Spiritual awakening isn’t a one time event, and enlightenment isn’t about getting rid of the self.
I sought for so many years to have what I thought would occur as an inner seismic event in which I would be struck enlightened and consequently freed of all of the uncomfortable parts of me. It was I guess the adult version of my childhood prayers in which I would get on my knees, squeeze my eyes painfully shut, and then beg for some unwanted condition to magically disappear. More often than not, those unwanted conditions were rejected parts of my personality self. The more I prayed the more virulent those unwanted states of being became. I would end up with tired eyes, sore knees, and an amped up version of what I didn’t want. In retrospect I think I had a notion of a Holy Spirit much like Glinda the Good. I wanted some Divine Force to touch me with a golden wand and turn me into the sanitized self I so longed to be. I was sure that in a twinkling of an eye I would be turned into a glowing avatar that could float through this life with nary a negative thought or human frailty.
Spiritual awakening isn’t a one time event, and enlightenment isn’t about getting rid of the self.
It is now liberating for me to report that as soon as I stopped waiting for Glinda to appear or for a one time seismic event to turn me into something I unconsciously feared I was not life began to open up and awakened moments became more the norm than an exception. There is great freedom in realizing that enlightenment isn’t about a cleaned up personality or a neutralized emotional life. It isn’t about a magical wand or a genie in a bottle granting insolvency from unwanted character defects. It isn’t about being struck Godly. If enlightenment involves time at all it is about a lightened up relationship to the content of the present moment. It is seeing clearly the loveless parts of the personality self and bringing a loving acceptance to those places in need. It is a clear and felt sense realization that it is only the ego self that seeks to be rid of the ego self. The Inner Presence within us all doesn’t seek to be rid of anything. It watches compassionately the struggle and the aversion, the pleading on the bended knee. It knows and knows that it knows that awakening is only as good as the moment It is in. Awakening happens by inclusion, and enlightenment by witnessing simply what is without commentary or interpretation. Looking to the example of someone else’s supposed instant transformation and comparing ourselves to that tale does nothing but create stress and added self-rejection. Self opinion is a slippery slope of willfulness and perceptual misalignment. We do not and cannot know enough in our current state of consciousness
to reject any part of ourselves. We are not privy at the personality level to know what good these unwanted aspects bring to the emergence of the whole. Remaining awake to that fact alone goes a long way to a life of humility and serenity.
Spiritual awakening isn’t a one time event, and enlightenment isn’t about getting rid of the self.
If I find that I have slipped back into the “God fix me once and for all” kind of mentality I gratefully bring myself back into the awareness that what I have fallen into is enough to deliver me back to where my reality truly is: here and now, just as I am. When I am spiritually awake I bring lightness to the present moment. I am not absorbed in what I perceive is in need of fixing. I am alive in the witnessing of life as it is unfolding, and I am faithful that things are just as they are meant to be in this moment. There is nothing to be rid of and in that spaciousness there is peace. In the schemata of sacred emergence it is all good. When I am awake it is all good. When I am accepting myself just as I am it is all good. Gee, maybe Glinda visited me after all.
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