There is no specific moment when you enter into enlightenment. Rather, there is a gradual winding down of the period of transition and the feeling that what you now experience is becoming normal. It is still new and different, but it is now starting to feel like you.
You start to notice what is different about the nature of your experience. You recognize that your mood is very stable and even. Nothing upsets you. There may be moments when something frustrates you, but that feeling quickly passes. You do not take personally what other people do or say. You realize that it is not about you.
You no longer dwell in the past. You no longer fixate on the future. You become increasingly aware that life is only lived in the now. The now is all that you deal with. So you stay focused on what is before you in the moment.
You still have your preferences. You still have your favorite flavor of ice cream
and your favorite shirt. You still enjoy your work, your hobbies and your avocations. You no longer feel competitive or compare yourself with others. You enjopy what your do for the intrinsic pleasure that it offers. You enjoy being in the moment.
There is a growing awareness that everything is a manifestion of the one thing.
You start to feel that there is a presence behind the world of form. This presence has an energy to it. You become aware of very subtle movement within this energy. You feel it without knowing how it is that you are able to feel it.
You stay open to this feeling. There is much that you have yet to understand. So you simply stay open and feel what life is like around you. And you learn to trust when you need to act in response to a certain feeling.
There are no maps. There is no GPS system. But there are a few guidelines.
Live Closely To The Movement Of The Moment
There is now a different vector to living life. Before awakening, you tried to figure everything out with your mind and then you acted to create what you wanted for yourself. Before awakening you thought that you had to be in control and you tried to create the life you wanted for yourself. Now you understand life has its own movement. Your part is to figure out how you can be part of that movement.
As you live closely to the movement of the moment, you become more sensitive to that movement. You learn to let it guide your awareness and you let your awareness guide your actions.
You stay open to the possibility that at any point in time you might feel the movement. Movement is simply a change, subtle or dramatic, in the conditions which now exist. Usually they are subtle at first, and if you follow the subtle movement, momentum can build and the change can become more dramatic.
You understand that this movement is a natural part of life. It is how change can occur. When you feel the movement and then follow the direction of the movement something happens. This something is a change in your life.
When you follow the movement, you do not have to try and impose your will on the world around you. You do not have to analyze everything in order to make sure that you got it right. Life understands itself. When you trust life, you are in tune with reality.
Allow Everything To Be As It Is In This Moment
You no longer have to assess everything and determine what is right and what is wrong, or what is good and what is bad. There is no “right”. There is no “wrong”. There is only life in this present moment. From our vantage point of being consciousness in a body, we cannot understand everything that is going on in every single moment. We no longer have to determine how we are going to navigate through the circumstances of our living. We accept that life itself understands all aspects of what is going on because life is present in all aspects of what is going on.
If we trust life, then we are tune with the reality of the moment.
This is uncomfortable in the beginning. We are used to living from our minds and trying to understand from our minds. In the beginning we simply have to trust that if we following the movement of the moment things will work out. In time, experience will show that this is what tends to be true. Our confidence in our ability to experience and interpret this movement strengthens as we have more experience with it.
Be Aware Of How Life Is Coming Through Others
Life is present in all of us. When you are in the presence of people who live from “me” centered consciousness—and this is just about everybody—you experience in them a life that gets filtered through a set of private beliefs. When they interact with you, there is likely to be a considerable amount of distortion that occurs. In these interactions, you look for those moments when the pure essence of life shines through their “me” personality. These are your opportunities to make genuine contact.
When life shines through the “me”-centered personality is the moment when a true connectioin is possible. What you are looking for is an opportunity to allow the life which is within you to touch the life that is within another.
Most people are very well defended. They feel vulnerable when they allow life to seep out around their public façade. The moment when life in one person touches the life in another person is what we refer to as “intimacy”. It is the feeling of authentic connection because it is really life connecting with itself within two or more different human beings.
We have all experienced these moments and we know them to be special. But with “me”-centered consciousness they are fleeting. They will occur for precious moments with a few select individuals but it rarely lasts for long. The structure of
“me” centered consciousness and the nature of our public/private worlds prevents this connection from becoming permanent.
When this structure of consciousness falls away and our inner and outer worlds become aligned, it now becomes possible to have authentic relationships with people all the time.
But this rarely happens because very few people have reached this alignment of their two worlds.
Wait For The Situation To Present Itself
Since the opportunity for authentic contact is rare, you simply remain open to the possible and look for it where you can. This requires that you allow each situation to come into focus and to show you what is possible in the moment.
What, if anything, is the problem here? Who is feeling this problem? How are they holding it?. What—if anything—is needed from you?
Be patient and take whatever time is required. If the situation is urgent, then act decisively. If other people are uncertain, give them time to find out what they need. Universal consciousness can always trust when it encounters the presence of itself in another person.
Amplify The Oneness
What you bring to any situation is the experience of being one with the world. Others cannot see anything. They cannot hear anything. But they can feel something.
It feels a bit like the warmth of the sun on a cool spring day. This feeling starts to move inside them. Their inner reality starts to respond to the warmth as it seeps in deeper. You can strengthen this feeling for them by radiating oneness out from your core. Your inner being touches and soothes those who are around you.
Allow The Moment To Come Into Balance
In every situation there is—or at least can be—a sense of balance. This is the moment when there is an energetic equilibrium among the people present. No one is dominating. No one is left out. When people speak, others fully take them in.
If this balance is not present, then you move towards creating it. Mostly you remain silent and take in. You sense when you need to speak or act. If you are not clear on what is happening, you remain present to the moment until the situation is revealed.
There is no way to know in advance what the situation is going to need. You can only determine in the moment what is needed by feeling what is going on.
Find The Place That Fits For All
Your focus is to find the place that seems to represent common ground for all who are present. This may be a consensus view on what the problem seems to be. It may be a suggestion for action which seems to meet all the concerns which have been expressed. It may be a strong advocacy for the need to become focused and act. Only in the moment can you determine what is needed.
The journey is always unfolding
You began by answering the call. You embarked on a Hero’s Journey and it took you to the side of the lack and the realization that you had to let go of the Hero.
Then you began another journey with no idea where it would take you. It began with the the realization that you were starting all over again. Initially, you were overwhelmed by the sensation that life was now very different than it had been before. Your perceptions of the outer world was altered. Your inner world became more intense.
In time you come to realize that what you are experiencing is a state of constant unfolding. There is no set state that defines enlightenment. There is only a sense of opening up.
It is as if the Flow of Life increases as your understanding of your new situation increases. You continue to see more. You continue to feel more. Your sense that there is an underlying oneness to all of life grows within you.
This is not a concept. It is not a value. It is not an ideal. It is a felt experience that emanates from your moment-to-moment consciousness. The more you feel it, the more there is for you to feel. It is the experience of life unfolding and there is no end point
It is like looking down at an artesian spring bubbling up from under the ground. In the beginning, it is a trickle of water. As you continue to observe it, you notice more water emergeing from the earth. Now it is a creek. The more you watch, the more you see. In time, you see an entire river flowing forth from the earth.
This is life unfolding before you.
At some point you come to realize that you are experiencing the evoltuion of life itself. There is an evolution of biological form. There is also the evolution of consciousness.
You are an integral part of the evolutionary process when you allow life to live you.
