I don’t like the word Enlightenment, mostly because there is no way to define it.
Go online and search for videos of people becoming “Enlightened” in some gurus presence. Usually what you will find is an over positive “seeker” that wants nothing more than a dopamine rush, or nothing more than a notch on their spiritual belt. I’am not saying it isn’t possible to be in the presence of someone with a high Awareness and feel something different, but we chase dopamine and there is a spiritual ego.
We think we know what enlightenment means; guys sitting on mats meditating with a blank look on their face, but that is not only what Enlightenment “is”.
In some ways this may seem trendy, or conceptual, trying to define how to “use” Enlightenment in modern times. Really this is just an Aware exploration of “what” this phenomenon is in 2018.
For the sake of clarity, lets use the words Expanded Awareness.
This implies someone that has seen outside the normal programming and mental concepts that we all live in, and someone that does not “live” permanently in duality (this is good, this is bad, this is ___). Someone that Knows there really is nothing until we take a mental position on it. As I have said before, if you were to take a pill that slowed the mind, all you would see is what you would see with no narrative. That is actually Real life. Thats not even a spiritual idea, its seeing what life really is when the mind is slow; and what life really is…is just what it is.
Life is.
A tree is being a tree, grass is being grass, mountains are being mountains..thats it. The narrative we attribute to them means nothing. An Expanded Awareness would be living in this state of Reality more than NOT living in it. Very simple actually.
We Realize there is “more” than just the concepts we live in; concepts we created. Once we realize that, we can attain what I said above (being in Reality more than not). For anyone looking to be productive, this is the ultimate “hack,” and I do not like hacks.
The mind wants to easily define things, wants to put them in boxes. It makes it easier for us to “understand” things. The mind wants to throw data into mental filing cabinets so it can access it later to “keep you safe,” or to torture you. Nowadays, it just tortures you.
Really all ll it does is keep us trapped.
Now I don’t mean there is “more” in a religious or spiritual sense; I mean it as a space that comes before all the programming, before all thinking.
Most don’t know it, but there is a blank space before your mind starts making opinions. We should be operating from this space; working from this space.
Operating in a space before the narrative we create.
Living in duality is one of our biggest issues; we constantly see things as good or bad, or this or that. So before you say to me that things are good and bad in life, it doesn’t mean you have to be stuck in a box over it.
If you want to go farther down the rabbit hole, whats the definition of good or bad? There are people overseas right now that think its good to blow people up. So whats the definition of good and bad? It’s nothing but concepts, when you get down to it.
Waking up is being a part of a higher awareness. Its using certain “broad viewpoints” to operate in a space that has no conflict, that has no resistance. When you live in concepts, you live in bondage, when you live in bondage, you are not free. As Dr. David Hawkins has said, its a change of context. Think of it as being the bigger picture instead of just focusing on “what” is going on all the time.
The main point is this: if you live in concepts, live in duality, or live in a mental box, you are not living, you are just existing off a prescribed parameter that society, or someone from it, made up. You’re following.
The main point to make here is that there IS something besides constant mental activity. No one is telling you to “not think” in a literal sense, its more important to not be concerned with what is being thought, so to speak. Maybe you do need to be concerned, ok then be concerned. But 24/7 living in thoughts and feelings serves no purpose.
We will always use our brains, but they are used as tools. In other words, used when needed. When you are on a walk in the woods, as an example, do you need the constant mental chatter? Its another version of the popular “flow” that you keep hearing about. You are so focused and surgical in what you are doing that the mental chatter does not exist. Another form of meditation really.
I dont like using the word ignore, but that would be a good word when it comes to extra mental activity. Look at it like this; the mind is going off on a mental tangent, its doing that due to the past and the future. If our awareness is expanded enough, we can “pull” out of that activity and notice it; the second we notice it we can detach from it. Thats just how it works. As humans we can actually think about thinking, which means we can use the brain (so to speak) to transcend the mind.
There is no way that someone will be able to expand their Awareness unless they can “empty” their mind. I don’t mean not thinking; I mean not Being the thinking. Most of you reading this have never been anywhere but inside the mind. Have you ever had a time where you weren’t just your thoughts? Just sitting there with no mental movement, or very little? We live in concepts, we live in constant mental activity.
There are those people that wake up and boom, they are hit with Enlightenment, but you better believe in order for that to happen the mind had to slow down for a second.
I have had many incidents where I just sat there and thought of nothing. It may have only been for a minute, maybe an hour, who knows, and it was nothing more than the mind slowing down. Take all the other cool words and “spiritual” stuff out of it. This was just a very low state of mental activity. This is why every Sage on the planet has talked about the mind; we can never fully see Reality while we are stuck in built up mental activity. Its not possible.
The experience I have had on the this path is really no different than what a lot of people have explained before me. I always had questions, I always felt everything I was doing was “not enough.” There was always a feeling of “this isn’t it” but I didn’t know what It meant. Time went on and I became tortured by mind. Every second of my life was the mind. I woke up and I was thinking, I left the house and I was thinking, I would be standing in a grocery store on autopilot because all I was doing was thinking. This is not living.
I could argue that I hit rock bottom so many times from a mental standpoint that I had no other option but to wake up. I started actually getting “glimpses” of what it was like to not have constant mental chatter; I started feeling the idea that there was something more than just how we define things. Really all I was doing was getting a glimpse of what very low mental activity felt like, which led to a higher Awareness, which led to a piece of Reality.
It could also be described of being the observer. I was witnessing the witness or I was the witness. Things would happen and I “saw” them happen, I did not react to them happening. When I say things I mean more or less mental things. I learned that things could have been dealt with in a few ways, meaning I did have a choice on how to respond. Most of us have no clue that there IS actually a choice.
Modern enlightenment, or an expanded awareness, is not trying to “deal” with anything, its not modifying anything, its not a new mindset, its not improving. A mindset is nothing more than a set; a prison that you try so hard to stay stuck in. This causes even more problems.
The idea of self improvement is flawed. Its trying to improve what you have, instead of removing what you have that blocks you from a true experience. An expanded awareness, or waking up as some say, is removing anything that does not need to be there. Improvement or “mindsets” are walls with a door; Awareness is knocking down the walls so the door doesn’t matter.
Always point back to Awareness. Point back to what is before your concepts, your thoughts, your ideas. Point back to that and stay in that.
When its time to interact, go ahead and interact. But your place of business should be in Awareness. This is real power.