ENLIGHTENMENT HAPPENS
‘IMPOSSIBLE CONCEPTS’ ARE NOT REALLY SO!
If you're looking for the path, you're on it!

When I began my so-called spiritual journey, enlightenment was far from my mind! What I was looking for was a better life…and at the most some abstract notion called peace of mind.  And oh yes, most certainly a quick fix method to jump start me out of my problems! But enlightenment?  That sounds an impossible concept and we usually leave it for another life time …or whom I would perceive as the holier than thou’s!

And yet if we could only become aware, that it is our preconceived notions of what the term suggests that comes in the way, perhaps more of us might make it our reality. Enlightenment is not something for the sages, it is not an impossible dream…and it does not imply a distancing of self from all that we have held dear! Life…even my very modern life and enlightenment are not mutually exclusive states!  And this to me is true spirituality- something that includes and not excludes my daily life! Something that blends with and indeed optimizes my humanity & its purposes and desires rather than opposing, suffocating, suppressing them! Thereby deeply fulfilled, and in deep union with Self and all Selves around us, we but naturally become more and more palpably the God within...!

Indeed we come to realize that impossible (sounding) concepts are not really so! Unconditional love, non-judgment, thankfulness, oneness and the like might appear abstract, exotic and out-of- reach when read off the pages of a book, but once you are on the journey they are unexpectedly user friendly! Ask me! I used to think unconditional love was only a sop for those who had no ‘real’ personal lives of their own! And being the much touted ‘witness’ seemed to me a concept Shiva created so that no body could match him! And yet … a few years into this wondrous path…all these qualities ‘happen’ more and more naturally! One discovers that it was partly  the misconceptions of a half baked understanding that made them loom so large and forbidding…and the rest of the gap is easily bridged by a growing awareness that literally unravels and extends self to …selves… and Self!

And enlightenment is suddenly an escalating lightening of the heart… automatically reverberating like a chorus of joy, creating beautiful realities at tripartite levels- personal, environmental and the world! And your more personal journey involuntarily becomes a spiritual service to the world- for you are in 24/ 7 service as transmitter of these energies wherever you maybe placed in life, through whatever tasks or jobs your day –to- day life may comprise of!

And the best part! Enlightenment happens in individual ways, tailor made to you!  Enlightenment does not mean becoming some impossible ideal…a Buddha or Jesus (or whichever Gods and Masters we resonate to) …for we individuated to each be what only we could be for the whole… towards enlightening the whole in unique ways! We do not lose our identity but indeed expand and revel it in ways perhaps we were not even aware of! Religion is a path described by another (or a set of others) …if you view these as a set of must-do rules, they can limit ; if you completely shun them all you may ignore some vital clues and tips of those who have already journeyed along the path you now traverse! I find it best to adopt the middle line, use from them what works for me…expand some of its concepts in ways which are applicable to the time and space coordinate that I am in, so that ‘religion’ does what’s it here for …help me re align… and in touching spirit within, spirituality blossoms…and we now contribute I unique ways to ‘religion’!

And through it all we are moving towards what -en ‘light’enment- is best known for! The startling eureka’s… of inner illumination! A rapidly expanding understanding of self, the other and the universe we live in! In more modern and scientific terms enlightenment is a re-mapping of our neural pathways, a literal expansion of our minds, for our expanded consciousness leads us to consciously activating parts of the brain we haven’t accessed thus far! With new brainwaves… our perceptions begin to change… ignorance and separation start to dissolve… and enlightenment is ‘happening’ …involuntarily almost!

Divinity permeates your day-to day life, for then the 'sacred' cannot help but pervade your every living moment- awake, asleep, playing, at rest or working. And life becomes an Arabian night’s journey. For the journey within is truly that: infinite scope for inner expansion, reflecting in external areas of life all panning out more and more to our individual ideas of what they can best be!! And then...there is more...! Yes there always is!