality knows no end.
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If you like more on this subject, I recorded a video about it.
Om...
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