Seeking enlightenment is a journey toward deeper understanding, self-realization, and inner peace. In many philosophical and spiritual traditions, enlightenment represents a state of heightened awareness, where one perceives reality with clarity, free from illusions and attachments. The path often involves self-reflection, meditation, and a disciplined practice of aligning actions with values like compassion, humility, and wisdom. To become enlightened is to transcend ordinary thinking and recognize the interconnectedness of all life, often bringing a profound sense of purpose and harmony. This journey is both personal and universal, leading you to an awakened state where you feel liberated from the ego’s confines and in tune with the true nature of existence. Enlightenment is thus seen not as an endpoint but as a transformative process that fosters inner tranquility, moral clarity, and a compassionate outlook on life.
Neither is enlightenment something that comes to you like an inner explosion when you wake up one morning, nor something that is conferred upon you by an ‘authority’ like a mystic guru or an acknowledged master. It is not something like the attainment of a goal, or some other recognised achievement. Enlightenment is an energy of consciousness and, as energy, is subject to vibrational fluctuations, like mood swings, emotions which bring you down, or joy and happiness which bring you up. It is not a static state but always in motion, creation and re-creation. It is not subject to any external validation, rather internal feeling, resonance and knowing. It has very little to do with world around us but can come into being, eventually, because of tests, circumstances, challenges, situations – experiences – received and undergone from the outside world and resultant mastery of those challenges – reasons why we came here. The journey towards enlightening yourself starts with empowering yourself.
Feeling empowered requires an inner knowing of who and what you are. It means understanding and knowing who and how you are when you have others with you, knowing that you do not seek to be different or separate from them, or argue ‘being right’ over them. Feeling empowered means that there is no winning or losing, just the greatest benefit for the greatest number. Feeling empowered means that there are no ‘outsiders’ because, deep-down, under the games we play and the masks we adopt we are all the same - all one.
Feeling empowered means knowing not to criticise nor judge, but share, encourage and help by being just the way you are, not necessarily doing the ‘right’ thing because to be empowered means knowing that we each have our own pathway through life and none is ‘better’ than any ‘other’. Feeling empowered means knowing what victimhood means, understanding the true nature of acceptance, surrender and letting go and that resistance means persistence and that with all our self-imposed tests and trials we find ourselves learning and re-learning the same lessons over and over again.
You do not need to become a follower of a recognised group or authority but do so if it suits you – it’s your journey. You do need to indulge in rituals or mantras, but you may want to try them to see how you feel about them. You need not become a dedicated devotee to meditation or burn incense but, again, you may want to try them to see what suits you and helps you with your intention and your attention to focusing on gaining a state of peace and calm serenity and a non-chattering mind. You do not need to steep yourself in what may be deemed useful or appropriate literature to attain a higher vibration or higher consciousness. Remember not to get attached to understanding the mental concepts, or the intellectual satisfaction of grasping notions that have eluded you in the past.
What is important is your intention and your attention of focus on it. Your intention should include gaining a state of peace and calm serenity irrespective of adverse circumstances or discordant situations. Your intention should include the notion of presence – the full experience of the present moment - without extraneous thinking or chatter. Your intention should include detachment from any form of desire, or goal to be attained. Your intention should not include effort toward a goal, but being in a feeling, a resonance of well-being and inner peace and contentment.
Intellectual understanding is fine but alone it won’t be remembered if an adverse circumstance or encounter upsets your apple-cart and you sense that you are plummeting back down the vibrational scale to resentment, victimhood and anger. This is why you need to feel and experience your sense of inner peace and well-being with a ‘knowing’ which makes you automatically protect your energy field and disengage from the adversity or discordance.
You do not need the validation of others who won’t be on the same journey. It is more a question of being in isolation rather than in company who won’t understand unless you are totally in sync with one or two close ones with whom you can share pitfalls as well as progress openly and not having to suffer their ‘knowing better’.
Where should you engage in this silent, solitary practice…? In a haven of peace and quiet where you will not be disturbed…. But… being outside in nature can provide all you need including immeasurable therapy, inner repair and healing. You don’t have to climb a mountain or hug a tree unless it suits you to do so to regain the benefits that nature can bring back to us.
What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.
'The way you invite things you don’t want is by spending a lot of time talking about them.' (Abraham Hicks)
If you feel despondent, negative or down, you will only attract more despondency, negativity or down-ness. If you are thinking of what you don’t have then you will be attracting more of what you don’t have until you change your thinking.
'Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.' (Dr Wayne W. Dyer)
Most of what is required of us is in being grateful and giving, surrendering - going with the flow not against it, and letting go – not persisting, especially when the ego is in play.
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We have all experienced feelings, or energies, of bliss, of a peace so profound, of a kind of resonant knowing. And then... bang! The bubble bursts and that glorious serenity goes as fast as it came. The mind clicks in and tries to get back to that idyllic state. But it can’t – it’s not something the mind can do. In fact that energy was very much like being out of your mind. It is in that trying to get back, the effort to regain what was, that we fail because that wonderful, if fleeting energy, did not come from any trying, any effort. It was not a goal achieved but rather a gift that our consciousness gave us. And it only happened when our full attention and our consciousness were in alignment. It only happens when we are totally at one with ourselves and will not happen when our attention is like a flitting butterfly jumping from one thought to another.
We intellectualise. We mentalise. We look for something logical or rational. But that doesn’t work. That moment of bliss was not a result of the mind. The mind was blessedly silent and allowed heart and consciousness to become balanced, aligned, not trying to do anything, not wishing for the past, nor worrying about the future. Being in alignment can only happen when the mind is still, at rest. And for most of us that does happen often.
Enlightenment, sheer bliss, is not to be worked at, striven for. It is rather a state of being when balance and alignment are in place. What does that mean? It means that you are so at one with yourself, no longer at odds with anything or anybody that brings about such a state, such a connection. It takes a high vibration and with consistency and practice it can be maintained.
'Your focus of attention is to be on your state of Beingness, not on any acts of Doing. And even though you (may) now flit in and out of that state of Presence, it is your focus of Awareness, that ultimately, will enable you to sustain that state and walk in the fullness of your experience of Oneness.' (Rasha. A Journey to Oneness. Earthstar Press, 2013. page 370)
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