What Is Enlightenment?

what is enlightenment^ Q Andrew, you are ateacher of enlightenment. Alot of people would like to understand what that word means. So, my first question for you is: What is enlightenment? A That’s avery difficult question to answer in asimple, succinct way, because enlightenment means many different things on many different levels. Maybe Ican begin by giving you one definition, and hopefully by the end of our dialogue together, afull picture of what it means will have revealed i t s e l f . Agood place to start would be this: One who is truly enlightened has directly experienced the ultimate or absolute nature of life itself. In that revelation, they have seen far beyond the boundaries of the personal self and discovered the universal nature of all their human experience. That explosive realization liberates the self from the perpetual tyranny of being trapped in arelationship to life that is merely personal. Another way to answer your question would simply be to say that enlightenment is acondition in which the individual has come to the end of afundamentally self-centered relation¬ ship to life. Most human beings, it seems, are concerned only what is enlightenment? with their own needs—constantly thinking about them¬ selves, always wanting for themselves, perpetually lost in an endless, narcissistic preoccupation with their own personali¬ ties. So one way to understand what enlightenment is would be to say that it is acondition in which we have come to the end of this painfully self-centered relationship to the human experience. How does this realization happen? Does it happen gradually, oi¬ ls it adramatic transformation that can occur in an instant? It really depends upon the individual. But it doesn’t matter whether it happens instantaneously or gradually. The only important thing is that it happens. Because as long as we are self-centered, lost in that which is merely personal, we are simply not going to be available. Available for what? Avail¬ able to manifest the profound and extraordinary evolution¬ ary potential that in most of us lies dormant. You see, this suffering world is in dire need of truly conscious beings— human beings who know who they are and why they are h e r e . But wouldn’t moving beyond the personal in the way you are describing discount many important aspects of human life? Absolutely not. The enlightened condition in no way denies any aspect of our humanity. It enlightens it. What does that mean? It means that our perspective dramatically deepens and widens. The perspective of one who has not awakened 2living enlightenment is limited by definition. The reference point for all of their personal experience is the separate ego. But the perspective of o n e w h o h a s a w a k e n e d i s f r e e f r o m t h i s f u n d a m e n t a l l i m i t a ¬ tion because, as I’ve said, they have realized the absolute n a t u r e o f l i f e a n d t h e u n i v e r s a l n a t u r e o f t h e i r o w n h u m a n experience. And that changes everything, ft transforms their relationship to being alive because the context in which they are living now infinitely transcends the merely personal dimension. Therefore, the question Iencourage people to ask themselves is: How enlightened is my perspective on my own personal experience? So an “enlightened perspective” would be one where we see all our experience in amuch, much bigger context? Yes. And that bigger context reveals itself automatically when we make the thrilling discovery that who and what we are, beyond the personal ego, is aprofound mystery that is completely free from any sense of limitation. Atruly enlightened human being spontaneously expresses that freedom from limitation as their own humanity. Indeed, sim¬ ply through spending time in their company, we can awak¬ en to that same mystery that is also our own true nature. In their reflection, it becomes obvious how, in our ignorance, we have been living in an alarmingly small context. And we see directly that it is that small context alone that creates the painful sense of suffocation and isolation that is so familiar in the unawakened state. The miraculous expe¬ riential discovery of the enlightened perspective is instantly what is enlightenment? liberating. And it is in this discovery that our humanity is finally set free to manifest its evolutionary potential without i n h i b i t i o n . 4living enlightenment r