Enlightenment is not an achievement
by Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
There is no merging and there is no achieving when it comes to enlightenment. All that exists does so right here and now. Enlightenment, then, has to do with realizing what has always been here, which is the ultimate Truth. There is no achieving it, in the same way that there is no achieving water when you are in the midst of the ocean.
We begin with the cosmology of the Self
So what is happening? The answer begins with a basic understanding of the cosmology of human life. The main players are the biological body, the brain, the mind, the egoic self, consciousness, and the Absolute.
Since the earliest age, the mind is conditioned by information to which it is exposed. This information creates a belief system that you call “me,” or “I.” It is the egoic self, or the egoic mind, and it is a belief that you are the body and the mind, and that you are attached to and identified with other people, objects, possessions, achievements, failures, events, traumas, celebrations, and so on. Parents, teachers, authority figures, and other influential people and events depart information that you accept to form a sense of who you think yourself to be.
The egoic mind has very limited usefulness, and it gets in the way of understanding that we are all the same consciousness that expresses itself in all beings, objects, and phenomena. The egoic mind presents a sense of separation from the whole, and this separation creates conflict of all sorts, because that which is not whole is fragmented — and fragments conflict with other fragments. Scientifically we would say that opposing pieces cause friction, and this causes wear, tear, resistance, and destruction.
Consciousness “is”
Consciousness is the totality of all that is. It is action, existence, movement, creation, destruction, and all phenomena. Since the egoic self is only a belief forged out of information, thoughts, ideas, and memories, it misbelieves that it is the doer and the creator. But consciousness is the only creator, including the creator of the body, the mind, and everything that happens and can be sensed and known.
The enlightened person realizes that he or she is actually consciousness as existence. There is no separation between consciousness and who we are. It is not something we have or that we “get,” but rather something that we are. We are the creative force and movement of the universe, but not “we” as individuals. We as consciousness, expressed biologically as people, are the movement, makeup, contents, and existence of life.
Nothing but The Absolute
The enlightened person realizes what has been explained above. But there is more. Prior to consciousness — prior to movement and even prior to potentiality—is a spaceless, timeless, boundless, undefinable, shapeless, nameless, infinite, silent stillness that has been called The Absolute. This is the “screen” upon which the play of life expresses itself. It is not knowable by the thinking, calculating, reasoning, sensing mind.
