Enlightenment Is Not An Achievement
Are You Already Enlightened?
Nobody freely talks about enlightenment today. The sense that arises around the term seems to be;
“I am definitely not arrogant enough to think that I am enlightened like Buddha.”
Listen, nobody ever said anything about that, and why would it be arrogant to think that one could currently be an infinitely compassionate and understanding soul?
Right now you are already enlightened, and I would like to show you how.
I understand that there is sort of a collective reaction (not response) toward the term enlightenment today. It is met with a certain reverence. The term often carries the context of self-realization. It does not necessarily refer to this though, it is just popularly associated. Still, we frequently assume that “enlightenment” is synonymous with “self-realization.” This is like calling all ice pops, Popsicles.
Popsicle is a brand of ice pop, not a substitute definition. Even if it is colloquially equivalent, in most cases there are still many different forms of ice pops that are not Popsicles. Similarly, enlightenment can refer to an infinite variety of things.
You could say that all popsicles are ice pops, but not all ice pops are popsicles. All self-realized beings are enlightened, but not all enlightening realization (enlightenment) is self-realization.
Well, I am here to tell you that we are all enlightened, it’s not a big deal. The idea of enlightenment has certainly withstood the test of time as a marketable term. For good reason too — it accurately describes a specific pervasive illuminating experience we all have in our lives.
How To Avoid The Trap Of Enlightenment
The word ‘enlightenment’ is an old English word coined around 1660, with the base word ‘enlighten’ first recorded in the 14th century. Now this word is frequently used to describe the presence of a being that was born in India somewhere hovering around 400–600 B.C. I feel like there is some obvious distortion of meaning with the time jumping translation, but this distortion is often not considered when we think of the word.
The term “enlightenment” is still a label.
Think of commonly used labels today—doctor, lawyer, painter, celebrity, musician, accountant, waiter, or athlete.
What do these all have in common? We give those labels a spectrum of achievement.
You can be an A, B, or C-list celebrity. A lawyer who makes incredible amounts of money or a lawyer who works for a modest salary. Leonardo da Vinci vs. a commercial painter.
Somehow, we contorted enlightenment into this. Only you cannot choose enlightenment as an occupation, so it does not conform to the ranking system I just mentioned. Now we think we have a fantasy that becoming enlightened is like becoming Buddha.
You, reader, could be enlightened right now. I would like to ask, at what point would you feel comfortable to safely say that you are enlightened? What would constitute you being classified as an enlightened being?
Today, if someone was informed that they are already enlightened and they believed it, they would react with a feeling of mild-moderate disappointment thinking “that’s it?”
Nobody has come up to them and revered them as a divine celebrity, so it is unfathomable that they are like the great mystical prophets. We have culturally followed a very dramatic idea of enlightenment.
Enlightenment Is Not An Achievement
Enlightenment is not something to strive for.
In today’s culture of success and achievement, it is natural that something that is often connected with a greater ability to achieve, function and think would be placed in the position of an ideal.
It seems likely that the attachment to enlightenment as an ideal to strive for arose through the stories of accomplished yogis, masters, and prophets being filtered through today’s cultural norms.
This achievement is because those masters skillfully navigated around the pothole in the road, which they could see because they had their headlights on and could drive their cars very well. They began to figure out ways to fix the pothole(s) also.
That being said, many achievements of enlightened individuals in their grandest scales could, in theory, be mimicked by you today. Even mimicked with the same results of popularity. Essentially it would have no bearing on and bear no indication of how enlightened you are.
It is possible for a human being to take the same exact actions with the same exact results as great sages and prophets and still be highly ignorant. Enlightenment is not evidence of success nor a predictor of success.
Simply put, it is not an achievement.
Conclusion
Enlightenment simply means that you are seeing things as they are. It is kind of like turning on the headlights for your car.
Have you noticed this? Have you ever been driving for a while at night thinking, “Wow! it is very dark” and then you remember to turn your headlights on? After they’re on again for a few minutes you quickly forget those moments when you could not see the road. These are deceptively revealing moments. They reveal that once our problem is solved, we usually do not even remember there was one! Right now you may perceive that there is a very stressful or dark area of your life and feel unable to see a way out. Drawing a blank and unable to come up with any ideas on how to get out of it. In other words, the headlights are off.
For us, turning the headlights on just means paying attention to what is presently appearing to us in any area of our perception. Thoughts, emotions, or physical feelings, all at fluctuating levels of intensity. Regardless of whether we predict our perceptions to turn out as good or bad, it is more important to calmly observe those specific unpleasant perceptions.
With calm and consistent practice of calmly observing them, one will become more relaxed. Training to habitually react to the thoughts with a different emotion, besides stress. The unconscious feeling-based reactions are reconditioned through your conscious response, it is simply conditioning a new habit.
Look and see if you are enlightened right now in your life, you don’t have to wait for some sort of transcendental experience.
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