The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being.
So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before.
Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.
Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not "fit in" with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.
Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.
Even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free or desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present.
...the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.
If there isn't an emanation of love and joy, complete presence and openness toward all beings, then it is not enlightenment.
When you continuously know and sense yourself as the space of consciousness rather than what appears in consciousness - sense perceptions, thoughts, emotions - then it can be said that you are enlightened... except that you wouldn't think or speak of yourself as 'enlightened', because that would instantly create another mind-based conceptual identity and so it would be the end of 'your' enlightenment.
Enlightenment means choosing to dwell in a state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is.
You are not seeking to attain some future state. That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state - enlightenment, or whatever they call it - they want to achieve.
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.
Pain is the fuel that lights the flame of our enlightenment
The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.
So the single most vital step on your journey towards enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.
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