Be Enlightened

If happiness and peace sound like worthy goals, use your imagination to "pretend" enlightenment. You'll be surprised at the results.

When I began my journey, I never thought I was looking for enlightenment. If you'd asked me what I was looking for, I probably would've said, "To get some peace, and to have some control over my thoughts." If pressed further, I might have admitted I wanted to be happier. Or I might have confided that I'd had some experiences of feeling connected to everyone and everything and wanted to know why. This state of being connected felt better than anything else, and that I wanted to find some way to live there.

It was years before it occurred to me that my search for peace, happiness, and connection actually amounted to a search for enlightenment. Enlightenment is the only state in which happiness, peace, and the feeling of being connected do not go away. I thought of enlightenment as an exotic state accessible only to mystics and similar otherworldly creatures.

I found a simple technique where you focus your attention on the energy in your body in order to experience the inner presence that lies beyond thought. Suddenly, my vision shifted, and I "saw" that everything around me and everything I could think of was part of one fabric and that the fabric of the universe was the fabric of my own consciousness. This shift in vision was accompanied by a sense of total relaxation and peace. This new vision hasn't gone away.

After practicing this technique, I’m asking, "Why don't more people make enlightenment a goal?" Enlightenment is a lot more accessible than people think.

If you've stood aside from your own mind and become the witness of your experience, or felt loving toward someone you ordinarily don't like, or stood in nature and sensed the interconnectedness of everything, you've touched one of the flavors of the enlightened state. If you've ever lost yourself completely in a task, in sexual ecstasy or dancing or music, or felt pure happiness or compassion well up for no reason, you've touched enlightenment.

Of course, human beings have had such experiences forever. And full enlightenment, which I'd define as the realization that there is one energy in the universe and that all of us are part of it, is not something that comes easily. It requires effort, commitment, and grace.

The most obvious answer is that most of us don't realize the state of enlightenment is either possible or desirable. You may believe it requires a level of heroism and sacrifice that is beyond you, or that it's reserved for people, who, like the Buddha, renounce everything, who leave job, home, and family to spend years chastising themselves, meditating for long hours, and cutting themselves off from ordinary life.

This all-or-nothing notion of enlightenment is deeply rooted, and insidious. I often get questions from students who experience an expansion of consciousness and then worry, "But if I keep doing this, will I have to give up my family? Will I lose my personality?" If you think pursuing high states of consciousness means giving up other aspects of life, it doesn’t seem like an attractive option. Your opinion of what is important may change, but it will seldom disrupt your life, it will only enhance it.

On the he other hand, you may be attracted to the idea of enlightenment, but imagine it to be a way of bypassing ordinary challenges and irritations, and then may get discouraged if you don't experience an immediate transformation, or get frustrated when you aren't lifted miraculously beyond the everyday demands of work and family relationships.

Another misconception about enlightenment is that it's only for saintly types. We look at ourselves and say, "I could never be enlightened because, …" We can't imagine how someone like ourselves, with all our foibles, aversions, and desires, could ever enter such an exalted state.

The truth is, we can, and we should. Enlightenment, according to the yogi traditions, is one of the four legitimate goals of human existence, and despite centuries of propaganda to the contrary, it's something that can be sought, and practiced, in the context of a so-called normal life.

When you consider becoming enlightened a possibility, and practice enlightened attitudes, you create a spaciousness in your mind and life that's powerfully positive. In short, practicing enlightened attitudes will probably make you feel better if nothing else.

It was a fairly radical idea at first to realize that enlightenment could actually be practiced, I found the idea impossibly far away and unrealistic when I first encountered it.

For me, once I started meditating I realized that there are subtle thing happening around me all the time that I had blocked, tuned out, or chosen not to notice. Just by setting still, quieting my mind, and focusing on my breathing, I became a calmer person. My stress melted away. I became aware of the Universe around me. Time became unimportant to me, but I became astutely aware of time. I stopped using a watch.

I had studied Kung fu from the time I was 12 years old, but had never been interested in the internal arts. Things changed when I discovered the yoga Tantra tradition called bhavana, a practice in which you use your mind and imagination to create an inner experience of oneness, or to contemplate an enlightened reaction to an object of desire, say, or to an enemy. The idea is that by using your mind to hold enlightened ideas, and using your imagination to "pretend" enlightenment, you begin to create an inner experience of these states.

I was given tapes by Deepak Chopra and a video by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer that changed my fundamental way of thinking. From then on doors and opportunities opened to me. By using a few affirmations and having faith in the outcome, The Universe allows the act of creation to take place. "Everything inside and outside is an aspect of the divine,"

I started studying Qigong, a self-healing art that combines movement and meditation. Visualizations are employed to enhance the mind/body connection and assist healing. Qigong is the key component of traditional Chinese medicine with a history of five thousand years (in record)

These practices, I soon discovered, made a palpable difference in my state of mind. The best antidote to feeling bored, insecure, or unhappy was to spend a few minutes actively thinking, "Everyone is an aspect of my own consciousness." Not only did this smooth out my internal environment, but it also seemed to shift other people's behavior. To experience this, "Do It Yourself."

I have experienced confrontations that miraculously dissolved many times, and I’m still amazed each time it happens. When I’m expecting a fight, argument, or having to deal with a uncooperative person, I notice my attitude. If it is a negative reaction, I countered with the thought, "This person is part of my own consciousness. He is an aspect of my own Self. We are one."

As I hold that thought, I can feel my own attitude softening. I try to lock eyes with the individual, and I smile. The other persons attitude or outlook most always changes for the better.

Since I've been doing these practices, I've had this experience again and again. When I pause to remember oneness, difficulties tend to disappear. The disobedient computer and the short-tempered store clerk become more helpful when I remember that they are part of my Self. People are nicer. I'm nicer. This simple application of enlightened consciousness dispels negativity like almost nothing else. And then there are the times, sometimes for hours or even days, when remembering oneness stops being a practice and becomes a natural awareness that infuses my life.

The way you keep your mind determines the way you experience the world. On one level this is very obvious, you almost certainly have experienced getting into a bad mood and attracting annoying people and situations. If you follow this insight to its logical conclusion, you can take advantage of your mind's amazing creativity and imagine yourself into consistent states of freedom and joy.

Thinking yourself into an enlightened state is a particularly clever way of countering the negative tendencies of the mind; pretending enlightenment cuts right to the core of your contracted feelings. The root cause of fear or anger or addiction is the feeling of being alone or isolated and separate from everything else. Any moment you can shift that viewpoint, you eliminate a layer or two of fear and anger. The more you can do that, the more you shift the neuronal pathways that create all the "enemies" of your happiness.

Practicing enlightenment is a sophisticated exercise. Of course, it works only when you do it for its own sake, not because you're trying to impress people, and definitely not to claim a mastery you don't possess. You do it for the same reason kids pretend to do grown-up things, because it habituates you to the mature self you will one day become.

The truth is, you hold within yourself a template for enlightenment. Whether you call it the Self or Buddha-nature, there is at your core something, an essence, that is effortlessly joyous, free, and utterly connected to all that is.

Every time you remember oneness, you bring yourself one step closer to experiencing that core Self or enlightenment. It's a bit like calling forth the enlightened intellect that lives inside you. The sage is really there, along with all the other subpersonalities, the charmer, the worrier, the kick-butt yogi. The more you align yourself with these energies, the more you’ll find things fall into place in your life.