Demystifying Enlightenment
Enlightenment is simply the recognition of your true nature.
How to get the most out of these Wisdom Quotes:
Put aside everything you think you already know.
Open your mind and heart to receive something new.
Take your time going through each point.
Return to any points that particularly touch you.
In the coming days, listen carefully to the wisdom within you.
1. Enlightenment Is Not Something That Happens to You
"Many people, perhaps most people, conceive of enlightenment as the ultimate object of gratification, the ultimate experience that is more stable, more reliable, more trustworthy and, basically, permanent.
As long as we feel that enlightenment is such an experience, we are going to be disappointed.
Enlightenment, for want of a better word, is not an experience. I don’t know how to say this more clearly or more simply. Enlightenment is not an experience, not something that happens to you, not something that can be found.
It is simply the recognition of your being, of the nature of your being. There is nothing remotely exotic about enlightenment.
It’s not close to you. It IS you. It is just the recognition of what you have been calling "I" all your life. It’s not something that is added to I. It’s not something that I might experience if I’m lucky enough. It’s just the recognition of what we call "I."
In fact, enlightenment is a complete misnomer. Our self doesn’t BECOME enlightened. For most people, their self is veiled or endarkened by thoughts and feelings, and therefore they do not see themselves clearly."
~Rupert Spira, from the video: The Direct Path - Rupert Spira and Mooji Baba share their wisdom for enlightenment
COACHING NOTES:
What does enlightenment mean to you?
Notice any concepts you have around this word. Are you drawn to it or does it irritate you? Realize that any meaning you have given it is based on conditioning, and open yourself to see something new.
Perhaps, when you think of enlightenment, you think of a small handful of people who experienced profound transformation in an instant. And yet, if you listen to the words of these people, they speak of enlightenment as being something quite ordinary and simple, far removed from the concepts of the complicated mind.
Rupert says that "our self doesn’t BECOME enlightened." If there is nothing to become, and we already ARE that, then we must concern ourselves only with the unveiling of our thoughts and feelings, so that we can see this matter clearly.
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2. Enlightenment Is Not in the Future
"When you were a 5-year-old girl, you felt, "I am myself." When you were 10, 15, 20, 25, you’ve always felt, "I am myself." Irrespective of what you were experiencing, you always felt, "I am myself." And you always felt that myself is the same self.
What is that self? What is it that remains the same throughout your life? You call it "I." It’s always "I" who is experiencing whatever it is you're experiencing.
What you know changes, but that which knows it never changes.
So, whatever it is that was knowing your experience when you were a 5-year-old girl is the same that is knowing your experience now. It hasn’t aged. Nothing has happened to it all these years.
All these wonderful experiences you’ve ever had, and all the awful experiences you’ve ever had, have not changed your essential being.
Your thoughts and feelings may often be disturbed or agitated, but you, the one that knows them, the one in whom they appear, is that one ever agitated? Does it share the disturbance of your thoughts and feelings?
It is imperturbable - it cannot be disturbed. Its nature is peace.
We’re not talking about how you might become. We’re talking about how you are now."
~Rupert Spira, from the video: The Direct Path - Rupert Spira and Mooji Baba share their wisdom for enlightenment
COACHING NOTES:
We want to know enlightenment, but it is enlightenment that knows.
Can you recognize that sense of self which you have had your entire life? Have you ever looked in the mirror and felt shocked by visible signs of aging, when you know that, inside, you're still the same being that you were as a young person?
We have become so caught up in the content of our experience, that we have forgotten the one who is experiencing it all. Step back from your thoughts, feelings, and sense perceptions to the space of awareness, where nothing can be disturbed, and everything is allowed to come and go as it pleases.
Here, again, we see the dance of two dimensions - the form and the formless. Do not become lost in your life story and identified with your personality. Remember the "I" of your true being and keep relaxing into the background of your experience.
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3. Enlightenment Is Not Waiting for Anything
"Has any experience you have ever had, added anything to your essential being?
Your essential being is not in a state where it needs to be completed by an object. It is not in a state of incompletion, always needing to be completed by an object or relationship. It is already complete. It needs nothing from experience.
What’s the common name for that, needing nothing, absence of lack? The common name for it is just happiness, or fulfillment, or contentment. What more do you want?
You’ve recognized that who you essentially are now is everpresent, is never hurt or tarnished by experience, is never disturbed, it needs nothing. What more do you want?
If you have found that in yourself which is inherently peaceful and has no sense of lack, what are you lacking?
The wanting will only stop when you recognize that you are what you want."
~Rupert Spira, from the video: The Direct Path - Rupert Spira and Mooji Baba share their wisdom for enlightenment
COACHING NOTES:
"The wanting will only stop when you recognize that you are what you want."
Have you stopped to consider what it is you really want in life, what your soul longs for? There are so many distractions keeping you busy, but deep down, what do you think it will take to satisfy you?
We all want the same thing - to be happy. We have been led to believe that this happiness lies in acquiring objects, meeting the right people, or achieving something great. But do those things really bring lasting satisfaction?
"If you have found that in yourself which is inherently peaceful and has no sense of lack, what are you lacking?" Happiness, then, comes from recognizing that you lack nothing, which, in turn, comes from recognizing your true nature. Could enlightenment be as simple as knowing who you really are?
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4. Enlightenment Is the Recognition of Your Being
"All desires are desires for happiness, never for the object. So, here, we go directly for happiness. We don’t go via an object.
Happiness is the nature of our self. By happiness, I don’t mean that you're always singing and dancing and smiling. I just mean the ease of being, the absence of the sense of lack, the feeling that I don’t have to leave the now because I’m just content, fulfilled, I’m complete. I don’t constantly need to be filled up by someone or something.
I’m just at peace.
That is your nature, It’s what you are. It is the nature of yourself. All that’s necessary is to recognize the nature of yourself. That is what enlightenment is.
Enlightenment is just the recognition of our being. That’s it. That’s all it is. The recognition of the nature of our being."
~Rupert Spira, from the video: The Direct Path - Rupert Spira and Mooji Baba share their wisdom for enlightenment
COACHING NOTES:
Take in this definition of happiness that we are presented with:
The ease of being.
The absence of the sense of lack.
The feeling that I don’t have to leave the now because I’m content and fulfilled.
I’m complete.
I'm at peace.
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5. Enlightenment Is Being Aware
"When everything that can be removed from ourselves is removed then what remains is what we essentially are.
Thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities, relationships - all of these appear to us, exist, and, sooner or later, vanish. But there is one aspect of our self that never arises, never evolves, never vanishes, and that is the simple fact of being or being aware.
So this way of recognition is an approach in which we remove from our self. We go deeply into our self, discarding, (not rejecting) but letting go of anything that is not essential to us.
It’s a bit like getting undressed at night. When we go to bed at night we take off all our clothes until our naked body stands revealed. We do not suddenly become our naked body. Our naked body is simply revealed under all the layers of clothing in which it was wrapped, or shrouded during the day.
The way of recognition proceeds in a similar way. We undress, so to speak. We take off all the layers of experience - thoughts, images, feelings and so on - in which our being has been clothed and, at some point, our naked, irreducible, essential self or being stands revealed.
We do not become this being. We are always only essentially this being, albeit clothed much of the time in experience."
~Rupert Spira, from the video: What Is Enlightenment? How Can It Happen For Me?
COACHING NOTES:
Let's take off all the layers of our experience!
Undress your thoughts, feelings, images, sensations and perceptions. Take them all off and stand in your pure beingness.
Some of us go through our entire lives remaining clothed in experience, never knowing who we really are beneath all the busyness and confusion of it. We have forgotten that we are the sky and have become caught up in all the weather.
Be the space in which all things happen.
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6. Enlightenment Requires No Effort
"The impulse to move away from our self, to achieve something, to acquire something, to understand something, winds down. The seeking-resisting impulse winds down. And, when it winds down completely, it leaves us in peace.
The highest meditation is therefore not something we do. It’s what we are. It is just to be. And as we are already that, it requires no effort.
There is no distance from our self. There is no distance from our being to our being.
What room could there be for a practice or an effort or a discipline? Any effort would take us away from where we are now, towards something which is not yet present.
That is suffering. That’s the definition of suffering: the moving away from what is."
~Rupert Spira, from the video: The End of Spiritual Seeking
COACHING NOTES:
"The seeking-resisting impulse winds down. And, when it winds down completely, it leaves us in peace."
Don't judge yourself for still having the seeking-resisting impulse. We live in a world of seeking and resisting. We have been doing it our whole lives, without realizing it. It has become a normal way of life.
As an aware being, though, you have the capacity to recognize what's going on in your human experience through insights.
As counter-intuitive as it may seem, you know it makes sense that effort takes you away from where you are now, "towards something which is not yet present." All that remains, then, is to see what is present now.
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