Author: Richard Shelmerdine
Against what has become the public belief on the idea, enlightened being is actually your natural state. When you think of it a certain way, it is more like letting things be and just flowing with the natural process. Things that you have mentally accumulated are giving you an illusion that you are gaining and stopping you from having the direct experience of enlightenment at this moment. Would you think that God may only let a person who has been lucky enough to have a good education or spent 10 years in a Tibetan Monastery have access to and learn how to reach enlightenment? If you were going to die soon and only has a short space of time to experience enlightenment would it be possible for you?
I honestly believe, in fact I know that anyone can reach enlightenment at this moment. I feel like saying to you that this will transform your life but it is such an overused statement that it doesn’t need repeating. It will literally alter the basic structure of your mind. It is an amazing journey that we are all on anyway even if we do not wish to be. during this article I will try and answer some common questions that pop up like “When you have reached enlightenment is there still work to do?” and “After you have come to the realization that you are not your mind what does the role of your mind then become?”.
A regular phenomenon with a lot of spiritual teachings is that words can’t describe the process but they are the best we have that we can communicate with over the Internet so we must soldier on. Throughout your lifetime, you will often reach outside of yourself for things like money and truth. Strangely though, when you reach enlightenment this is the opposite of what you do. Enlightenment is the absence of reaching and the comfort in your being. Reaching suggests that there is something to achieve. Enlightenment is actually being what you are and realizing that mind is a bottomless illusion, although it has its uses. In one way, you are already an enlightened being, you are just not of a high enough level of consciousness to experience it yet.
When you are reading this article you may find that your mind is analysing what we are saying and trying to make some sense out of the words. Look to where the words point and not what they say and what each individual word means. Silence that voice for a while that has wronged you in the past and experience the truth right here for yourself. During the process of learning how to reach enlightenment, you will almost definitely have your mind saying things to you like “Wow, I’m enlightened now, fantastic, we’re all done here, what’s the next thing?”. You have to ignore this voice and see it as illusion. Your mind cannot and never will understand enlightenment, this is why so many logical geniuses cannot understand enlightenment.
Your mind is trying to get you to identify with it. You will know the experience of enlightenment for yourself. It is accompanied by a light sense of the body and a deep feeling that everything will be OK with eternal peace. It’s pretty nice! As soon as enlightenment becomes a concept in your mind you have lost your connection with it. When you start to make into reality this truth, you will find that your perception of reality will shift almost immediately. The things in your apparent external world will just seem less important and more like a game of form that you can play or withdraw attention from at any time.
Your mind is like every other entity in existence, it wants to survive. The beginning of this process is like a juice diet, your whole being is detoxed of things that have been laying around for years. The most obvious patterns that have emerged in your life will be the first to go like compulsive eating for example. If you have identified with your mind for your whole life until now (nearly everyone does) then your patterns will be deep rooted and into your subconscious, their patterns will constantly arise. This is not a bad thing though because it is the light of your consciousness bringing light to the darkness of unconsciousness, your very purpose spiritually! This is the process of enlightenment.
These patterns may be strong but they cannot come up against your focused attention. It is akin to a rocket breaking through the atmosphere. the initial push is where all the energy is needed then it is easier after that. I thought of a great story to explain how this works. You have to be like a man who would like to cross a certain bridge over a river. He cannot do this yet though because heavy rainfall has caused the river to burst its banks. He sits silently on a hill top half a mile away and when the water calms he crosses the bridge to the other side. What does this have to do with how to reach enlightenment and spiritual awakening? Well the river with the constant action is your mind, the activity is your thoughts, your focused attention is the man and the bridge is the spiritual pathless path that will lead you to the other side of enlightened being and conscious life.
Bringing Darkness to the Light
Better it is to light a candle than to curse the darkness – Chinese Proverb
Looking at your life from an outside point of view which is in the world of form your spirituality aim is to become progressively more conscious and to bring consciousness to more and more deeply ingrained habits. Your aim right this moment is simple. Be as conscious as you can. Just be aware of your inner state and forces trying to pull you into identification with them. Sitting in a room silently meditating for long periods of time is great but your deep habitual patterns will only come around in real life. They were created here so you have to face them here too.
As you go out into the world, just be aware of what your being is telling you. The strongest signal that gets your attention is where your consciousness should go. Your habitual state (poor choice of words) is that you should be sat internally at the base of your mind watching for a thought to appear so you can see what it is signalling and dis identify with it. This is my central teaching for how to reach enlightenment. This will take you a lifetime to master as you progressively become conscious of what you truly are. One great thing about becoming more conscious is that your sense perception become really focused and you notice smells and taste depth that you have never experienced before.
When you decide consciously to split from the eternal one consciousness that you really are into your individual form, your mind has a use. Its use comes from helping you navigate the world of form. It helps you learn from the past, plan for the future, make sense of patterns so you are constantly learning etc. For a lot of humans though, their minds are like a razor blade. They use it constantly and never take care of it so it becomes blunt. Instead of the natural use which is hardly used so when it is the razor is sharp and focused because it hasn’t been wasted on trivial use. Another good tip here is to go into your mind whenever your planning things with a high level of consciousness. Even higher than usual. Your mind is tricky and will try its best to get you to identify with it.
Going through the steps of learning how to reach enlightenment, you will start to use your mind less and will feel more inner peace. You will see that these 2 are correlated. Your mind is not your master any more, dragging you here and there but is your servant that you can put to great use. Money cannot make the man because man made money. Your mind will become extremely focused and you will see for yourself how scary and erratic its patterns were in the past and sometimes still see its insanity. It can be funny to see this in another person sometimes.
A common misconception is that the mind is an evil tool that should be ridden off, kind of like how people think being in possession of large sums of money is “evil”. These all come from mistranslations of various ancient teachings. It’s the spiritual teaching of not being attached to outcome but people take this to mean “You can’t have money”. It becomes a trap that possesses you and keeps you in poverty but I digress. Identification is the problem, not the thing. That’s like blaming McDonald’s for you being fat. People actually do that.
Some people choose to live the life of a spiritual Ascetic but I don’t need this life. I’m happy with little but want abundance. Just keep the teaching with you at all times that you cannot experience the future and that you are not your mind and thoughts.
Once you learn how to reach enlightenment, life becomes a joyous game for you. You will find the external world changing hugely but it will not disrupt you as you stay rooted in being. Opportunities will knock your door down and it will be accompanied by a feeling of inner depth and peace that is unshakable at all times. It’s infinitely more beautiful than anything you can experience on a form level. You get that sense of wonder back that many think is only available to spiritual awakening masters or to very young children before they develop mind. Fears that have hung around for years will just up and go.
Once you get to this state, you have taken the first step that 99% of people will never take and that is consciously pursue becoming more conscious! Just keep unveiling new layers of unconsciousness throughout life and you will enjoy and understand it more.
Realizations I’ve had
Ever since I began on the path towards spiritual awakening and learning how to reach enlightenment I have realised quite a few interesting truths. They include:
- Whenever we make a judgement it is basically like saying to God “You are wrong, make it how I want it”. It is set-up for the greater good AND your greater good, you just don’t realise it yet. For example, if you want to earn money doing something that you love and it is taking long, the universe is teaching you the vital business lesson of persistence.
- My thoughts are directly affecting reality. This is what Jesus did when he performed miracles. I say miracles, they are only miracles to someone who doesn’t have a good God connection.
- You see lots of people around you who are spiritually bankrupt. It becomes intensified because of your personal inner transformation. They look drunk and have a glazed over look in their eyes. Pretty scary at first.
- Delving into spiritual awakening never ends. Once you have learned how to reach enlightenment, there is always more unconsciousness to unravel.
- Life becomes a game. You know it will end one day so cut all the rubbish and do what is important in a non serious but focused manner.
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