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As soon as the word enlightenment is mentioned all kinds of notions spring to mind. It is such a controversial word, and it seems that each and every spiritual aspirant or seeker has a different, yet equally certain definition or idea of what they think it should be and what it should look like. Many people aspire to attain this ultimate state or to have a sustained experience of it, but no one can even agree on what it is! The mind boggles with the myriad concepts and ideas that arise with the mere welcoming of this word into consciousness. Yet, welcome it we must.
Even in the simple reading of the word, many of you may already have had numbers of images come to mind. Some of you might have imagined a wise, saffron-robed sage, with a beatific expression, sitting in a perfect yogic lotus posture, and seeming entirely removed from worldly aspirations. Often, with that picture, comes the false belief that these enlightened beings are always and eternally established in bliss, in peace – and that no emotion could even create a ripple in their sublime stillness.
Others of us, never having seen a so-called enlightened master, might not have a clue what enlightenment looks like; but we still hold out a belief that it must mean the end of all suffering, all judgements, indeed, the end of anything that is not what we consider enlightened thinking or enlightened behaviour.
For others there is a belief that enlightenment means you must be totally free; not bound by any of the rules of society, and established in a benevolent love that allows you to act freely, lovingly towards all beings; and that no negative thought or belief could possibly penetrate this presence of grace.
Still others hold the belief that in order to be enlightened you must annihilate the ego, penetrate the lie of the worldly illusion and, in one cataclysmic event you suddenly are enlightened – and you remain that way for the rest of your life. It is as if some huge magical, liberative blasting has to take place, and then suddenly you land in final enlightenment. Some spiritual teachers have even come to label this experience as ‘smashing the pot’ or receiving the ‘final cut’.
Yet others of us believe that enlightenment is only for the rare masters who have spent their lives in spiritual austerities, learning all the rituals, mantras, yogas, scriptures, purifying their minds and bodies. They finally attain enlightenment – something almost completely unavailable and unattainable by the normal, everyday householder.
For others enlightenment looks like total detachment, as if the teacher is entirely, almost inhumanly disengaged from life; not responding in any way to the everyday sufferings that beset the rest of humanity. This version of enlightenment usually includes the notion of ‘transcending’ worldly life, and such a master will appear emotionless, almost lifeless.
Then there is the belief that if you are enlightened you must live your life in poverty and complete austerity, spending your outer-world actions in good deeds and in helping others to awaken to their own purity.
Some people even believe that with enlightenment come the super-human powers of mind reading, seeing into the future, astral projection and other ‘siddhis’; and that with enlightenment, all desires are magically fulfilled, and that disease cannot visit the body of the holy one.
On and on and on … our mental constructs pile up, as we try to imagine and project what it must be like to live in this ultimate state of bliss, paradise, nirvana. All of our ideas coagulate around and magnify this notion called enlightenment, until the whole thing seems so impossible, so distant – something that could only be attained at some far off time in the future, after having spent a lifetime doing everything we could to earn it and attain it.
Like many spiritual seekers around the world, I too spent most of my younger years thirsting, seeking, longing to experience enlightenment, to merge into the divine. I went from teachers, to masters, to yogis, to monasteries, to ashrams. I traversed many spiritual traditions, read all the right texts, did endless austerities, fasts, practices, mantras – all in an effort to find freedom, to slake this seemingly unslakeable thirst to experience that infinite presence as an ongoing, everlasting, direct realisation.
Along the way I learnt countless theories, and came to firmly believe that enlightenment could only be attained through endless practice, fervent desire, total surrender and complete focus on the goal one hundred percent of the time. I sat with several enlightened masters and, in their wakeful presence experienced countless awakenings and bathed in the bliss of freedom. Still I kept searching. Even in the midst of basking in scintillating presence, steeping in love, the longing still burned. Sometimes I thought I might die in the ferocity of its blaze – in fact, I was willing to physically die if it meant merging into God, realising Self, opening into the infinite, resting in enlightenment.
Grace was surrounding me, embracing me, shining in everything, but still I held onto the notion that enlightenment was to be attained, and was somewhere ‘out there’, and would happen at some time in the future.
I was pigeon-holing these sublime experiences, categorising them as mere passing states and relegating them to the past – renouncing the experience of it all as not true enlightenment, and letting it become another beautiful, faded memory. All my focus and attention was on my imagined goal. I was projecting myself into some ideal picture of what I believed enlightenment must be like, overlooking the infinite presence I was already steeping in!
Like the little wave, there I was already soaking in it – but I was still reaching outside, trying to find it, to experience it, to fathom its mystery. I had put myself on a path of postponement.
Then one day, like the wave I had a wonderful collision with reality, and a cataclysmic realisation crashed through my world of the known. In that one moment all my ideas fell away: my beliefs about who I thought I was, my identification with a constructed somebody I’d come to believe was my self – for one instant all the concepts of enlightenment completely dropped away. And in that moment I saw through the lie of my search.
When all identifications, beliefs, concepts and theories were gone, everything that had been obscuring open awareness became obviously apparent.
I’d overlooked the obvious because my focus had always been elsewhere! All along, this that I had been seeking was already here.
I realised that I was resting in an ocean of grace, pure presence, unobscured freedom, and I recognised that I’d spent my whole life in this embrace – I’d simply overlooked it! It wasn’t somewhere ‘out there’, in my future. It was right here, surrounding, suffusing and shining in everything. And it was realised to be here the instant I got fully present to it. When I’d stopped labelling it as a past experience, stopped imagining what it might be like in the future; when I stopped all the mind games and just innocently opened into the present moment – unobscured awareness was realised to be here. In fact, I experienced it as being everywhere, in everything.
What a joke! All my life I spent in fruitless searching, when what I was seeking was closer than my own breath. And I didn’t even have to do anything to get it. In fact, it was my very ‘doing’ that had taken me away from it!
From that day forward I ceased seeking and decided it was time to just relax – to rest in the open presence that is shining here, available each and every moment, whenever you bring your awareness to it.
I hadn’t recognised it, but somehow I’d fostered a notion that enlightenment was a landing place – that you landed there and suddenly and forever you were enlightened, realised.
I didn’t know then what I do now: that enlightenment is simply an invitation to open and be fully present in this moment – with no thought of past, and no thought of future – just this moment. And it’s fully and completely available each time you bring your awareness to the now. It can’t go anywhere because it is yourself. You can let your attention wander and let your mind collapse into some other notion or concept, but the moment you stop … open … and just be still, everything you are seeking is realised to be already here.
I came to realise that enlightenment is a continual opening: concepts can’t cling to it, lies burn away in it, dramas get played out through it, and the whole dance of life is happening in it – waking, sleeping, all of life takes place in this vast embrace.
Sometimes, when my awareness collapses into some story, I still get lost in the drama of something ‘out there’ and I believe myself to be the wave – I get caught up in its unique movements and ever-changing patterns for a brief time and, in those moments, the ocean fades into the background and the drama on the surface takes centre stage. But the second I stop, drop the story and any belief in it, the ocean pulls me back into itself – into an endless sea of peace; and I realise its presence was there all along, even when I pretended for a moment to get involved in the game and played at being a little wave.
Of course, its presence is always here. How can the ocean go anywhere? It’s what you are made of, who you are. Wherever you go, there it is – and all thoughts, dramas, the full dance of life are merely waves on the surface of this that is your infinite self.
Since the day I penetrated the lie of my illusory search and realised that I am this ocean, it has become increasingly difficult to buy into the drama dancing on the surface for any length of time. For me, the reality of this moment and the power of its presence is too strong a pull to resist – it keeps calling me back into itself.
So these days I find the drama of life may still dance through – it just seems to be happening in a vaster presence of grace. Thoughts come and go in it, feelings are welcome in it – in fact, all of life is welcome in it – yet the infinite presence does not come and does not go.
It is time to call off the search.
You are this that you have been seeking.
