What is Enlightenment?

What is Enlightenment?
Roy Biancalana
www.coachingwithroy.com
407-687-3387

In most newsletters, I write about intimate relationships, but this month I’m going to point you toward your most important relationship off all—the one you have with yourself.
This month I want to allow my favorite psycho-spiritual writer, Ken Wilber, to talk about what it means to live as a conscious, enlightened being. What does it mean to be enlightened? Wilber points us toward it better than any other writer I’ve found.
I realize that not many of you read Wilber’s books (he’s authored 20 of them and they’re pretty deep), but what he has to say is so powerful and so important to our lives (and indirectly, our intimate relationships) that I felt compelled to reprint a long section from his book, The Simple Feeling of Being. Enjoy and contact me if you want to discuss his thoughts. I’d love to hear from you.

“Let your mind relax. Let your mind relax and expand, mixing with the sky in front of it. Then notice: the clouds float by in the sky, and you are effortlessly aware of them. Feelings float by in the body, and you are effortlessly aware of them, too. Thoughts float by in the mind, and you are aware of them as well. Nature floats by, feelings float by, thoughts float by…and you are aware of all of them.
So tell me: Who are you?
You are not your thoughts, for you are aware of them. You are not your feelings, for you are aware of them. You are not any objects that you can see, for you are aware of them too.
Something in you is aware of all these things. So tell me: What is it in you that is conscious of everything?
What is it in you that is always awake? Always fully present? Something in you right now is effortlessly noticing everything that arises. What is that?
That vast infinite witnessing awareness, don’t you recognize it? What is that Witness?
You are that Witness, aren’t you? You are the pure Seer, pure awareness, the pure Spirit that impartially witnesses everything that arises, moment to moment. Your awareness is spacious, wide open, empty and clear, and yet it registers everything that arises.
That very Witness is Spirit within, looking out on a world that it created. It sees but cannot be seen; it hears but cannot be heard; it knows but cannot be known. It is Spirit itself that sees with your eyes, speaks with your lips, hears with your ears, reaches out with your arms. When will you confess this simple secret and awaken from the gruesome nightmare?
Can you see the words on this page? Then 100% of Spirit is present, looking out through your eyes. Can you feel the book in your hand? Then 100% of Spirit is present, taking the world in its hands. Can you hear the sound of that bird singing? Then 100% of Spirit is present, listening to that song.
You cannot look for this Spirit, for it is doing the looking. You cannot see this Spirit, for it is doing the seeing. You cannot find this Spirit, for it does all the finding. If you understand this, then Spirit is doing the understanding; if you don’t understand this, Spirit is doing that. Understand it or not, just that is Spirit.
Hence the amazing, secret, ultimate truth that slowly starts to dawn: the enlightened mind—pure Spirit itself—is not hard to attain but impossible to avoid. How could you ever be without that Spirit which is reading this sentence right now?
Show me the Self you had before the Big Bang, and I will show you the Spirit of the entire Kosmos. And as for that pure, timeless, formless Spirit: You…Are…That.
And then the strangest thing happens. Resting in the pure Self, abiding as the timeless Witness, noticing that the clouds float by in the vast expanse of Emptiness that is my own ever-present awareness, the Witness itself suddenly cannot be found. The Seer vanishes into everything that is seen and never again returns to haunt the universe as a separate and separating force. Subject and object vanish into One Taste, the Nondual announces itself as a Presence that has no within or without, the ultimate Mystery permeates the Kosmos with an Obviousness that is too simple to believe, too close to see, too present to be reached, too This to be noticed.
The Seer vanishes into everything seen, which sees itself eternally. I no longer witness the clouds, I am the clouds; I do not hear the rain, I am the rain; I can no longer touch the earth, for I am the earth; I cannot hear the robin singing, because I am the robin singing, here in the painful brilliant clarity of ever-present One Taste.”