Where does Enlightenment come from? In nondual studies, that’s what we’re talking about, we’re talking about Enlightenment. I think non-duality is popular these days because nobody wants to admit that it’s really about enlightenment.
Where does Enlightenment come from? Much of our teachings focus on the interior experience. We talk about the experience of being enlightened, the experience of being in the nondual state. If we focus on the experience, then we’re focusing on ourself.
We’re focusing on ourself as a separate being. And that’s what makes it difficult to get from here to what we perceive of as there because we’re using all of our strategies to remain a separate being to get us into not being separate. It doesn’t work.
We often call it ego. We try to use our ego to get beyond our ego. We use our habitual sense of separation as the tool to try to get beyond separation. And it doesn’t work.
When we’re constantly focusing on our internal experience, it becomes this forever-thing. That’s why almost everyone who wakes up describes it as an accident.
Boom! Whoa! All of the sudden I saw.
What if instead of focusing on this desire to have the experience of Enlightenment we focused on the full picture that’s around us. The world brimming with life that is wanting us to be a full participant?
Broaden yourself. It’s easy to do. Human beings… we have such brilliant minds. We’re capable of focusing on something little and we’re capable of opening wide into the big picture.
Open wide into the biggest picture that you can. Inside that picture, include everything. The Earth is there, the trees are there, everything in your room is there, your chair is there, your phone is there, your computer is there, all these things are part of this vast interconnectedness with that you are in. All the people that you know are part of this vast interconnectedness. Feel that, float in it, in a relaxed way. This vastness wants us to all be full participants.
Now, who is participating in it? For me, it’s me.
I feel myself as this participant in life, fully awake, fully alive. Where is that for you within this vastness? You are experiencing it now. Put yourself into place. You are actually somewhere right now. Be here now, right here in this place. This is you right here, in the vastness, we’re all moving along through it together, right?
Aliveness. I’m focusing on it, on my vast aliveness. We are intertwined in it. This is where Enlightenment comes from, from this field of Unity. It’s not a field of unity that’s empty. This field of unity includes me and includes you. That’s where it comes from.