What is Spiritual Enlightenment? Together let’s look at what This really represents.
The complexity of the egoic mind, the complexity of the mind can end. This complexity places you in a position of contradiction, of suffering, of conflict. And if the egoic consciousness, that common consciousness of ours, if that disappears, That which is present is the Nature of Being, it is the Nature of Truth about You, about who You truly are!
So, Spiritual Enlightenment, Spiritual Awakening, is the Truth about who You are when that consciousness disappears.
Basically, our consciousness is the “I” consciousness, which can disappear. Therefore, it’s not the Nature of your Being, which is Consciousness, but the egoic consciousness, this consciousness of the “I.”
Realizing the Truth of no separateness between you and Life, between you and God – This is Spiritual Enlightenment.
This is our subject here, on this channel. We have a playlist dealing with this, delving into this subject, as we have other playlists here on this channel. We are investigating how This takes place, how This is realized, how This becomes possible.
The Truth that You are is not “you and the world,” it is not “you and life,” it is not “you and the other,” it is not “you and God.” There is only Consciousness; there is no separation, there is no duality. All that feeling and thinking of separateness… For example, you say of yourself “I am a person like this, like this, like this…” This kind of talk, made by you, believed by you, professed by you, this is a concept, this is an image, this is an idea.
We have to look at what we are, we have to get closer to ourselves, we need to study this, we need to understand the Truth about ourselves.
So, for that question “How to attain Spiritual Enlightenment?” or “What is Spiritual Enlightenment?”, the real answer to that lies in Self-awareness, and Self-awareness is what shows you that the idea you have about who you are, like any idea someone else has about who you are, is just an idea.
An idea is a thought, a set of images – this is an idea, this is a belief, this is a concept.
It is important to understand this, because it not only refers to the idea, to the thought, it also refers to the feeling, it also refers to this feeling that you have about yourself.
Thought is not real and feeling is not real. I'm not saying that feeling doesn't have a relative basis in truth when it appears. Feeling appears in the body and it has this relative truth, the truth of feeling. But as for feeling, there is no “someone” present in that feeling, as we believe.
So, there is no identity feeling; there is feeling without a present identity. This duality between feeling and someone present feeling, this is not real. We are conditioned to that belief, patterned on this model.
Since childhood you have been feeling, this “I” has been feeling, this “I” has been thinking, this “I” has been choosing, doing, making. This “I” is a belief of an identity present in the body when thought arises or when feeling arises or when doing happens.
When action happens, doing happens, thinking happens, feeling happens, the central idea is “me” – “me” doing, “me” in action, “me” in feeling, “me” in thought.
This duality “I and this experience of doing, thinking, feeling, acting,” as if there were this “me” and acting, “me” and thinking, “me” and doing, “me” and feeling, as if this were real, this is psychological conditioning.
We believe in an individuality present here, in this experience, in life, in the relationship with the other, with the other person... the relationship with the other, the other being an experience, a thought, a sensation, a perception, an object – that is a belief, it is a psychological conditioning, a pattern of behavior, where there is thinking and “someone” in thinking, where there is feeling and “someone” in the feeling, doing and “someone” in doing, the action occurring and “ someone” performing this.
The approach of Self-awareness will show you that there is no such thing, there is none of that! This is not Reality, this is not a fact, this is fiction, this is imagination.
Action occurs without the “I,” thought occurs without a thinker, feeling occurs without “someone” in this feeling, emotion occurs without “someone” in this emotion. There is no identity present, there is no individuality that is real in this experience. Individuality is illusory. So, there is this illusion of individuality – this is our psychological conditioning.
Here, we are investigating this, in this playlist, with you; we are getting closer to it. Our goal is to discover how to attain Spiritual Enlightenment.
Now, understand: the expression here, “how to attain”... We have to approach it with some care. You can learn a method for a certain practice and that method, in that practice, becomes something mechanical to you.
That becomes mechanical, once again you are stuck in this condition of psychological time, of the mechanical practice of the egoic mind.
So, when we speak of Spiritual Awakening, of Spiritual Enlightenment, this “how” here does not imply method, but learning. It is not a practice, it is not a method, it is not a mechanical thing; it’s actually a “how to look,” a “how to learn about yourself” – that’s what we need for Spiritual Enlightenment.
We need to learn about ourselves, study about ourselves, see how we position ourselves in this relationship with life, with the world, with the other, with ourselves, in this illusion that there is this “I” and we, this “I” and the other, that “I” and the world.
Note how important and very delicate this is. In general, thoughts arise and you see yourself as the thinker of those thoughts, wanting to do something with or against them. So, you accept their presence, you believe that you are the thinker who thought them, who is thinking, who is producing them, who is bringing them into existence… No, you have not thought them, you are not the thinker of these thoughts, but there is this belief. So, you want to do something against them, you reject those thoughts. When it’s negative thoughts, heavy thoughts, when it’s thoughts that provoke within you some level of stress, of anxiety, of sadness, some level of depression, of anguish, you want to get rid of those thoughts, because you believe that you are the thinker who is thinking them.
So, these thoughts are being thought by you – that is the belief – you are thinking these thoughts. And if you're the one thinking, you can discard those thoughts, you can get rid of them.
This is the conditioning that we were brought up in, taught. People say to us since we were little: “Don't think bad thoughts, just think good thoughts.” You go to a self-help talk and there the speaker is showing you the importance of cultivating good thoughts, fulfilling thoughts, thoughts that can develop you as a person.
So, there are a lot of talk about this personal development, and all this is based on thought.
So, the idea is that you are producing thoughts, so you can improve, you can change the quality of your thoughts, and that seems very, very reasonable. The idea of the thinker and the thought, of the one who feels with that feeling… So, we want to do something against negative feelings, against negative thoughts.
So, this “I”... There is this idea of this “I” present in this experience. To look at what we are here now and realize the illusion of duality – that’s straight from Vedanta.
Vedanta… the last part of the Vedas is Advaita Vedanta. And in Vedanta it is very clear that there is no such illusion. The theoretical, verbal aspect is not important, however clear this is in theory, in concept. Here, for example, speaking… maybe this gets a little hazy or maybe even very clear, but that doesn't matter! What matters is that you actualize it in yourself – look, observe, without the observer, observe the thought without the thinker.
So thought is a memory, a remembrance, it’s an image from the past, there is no identity. However, you are addicted to putting an identity on it. But now I invite you to just look at thought which arises without condemning it, without criticizing it, without judging it, without comparing it with another thought, without liking it, without disliking it, just looking at it.
This goes for a present feeling arising here and now, in this instant. That feeling comes with a thought, so it has a story to tell about itself. What usually happens is that you believe what thought says because of the feeling you feel. Identified with the body, you say “I” and do not observe.
So, you get confused, you identify with. And when you do that, you are always, again and again, in this model of egoic identity, of false identity, of illusory individuality.
OK? Are we together?
We are exploring and investigating This with you – the Realization of your Essential Nature, your Divine Nature, which is Consciousness. This Consciousness is non-dual. There is only One, without the second – This is Advaita. The expression is “Advaita,” non-duality. There is only One, without the second – This is Spiritual Enlightenment.
That State settles into that body-mind, the sense of egoic identity is discarded, the illusion of separateness dissolves – this occurs with the Awakening of this Consciousness, which the Sages in India also call Kundalini. The Energy of Consciousness present in that body makes a change in that organism, in that mechanism, then Spiritual Enlightenment occurs.
So, here we have the answer to what Spiritual Enlightenment is: it is the end of the “I,” it is the end of the ego. The work consists of Self-awareness. We also have a very extensive playlist on this subject. We are working on it with you here: what is Self-awareness? How to learn about yourself?
This learning about yourself is being aware of yourself here and now, moment to moment.
So, this is not part of this movement of psychological conditioning, it is not something that the “me,” the “I,” the ego, this movement of memory, this movement of this mental consciousness, is going to acquire, to absorb into itself, it is not a method, not a practice, it’s Awareness here and now, Attention to yourself right now, moment to moment.
In this Attention, there is a breaking of this separateness, this illusory, artificial duality, sustained by this unconsciousness.
So, the work towards Spiritual Enlightenment is to observe yourself, moment by moment, to look at what arises, to look at what is here and now, and not place an identity in it, not place an experiencer in it, a thinker in this, an observer in this.
Try looking without the name for a present experience. Try this! When the feeling arises, don't name it. Stay with the sensation, but don't name it. There is a psychological tendency within you for this thinker to come up saying “I don't want to! I don't like it! I don't want this for myself!” When it verbalizes that, when it names that or when it internalizes that, it has already arisen by separating itself from the experience. And when that happens, the process of duality is there.
Try not to name, try not to put an identity when a thought arises, when a feeling, an emotion, a sensation arises. When you look at a cloud in the sky, you neither like nor dislike, you neither accept nor reject, you just look, you just follow, when you want to follow, or you let it… you are neither against nor in favor, you just look.
It is difficult to deal with what arises here in this mechanism, in this organism, because the inclination of the ego, the inclination in this programming, in this conditioning, is always to hold onto it and put an identity in it, liking it, not liking it, rejecting it, judging it, comparing it…
That’s why this work is a job that requires patience. We have to approach it patiently, but it can be realized, and that’s the purpose. So, the approach of Spiritual Awakening, of Spiritual Enlightenment, is through Self-awareness.
So, if that’s something that makes sense to you, if that’s something that touches you, we have online meetings to look into that, and face-to-face meetings, including retreats. If this makes sense to you, subscribe to the channel… We have the WhatsApp link in the video description and we can work on it together!
OK?
Thanks for the meeting and see you soon!
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