All those who begin to walk along the so-called spiritual paths hear to talk about the concept of “enlightenment” from very early on. It is identified both with a particular psychological state of a person and with a process that that person carries out with greater or lesser efforts. Psychological states are states of our Tripartite Soul, not states of “I Am.” The “I Am” is always what it is, it does not become anything in particular although nothing is without the “I Am”.
What does enlightenment consist of?” Allow me to clarify another more fundamental question: “Who is enlightened?” The answer is simple: the ego is illuminated. Let's clarify this. If enlightenment is a process or a state of our Soul, when we create an intellectual image of that state, we are creating a narrative of that particular state, and we will give one description or another, but using conceptual representations, which are always the result of an egoic action of centroversion of the organism.
Your Soul is illuminated, but the “I Am” in you is not illuminated, because the “I Am” is the Light that makes any illumination possible. You are already That, Tat tvam asi: whatever you do or don't do, you are already That.
Anyone who says: “I am enlightened” or “I have achieved enlightenment” is really saying: “I have an enlightened ego, I have constructed a spiritual mask from my other masks.” The “I Am” is present in states and processes of enlightenment, but it is also present in states and processes of darkness. In fact, it is present in any state or process, but it is not any of those states or processes.
Surely, you have also heard of another concept: “realization”. Realization is the perennial state of enlightenment. Our Soul can have psychic ups and downs, moments of clarity and lucidity, and moments of darkness and thickness. Realization is outside of those movements, it is simply the loving surrender of the Soul to the Self, to the “I Am”. There can be no realized ego, no particular mask or narrative of realization. The Soul annihilates itself in the Self, in the “I Am”, in the Atman, like the moth in the candle, as Rumi so beautifully said. Some say: “I don't want to become sugar, I want to enjoy sugar”, that is, I don't want to annihilate the masks that my soul has built expressing its transpersonal seeds, I want to give them their space and live them. That is desiring duality, and it is as wonderful as living in non-duality. Non-duality cannot be limited by duality, it is not about continuously and deliberately acting in a non-dual way, that would be forcing, it would be egoic. Duality is also spontaneous. If you want sugar spontaneously, eat cakes. If you are spontaneous, your Soul itself will become cloying at a given moment, then it will want something else.
Existence is not an adventure that can go wrong if there is bad luck or that can go well if there is good luck. Existence is the expression of the Supreme Being, both its lights and its shadows. The success of the infinite purposes of the “I Am”, of the Satchitananda that becomes Existence as Universe, as you, as your Soul, the success of your Soul and mine, is already guaranteed. The battle has already been won outside of time, won and lost at the same time, and therefore transcended. This wisdom lives in you and in me, like the essence of an invisible flower, pure Ananda.
Comments
I think it is interesting how the mind seeks duality in the lesson, or mine at least. Meaning, to "meet beyond good and evil" is also to give up the thinking that assigns bad to duality is bad and good to non-duality. It's more expansive, creative thinking to see our masks and the Atman outside this binary and to stop the internal struggle that arises when we assign these terms and then judge ourselves harshly for existing within them.