Melody Larson

Awakening 101: What exactly is enlightenment anyway?

Enlightenment is becoming an increasingly mainstream term, but one that is often misunderstood. Today it's no longer about transcending our human selves, but is about merging our humanity with our divinity, or multimensionality. Enlightement has changed as humanity has evolved. You may be on the path to enlightenment and not even know it!

Our journey in life always begins externally. We are taught to seek happiness through the pursuit of our goals and dreams, and to measure who we are by our accomplishments. Yet as we travel our life’s path, many of us sense that who we are remains illusive to us still. Despite all of our achievements in life, we are not fulfilled, happy, or at peace.

Awakening is the journey to our true selves—of coming to know that our primary nature is not material, but spiritual. From this knowing we cease trying to fill our emptiness through success, status, relationships, and possessions. We learn that doing so is like continuing to fill a bucket with a hole in it. Instead, we discover all that lies within us—our power, our wisdom, our joy, and our purpose—and we become whole again.

Our collective attempts to “fill our leaky buckets” have brought humanity to a critical place in our evolution. The madness of our tick-tock lives has proven too painful, too destructive, and too unsustainable. Yet even as our outdated systems fray and dissolve before us, we hear the whispering from within that beckons us to move from our illusion of separation and fear to a deeper awareness of the oneness of life. 

We are waking up.

What is enlightenment? In simple terms, it’s turning the way we view ourselves on its head. Instead of seeing ourselves as humans having occasional spiritual experiences, we clearly see that we are spiritual beings down here having a human experience.

Many traditional views of enlightenment were about transcending our human selves and our engagement with this world. We were to go beyond our thoughts and turn off our feelings in order to exist in that space of pure Being. This meant blissfully refraining from any self-improvement or other lowly affairs of the ego.

Enlightenment today is no longer about “checking out” from Earthly reality. The new times call for us to integrate our spiritual/multidimensional/quantum selves with our ego/human selves. The process of achieving enlightenment is to balance all aspects of our being so that we’re living from a place of wholeness. This means healing and awakening ourselves mentally, emotionally, physically, intuitively and spiritually. Indeed, awakening in any one way, without awakening in the other ways, leaves us out of balance.

Today there are many paths to enlightenment. We don’t have to subscribe to any particular wisdom tradition or follow a particular method. Instead, we can integrate many disciplines and teachings in a way that best suits our individual growth. Gone are the days of following gurus or being told how to do it. We have the power now to turn within and ask our own Higher Self to show us the best approach.

While we are neither our minds nor our emotions, our human aspects are not to be devalued or ignored. Otherwise, what are we doing here in human form? We need to make room not only for the needs of each developing Soul, but for the evolving creativity of each human mind and the expanding desires of each human heart. 

Enlightenment today is not about "going up there" but instead about bringing Spirit "down here" into the manifested world. Awakening is acknowledging the larger being that we each truly are. Isn’t it time for us all to awaken? Imagine a world where we each live from a state of joy, wholeness, creativity, acceptance, and empowerment.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR