Do You Really Want Enlightenment?

[zazed]

one does not become enlightened.
Enlightenment is not an experience, instead it is experience.

You can never be alone, but you can be the experience of "being alone", the awareness of it.
It does not change experience itself, the awareness just goes on.
The body/mind is maybe alone or afraid, but the experience is just experience, it does not care if you are alone and whether that can be considered good or bad by some.

Enlightenment never was about gaining something, or reaching for, nor learning something.
It is about letting go, and allowing the simple experience of life to remain. Because essentially, that is all there is, our "essential being" or "enlightened self" just is. Our existence is not the human idea's/morality/feelings/body, but it is that "capacity for life" deep within us, our soul perhaps, that is aware of all these things.

This experience or awareness we actually are, just exists, like a witness looking at it:

• It exists in war-zones existing aware of pure horror
• it exists in utmost bliss at the happiest experiences in human life,
• it cannot be escaped from, it cannot be turned of.
• It cannot be chosen to be believed in, or searched for, you are always "enlightened"
• It is there when you dream, and when you wake up. It is always there and always has been. It is the alpha and omega  
• It is where time moves through, unchanged as the sun sets, and as it rises, always constant. It is unchanged by time.
• it never changes, whether you are dying of cancer, lost your legs, or just cut your hair, it is always exactly the same. Always there to experience more.
• If you have a mental disease you are experience as true self
• if you get Alzheimer, experience continues unchanged (only the body input has changed)
• If you become blind, experience continues unchanged (only the body input has changed)
• if you become deaf, experience continues unchanged (only the body input has changed)
• If you are an animal, you are experience as true self
• Perhaps even plants and trees have an "aware" inner self somehow, aware of certain chemical signalings.
• It will experience everything you throw at it, even an atomic bomb, it does not matter what, but it will just experience it without judgement, without reason.
• Perhaps even after death it may continue, i don't really know about this now

In my humble opinion, if you let go and dwell in it (meditating), feelings of "undirected love" start to emerge.
But whatever feeling we experience is not us, it is a gift from the body perhaps when it is released from the burden of self?
And there is really nothing there, no time, no worries, just the experience of life at that simple moment, which seems to feel "good" unless you are in physical pain perhaps. (but i don't meditate with physical pain)

But most of us think, most of the time, we are a human, with a body, and desires/dreams, with a future and also a past.
And so the "thing" that is aware of the human is forgotten, the mind takes control of our life, and as human we live.
sometimes dreaming, the human is forgotten, or takes different form, and we still experience it, our true self "experience" is there to witness.

Those who forgot about enlightenment are actually more correct. If you meditate without goal, just being calm. You are being, you are enlightened.
Perhaps you may not fully understand all the implications of it, and as such it is fleeting and temporary. But many and most can manage such brief periods of turning off the body-identification and being pure experience.
It's not sexy, it's not revolutionary, it seems like a simple mind trick, or semantics. So you read all these fancy things about it, cause that sells off-course. But the simplicity is huge in its depth.

[Nahm]

@zazed You're alone right now.