Everyday Enlightenment

Why choose, or seek, enlightenment at all? Let’s start at the beginning.

When spirit first started trying to embody itself on this planet, mystics have said that at first spirit moved into rocks. And then it moved into plants, and then animals, and eventually it came to inhabit human bodies.

Spirit is always becoming something. Beingness comes from nothingness, and seeks somethingness. We need somethingness to validate, to complete, our nothingness. When we take physical form, we make real what would otherwise just be pure potential. Potential that never gets used is worthless.

The problem is that often times when spirit becomes “something”, it then forgets what it has become. This is tragic. Spirit becomes somethingness to validate its nothingness, and loses its nothingness. It becomes stuck on the side of somethingness. This is death for spirit. Life then becomes a dry husk, pointless and meaningless. It has, as Jesus warned about, “gained the whole world, and lost its own soul.” This can lead to apathy, depression, loneliness and despair, and on the other side, greediness, disrespect for physical life, raping of resources and pleasure seeking.

So, let’s just say that this is of primary importance, as Jesus said, the idea of “being in the world, but not of the world”. This would be reinforced by his recommendation to “seek first the kingdom of God”, to make sure that we get our priorities straight at the outset. For what good is a lifetime if we lose ourselves? Sure, it happens. A lot of strange things can happen, and they’re all wonderful and beautiful, once you wake up from the experience. A party that never ends is not a party. It is hell. Ask any addict. If you’re stuck on the merry-go-round, it doesn’t matter how good the ride was to begin with. Once you’ve lost your perspective, you’ve lost everything.

There is nothing wrong with swinging from one extreme to another, from one state to another, from one level of consciousness to another. However, there is a particular beauty in being able to have it all, in the middle, as in the eye of a storm. You can keep the consciousness of your nothingness while experiencing the reality of somethingness at the same time. You could even be fully experiencing your nothingness and at the same time fully immersed in physical reality. You could call this enthusiasm, bliss, ecstasy or passion. You could even call it enlightenment, living a life that is full of light. Everything worth doing is worth doing full out. Why not?

So, isn’t this a paradox, being fully yourself and being fully immersed in the world at the same time? Yes. Spiritual truth is always paradoxical. Only a paradox can contain the truth. A paradox has an infinite number of solutions. The truth is always infinite. The two go together.

This goes against the black and white thinking of the mind, where everything is either good or bad, right or wrong. The truth is, every circumstance is always slightly different, the variables are always slightly different. No situation can be treated in exactly the same way. If a running back in football expected every hole that opened up in a certain location to always look the same, he would successfully penetrate the hole a very low percentage of the time. We can generalize about holes, and this helps for preparation and for planning. But during a game, all preparation must be subconscious and we must be fully in the game, in the moment, to successfully navigate the situations presented, each of which is completely new and different.

Children are often in a state of coming from their nothingness and being fully immersed in the world at the same time. Unfortunately, we train our children out of this state. It would be nice if for every grain of information we provided a child with about the world, we allowed them to enlighten us, to remind us, of the larger perspective of God-knowledge.

As adults, it’s not so much that we have anything to learn to find enlightenment, but that we have many things to unlearn.

Descartes nailed our current level of consciousness on the head when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” We are in a conceptual age, a mental age. Currently, concepts are as real to us as physical objects. Advertising relies completely on this fact when it tries to convince us that a certain product is “sexy”. This, of course, can’t be objectively true. A product can only have certain attributes and be lacking in other attributes. No judgement can ever be objectively true. It’s only when you buy into a concept that it becomes true for you. You make it true. As Jesus said, “As you believe, it is done unto you.”

The most important concepts to address are going to be the ones that you have about yourself. These are going to be the core concepts. They will affect everything else that you do.

After taking a physical body, we gradually begin to identify with it, with its traits, capabilities and characteristics, with its environment and privilege and with our personality. We come to know ourselves as sexy, beautiful, homely, nerdy, smart, stupid, exciting, boring, slutty, prudish or any of a million other types.

It’s really a lack of precision that gets us into trouble. Instead of saying, “I have the ability to think quickly on my feet” or “I have a good memory”, we say, “I am smart”, and this lends itself to becoming a stereotype, an embodiment of a concept, like “the brain of the class”. A stereotype is a very limiting, one-dimensional concept of self. Others include “the jock”, “the whore”, “miss congeniality”, “the stoner”, “the most likely to succeed”, etc.

Identifying with the physical body is really a trap. This is why people who get into serious accidents or develop serious illnesses and their bodies are disfigured in some way are sometimes very thankful when the event is over and things have settled down. They are relieved to not be stuck with the same limiting concepts of the body any more. They have seen the bigger picture. They have seen what life is about. They now know that the body is just a body. It is not them.

Identifying with something is great as long as you think you are winning. And therein lies the hook. The mind always thinks it is winning.

First of all, I’d like to thank Eckhart Tolle for translating Eastern spirituality and philosophy for the Western mind. I’ve seen quotes and passages, and read books on Eastern thought, but never really appreciated what it had to offer until Eckhart Tolle began clarifying them in a very simple and straightforward manner with his book, The Power of Now.

For over a year, I have been the leader of a weekly Eckhart Tolle Silent Local Meditation Group in Northern California. This has been a very fulfilling and rewarding experience. For me, Eckhart’s words are deeply steeped in the truth, especially those that describe the human mind. However, what I have noticed for myself over the last year is that I could use a little more detail about the mechanics of how to interact with the human mind.

I am one of those people that Eckhart has talked about that has been meditating for twenty years. Part of me, indeed, thought that it was very advanced, and that it knew everything there was to know about meditation (among other things). With the help of the Eckhart Meditation Group, and close personal friends, I’ve repeatedly had to face the reality that when it comes to the human mind, I’m an absolute beginner.

It’s one thing to hear the truth that my mind hasn’t been very effective in promoting happiness in my life and that I must disidentify with my mind to find happiness. It’s another thing altogether to do it. If I am identified with my mind, the honest question becomes, “How do I disidentify with something that I think I am?”

Eckhart woke up one morning and was no longer operating in the same way that he had been before. He experienced a sudden shift in consciousness. It took him some time to realize this, but what had happened to him was a permanent 80% reduction of what most people consider to be normal thinking. This is reminiscent of Gautama Buddha, who sat under a tree until he began laughing when he finally “got it”.

Perhaps the final step to enlightenment does always come in an instant. Eckhart admits, though, that most people will probably have a more gradual transition to it than he did. Unfortunately, Eckhart’s teachings don’t address very much of this transition period.

On his CD, Gateways to Now, Eckhart introduces us to the tools of the “inner body”, silence and acceptance. In other places, he talks about the “pain body”, the reactive body made up of mind and emotions. In other places, he also talks a lot about stillness, and presence.

Presumably, one could just practice using these tools and exercising their awareness of those things which Eckhart speaks about to eventually gain a strong sense of their true self and of the Now to gain enlightenment.

Eckhart also says that ultimately everyone comes to enlightenment when they have suffered enough. Though I don’t doubt the validity of this statement, it sounds a little painful.

Frankly, I would prefer a little better map of the scenery that I will be experiencing so that I have some idea of what to expect. If my identity is completely based in my mind, how do I “lose my mind” without losing my mind? What does it feel like to be my true self instead of being my mind? Is it possible to straddle between these two worlds, or must one always bounce back and forth? Even though my true self is beautiful and wonderful, how do I trust it when I have no groundedness in it whatsoever? Does it take faith?

This need for a road map is undoubtedly one of the mind. But this is the point of a transition. We want to gradually, and gently, let go of identification with mind as we move toward groundedness in being. We’ll also want to know what the surroundings look like, in case some kind of “leap” is necessary. This way, the mind can stay as our ally, or at least not turn into our enemy.

A little more clarification about the mechanics of mind and how one interacts with it would go a long way in enabling one to proceed a little more quickly and easily. This road map doesn’t have to be perfect. There may be no experts on this subject that care to fully elaborate and there may not be any absolute truths when it comes to the human mind. It doesn’t matter. Any map is better than no map.